To farmers climate change is not a subject of debate, it is an accepted fact, a phenomenon that must be embraced with innovative, adoptive practices and proper risk management.
The World Bank says that precipitation on average sunk by 9.2 millimeters in Ukraine when comparing the 30-year periods of 1990-2009 and 1960-1990.
Forty-one percent of the shortage, or 3.8 millimeters, occurred in the three crucial summer months of June, July and August.
“The question about rain is about when it falls, when there’s a big drop in summer, it makes a big difference to farmers,” said Bohdan Chomiak, director of Lapersa Enterprises, an agricultural investment advisory.
To make things trickier, Ukraine, with a land area of 60 million hectares – roughly the size of France – has precipitation disproportionately distributed. It is highest in the west and north, and least in the east and southeast, according to the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage, a global non-profit group.
Research conducted by Chomiak’s Lapersa also found that over the last decade the average nationwide temperature rose by 1.5 C, an incremental change that is altering Ukraine’s agricultural climatic landscape.
Apart from sub-Mediterranean Crimea where tea, melons and grapes are abundantly grown, Ukraine has three agri-climatic zones: prairie, forest-prairie and forest, covering 48, 33 and 19 percent of the land area, respectively.
Each has specific climatic conditions, soil composition, and precipitation and temperature levels that dictate what can be grown and where. But if farmers don’t plan properly, their yields could fall drastically, or they could lose arable land altogether.
“Climate change is especially relevant all over southern Ukraine (where it is dry),” said John Shmorhun, CEO of Harmelia, a 70,000-hectare farming operation in Kharkiv Oblast. “That line (of dryness) continues to move north slowly. In that case you may have sufficient rain on an annual basis, but it may not precipitate at the right times. Therefore, it becomes more and more prudent to preserve moisture through minimum and no tillage.”
Located in the prairie south, regions like Kherson, Mykolayiv and Crimea are increasingly arid because of frequent drought, rising temperatures and lacking irrigation. These areas can see no rainfall on sown areas for up to four or five months.
Scientists warn changing climatic conditions could eventually transform Ukraine’s famed prairie into deserts. If no action is taken to irrigate the soil to keep it moist, 15 to 21 million hectares, or half the nation’s arable land, could disappear.
An undeveloped system of water channels compounds the problem in the south, “which requires a lot of attention,” said Sergii Nevmyvanyi, a technical expert for the International Finance Corporation’s Resource Efficiency program.
The farming areas there, particularly those in Crimea, are far from three of Ukraine’s major river arteries: Dnister in the west, Dnipro in the center, and Siversky Donets in the east.
In March Prime Minister Mykola Azarov acknowledged the problem and pledged to invest $2 billion to develop an irrigation system by 2015 as a part of a multi-billion government program to boost the economy.
“Today only 400,000 hectares are irrigated (1.1 percent of arable land). The total area of irrigated land in 2015 should reach 1.4 million hectares,” he said.
But it is still unclear, according to Nevmyvanyi, “who should lead this, who should be responsible for maintaining the system, cleaning it, ensuring water quality.”
Ukraine’s State Geological Service and Water Agency didn’t respond to Kyiv Post inquiries about available ground water level data.
This challenge also presents an opportunity for those ready to adapt. Farmers in the south and elsewhere are turning to more drought tolerant crops like sorghum, lentils and chickpeas. They’re also using drip irrigation, which typically involves placing drip lines below the soil to avoid evaporation.
According to Chomiak, the water-efficient technology is currently used on more than 80,000 hectares whereas in 2002, only 5,100 hectares applied it. He noted that where there is irrigation, especially in the prairie zone, farmers can double crop, “I’ve seen two crops of soybean where there is irrigation.”
Hence, sorghum production has jumped from being grown on 23,000 hectares in 2009 to 170,000 hectares in 2012, according to an APK-Inform Agency report. Having a high-yield quality that is superbly suited to climate change, sorghum can substitute maize and barley, Ukraine’s main fodder crops. It is also used for producing starch and bioethanol.
Oleksiy Stetsenko, marketing and strategy lead for Monsanto Ukraine, a global seed and herbicide producer, said he has observed Ukrainian farmers in the south and east introduce crops with more efficient water utilization: new hybrids of corn, millet, winter wheat and sunflower.
Yet at the same time, he added, “we see that some farmers still tend to shorten crop rotation which negatively impacts long-term yields in dry areas.”
Experts noted that in general, the less soil is disrupted, the more moisture and humidity can be preserved with the use no-till or minimum tillage.
Climate change can be advantageous, noted Vladyslav Luhovsky, chief operating officer of Mriya, an agricultural holding of 300,000 hectares located mostly in the west.
He said that Mriya, located mostly in the forest-prairie zone, grows corn, which isn’t considered a traditional crop for region.
“Nevertheless, today we comfortably cultivate corn with FAO 300 (hybrid seeds) which during harvest time has 25-28 percent humidity — this was impossible to even achieve with FAO 180-200 (seeds)…thus with precipitation falling, we could still harvest more corn,” said Luhovsky.
He admitted that “five years ago one would never dream that we would have problems with humidity.” Luhovsky added that the western region is facing bouts of insufficient humidity: “We continue to have rainfall. But only now, there are periods of drought for up to 20-30 days, and not more as in other regions that really experience drought.”
He explained that climate change has forced Mriya to re-examine sowing periods.
“Currently, sowing on our fields occur in March, which was not observed before,” said Luhovsky. The sowing window has also narrowed, he says.
“If in today’s conditions you’re late for one week in sowing, you could lose 25-30 percent of your harvest,” he said. “Thus, we literally have only a couple of days: once the soil is ready, one must soon get to work.”
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected]
