Europe’s Last Land Frontier Is Opening Up
Ukraine is about to allow land sales after decades of hesitation. It’s going to be messy.
Ukraine: Europe’s last farmland frontier.
Photographer: Vincent Mundy/Bloomberg
Ukraine has almost as much agricultural land as France and Germany combined and will finally start allowing it to be bought and sold next year. This is Europe’s last farmland frontier, and the fight over it is going to be messy.
About 17% of Ukraine’s gross domestic product comes from agriculture, the one sector where Ukraine punches above its weight on the global stage. It’s the world’s sixth-biggest wheat exporter, a top-10 supplier of corn and barley, the global leader in sunflower oil exports, and No. 3 in honey, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It has more farmland than anywhere else in Europe apart from Russia, where much of the land is actually located in Asia, and Ukraine’s nutrient-rich “black earth” soil is of better quality than most of Russia’s.