Relationship between climate drivers and agriculture in Ukraine: changes over the past two decades and potential implications on water scarcity in the future

Ukraine is prosperous in agricultural activities. Agricultural land covers 68.5% of the total land area. Additionally, Ukraine exports around 10% of the global cereals abroad and thus plays an important role in global food security. Crop production in Ukraine is dominated by grains (wheat, barley, corn), technical crops (sunflowers, sugar beets), potatoes¹. Livestock production is dominated by poultry, pigs, cows¹.  However, agricultural activities have been under threat over the past two decades. An important reason is climate change. Climate drivers such as temperature and precipitation have changed their patterns in space and time in Ukraine since 2000. The implications of those changes on agriculture are poorly studied, namely on crop yield, synthetic fertilizers, and animal manure. Furthermore, the potential implications of agriculture and climate on future water scarcity are unknown considering the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.

In this study, we aim to assess the relationship between climate drivers and agriculture in Ukraine over the past two decades (2000-2020) and discuss the potential implications of these drivers on future water scarcity considering the Russian-Ukrainian war as an additional (unexpected) threat. We do this in a spatially explicit way. We collect the following data for agriculture: crop yield, crop area, fertilizers, irrigation². Data for climate drivers include air temperature and precipitation³. For agriculture, data is based on one-year time steps, and data for climate drivers is seasonal every year between 2000 and 2020. We map the data for 24 provinces in Ukraine. We also show the historical changes over the studied period. From a historical perspective, we identify the main relationship between the climate drivers and agricultural aspects by province in Ukraine. We take these insights and discuss how water scarcity would change in the future if climate change and food production continue following the historical pattern, and consider the war as an additional threat. One of the results shows that water quantity is influenced by climate change; examples are droughts (less precipitation over time). Water quality is influenced by agricultural runoff and war activities; examples are too many nutrients from agriculture in rivers and too many emerging pollutants from destroyed treatment facilities.

Keywords: agriculture, climate parameters, water scarcity, drivers, implications

 

Acknowledgments: European Union HORIZON-MISS-2023-OCEAN-SOIL-01 Grant Agreement No. 101156867 (Path4Med).

 

1: European Parliamentary Research Service: Ukrainian agriculture, PE 760.432 – April 2024

2: The online platform AgroStats: Agricultural statistical data in Ukraine (1980-2023)

3: Climate Change Viewer platform: air temperature and precipitation in Ukraine (1981-2020)