After the war, Ukraine will need large sums of money to restore destroyed infrastructure and revitalize the economy. The German Investment and Development Corporation is already providing support DEG Private investments in Ukraine – also in its agriculture, he praises development policy information service Devex.
The Oakland-Institute in Kanada, which studies land appropriations worldwide, is extremely critical of precisely such investments. in one new report warns that Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign investors are acquiring large amounts of agricultural land cheaply. In Ukraine, this increases the concentration of farmland in a few hands, deprives many smallholders of their livelihoods and promotes industrialized agriculture along with its ecological damage.
Smallholders cannot keep up in the competition for land
According to the report, as a result of rampant privatization in the 1990s, more than a quarter of Ukraine’s land is already owned, leased or misappropriated by a dozen large companies. Among the investors are investment companies from Europe and the USA and the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia; many are registered in tax havens. According to the institute, such land takeovers are now threatening to accelerate again because the government partially lifted a moratorium on land purchases from 2001 in the face of strong protests in 2020. That, according to the study, was a condition of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Development Bank EBRD for loans that Ukraine desperately needed after Russia’s attack in 2014 and then in the corona pandemic.
With the 2020 law, the limits for the sale of large areas will be significantly increased in two stages – 2021 and 2024. According to the study, smallholders cannot keep up in the competition on the land market. Although foreigners are no longer allowed to buy land, they can lease it; that clears the way for big farms. The Oakland Institute also believes investments in Ukrainian agriculture are necessary for reconstruction. However, support should primarily be given to small farmers who feed the country, not to large export-oriented companies and oligarchs.