Ukraine, a country with an ancient history. Although it is only 600,000 square kilometers, it is regarded as the granary of Europe, which shows how influential the country's agriculture is.
What makes Ukraine's agriculture so important is that the country has a unique advantage, that is, the vast black land.
As we all know, black soil is a kind of land that is very suitable for crop growth. In our country, there is a black land with an area of 1.03 million kilometers, that is, the Northeast Plain. It is precisely with the crops of this land that the northeast has transformed from the original "Northern Wilderness" to the "Northern Northern Cang" of the motherland. According to a data from last year, in 2020, the four northeastern provinces and regions accounted for 25.9% of the country's grain production, which shows how important black soil is for agriculture.
Black earth does not only refer to blackened soil, but is named because the content of black humus is relatively high. The black soil contains a large number of phosphoric acid, humus, phosphorus, ammonia, magnesium, and minerals such as calcium or iron, which are very beneficial to the growth of crops, so it has become the most fertile land in the world, which can be called a gift from God to mankind.
There are three major black lands in the world, in addition to the black land in the northeast of the continent, there is the Mississippi River Basin in North America, which covers an area of 1.2 million square kilometers, and the largest black land is distributed in the Great Plains of Ukraine in Eastern Europe, which covers an area of 1.9 million square kilometers. There is also a reddish black land, that is, the Pampas in South America, which has allowed Argentina's agriculture to develop by leaps and bounds.
Of course, Ukraine's land area is only about 600,000 square kilometers, and it does not occupy all of the black land. But it should be noted that although the area of black land is so vast, this area is not all black land. If you calculate the area of black soil used for farming separately, Ukraine occupies 30%-40% of the world's black land! This is enough to make Ukraine's agriculture play a pivotal role on a global scale.
In particular, Donetsk and Luhansk, which have recently become independent in eastern Ukraine, are the main distribution areas of black land in Ukraine.
For many years, Ukraine's agriculture has been developing very well, and has long been the second highest food exporter in the world, after the United States, and above the mainland (third).
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine has released a data pointing out that the country's agricultural land has reached 42.56 million hectares, that is, 70% of Ukraine's land area is agricultural land, and 55% of the land area is arable land. Taking the 2020 data as an example, 6 of the top 10 exports of goods in Ukraine are agricultural products. Moreover, Ukraine's agricultural exports reached $22.2 billion that year, accounting for 45% of the country's total exports, and even contributed 9% of the country's GDP that year.
From these data, we can see the importance of agriculture to this country.
Ukraine's agriculture is not only vital to the country, but also has a huge impact on a global scale. Countries ranging from India to Egypt to Turkey, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Poland, Belarus and Germany are the main export destinations for Ukrainian agricultural products. As we can see, most of these are European countries, so for a long time, Ukraine was known as the "granary of Europe".
Ukraine's corn, barley, wheat, soybeans, rapeseed and other crops are very large in production and exported very much. Among them, corn production accounts for 3.5% of the world, exports account for 15% of the world, barley is the world's fourth largest exporter, wheat exports account for 10% of the world's total, of which the mainland is the main buyer of Ukrainian wheat. In addition to wheat, the mainland also imports a lot of corn and sunflower oil from Ukraine.
To exaggerate, Ukrainian agriculture can even "feed" the entire world!
However, don't look at ukraine's agricultural development is full of wind and fire, but the country's overall economy is not very beautiful to say.
Experts point out that 31 years have passed since Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union. During this period, Ukraine's overall GDP and GDP per capita, although higher than at that time, were much slower than in the surrounding Poland and even Kazakhstan. Even under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ukraine's GDP in 2020 even fell to almost the same level as it did in 2007.
Although its agriculture plays an important role on a global scale, even this "pillar industry" has not been developed in all aspects of the country, and there are relatively large shortcomings in warehousing and logistics infrastructure, and some policies related to agriculture need to be improved.
However, the country is quite confident in its own agricultural development, and even regards these problems as the great development potential of Ukrainian agriculture. In 2020, the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in China, Stepan Natalia, once said that Ukraine is also carrying out technological upgrading and improvement in agriculture, and is confident that it will double its grain production and triple its export volume within 10 years.
At present, with the increasing population of the world and the acceleration of urbanization, the food crisis around the world is also becoming more serious. As the "granary of Europe" and even an important agricultural country around the world, we also hope that Ukraine's agriculture can continue to develop and make greater contributions to world food security.
In addition, it also reminds the mainland how important it is to develop its own agriculture and grasp food in its own hands, no matter how convenient it is to import food from other countries. Regardless of the external situation, we must have our own jobs.