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Agriculture
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3.2.5 Agriculture
The area of arable land in the Dnipro Basin is 283,000 km2, or 55.4% of the total Basin area. Serious structural changes have taken place in the agricultural sector of the three riparian countries of the Basin over the last decade, leading to a continuous reduction in the proportion of arable agriculture compared with total agricultural output. However, mineral fertiliser application has significantly increased over recent years and livestock production has stabilised following a period of steep decline. Private sector involvement schemes have been set up, resulting in a 6% increase in the area of farmland allocated for individual farming activities.
Agricultural production plays a significant role in the economy of the Russian part of the Dnipro Basin. In 1996, the area of agricultural land used for arable purposes was 8.7 million hectares, accounting for 6.6% of the total grain cultivation area in the Russian Federation. Between 1996–2000 this area was reduced by 30%. This dramatic reduction in arable area graphically illustrates the current level of agricultural sector degradation in the Russian part of the Dnipro Basin, as compared to the overall situation in the country. A significant decline in livestock farming has also occurred. In 2000, meat and milk output accounted for 48% and 52% of the 1990 levels, respectively.
Deterioration of soil quality is considered to be one of the major causes of this continuing crisis, with 50% of agricultural land being swamped or acidified due to insufficient levels of lime. Large areas of agricultural land have also been inundated with shrubs. Erosion is also a continuing problem and inherent to agricultural fields located on slopes with gradients of greater than 1.5–2°. This has been aggravated because simple anti-erosion practices such as lateral slope tillage have been applied on only a third of this erosion-susceptible land.
The agricultural sector in Belarus was severely hit by the Chernobyl accident. Over 2,500 collective farms, 76 agro-industrial establishments and thousands of villages whose inhabitants relied on farming as their major source of income are in areas contaminated with radionuclides above 15 Cu/km2.
Intensive farming contributes significantly to the anthropogenic pressure on the Dnipro Basin within Ukraine. There has been a continuous expansion of grain-crop farming areas. Technical crops, particularly sunflower, are also increasingly dominating crop-planting patterns and are contributing to the progressive depletion of soil quality. A breakdown of agricultural enterprise by type is shown in Table 3.6.
Table 3.6. Breakdown of agricultural enterprise by type
|
Enterprise |
Area (Million Ha) |
Number of enterprises |
|
Large agricultural enterprises |
13.29 |
6,684 |
|
Private farms |
0.25 |
21,000 |
|
‘Gardening communities’ |
0.19 |
2,000,000 |
|
Land plots held by individual households |
1.85 |
6,400,000 |
Large-scale land irrigation/drainage schemes in Ukraine were launched in 1966, and the existing area of irrigated and drained farmland is 2.6 million hectares and 2.5 million hectares, respectively. The Dnipro River is a major source of water for irrigation. For example, the area of irrigated farmland near the Kakhovka reservoir is 260,000 hectares. Another 80,000 hectares lie in the Ingulets River catchment, and the North-Crimean channel serves an irrigated farmland area of 400,000 hectares. Irrigation systems are largely in poor technical condition and require upgrade and capital repair.
