Ukrainian Agriculture and Agri- Environmental Concern

This paper presents an overview of the development of macroeconomic conditions in Ukrainian agriculture from 1990 to the present, and highlights the main features of land privatization & farm reorganization that have strong impact on the environment. In this regard, the review describes the major agri-environmental issues drawn from national Ukrainian datasets accompanied by a discussion of the potential development. The paper consists of several parts: 1) the country’s general characteristics and overview of the Ukrainian agriculture; 2) the macroeconomic situation of the Ukrainian agriculture in the 90-th to the present; 3) land reform and reorganization of the farm sector; 4) environmental situation in the Ukrainian agriculture; and 5) agri-environment concern and policy response. All these parts primarily refer to the latest international and national repots, publications and cases in Ukraine before and during the transition period. * National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine ([email protected], [email protected]). Oleg Kucher currently is a Visiting Scholar at the Ohio State University, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics (S. Thompson). He also collaborates with the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences Vienna: Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences (R. Mansberger), Department of Economics and Social Sciences (S. Vogel). 1 The paper was prepared within the Fulbright Scholar Research Program at the Ohio State University, AEDE department. The first two parts of the paper are based on the publication “Landwirtschaft, Landprivatisierung und Landadministration”. Die Ukraine in Europa, 2003, with additions for the period of 2003-2006.