KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine could lose several million tonnes of crops because of flooding caused by the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in the south of the country, the Ukrainian agriculture ministry said on Thursday.
“Without a source of water supply, it is impossible to grow vegetables. Grain and oilseeds will be grown using an extensive model with low yields,” the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said this week dam’s destruction would flood tens of thousands of hectares of agricultural land in southern Ukraine and could turn at least 500,000 hectares of land left without irrigation into “deserts”.
The ministry said the flooded land would require a full agro-ecological assessment of the soil condition and in most cases special soil restoration methods would need to be applied.
It said vegetables, melons, grains and oilseeds were the main products which were grown on the affected land.
Ukraine is a global major grain and oilseeds grower and exporter.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
