Soils of war: The toxic legacy for Ukraine's breadbasket

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Experts say it would take decades to fix the damage in Ukraine – including contamination, mines, and destroyed infrastructure – and that global food supplies could suffer for years to come.

The war damage could cut Ukraine’s potential grain harvest by 10 to 20 million metric tons a year, or up to a third based on its pre-war output of 60 to 89 million metric tons, the Soil Institute’s director, Sviatoslav Baliuk, told Reuters., such as the area of land farmers plant, climate change, the use of fertilizers, and adoption of new farming technology.

Ukraine’s most fertile soil – called chernozem – has suffered the most, the institute found. Chernozem is richer than other soils in nutrients such as humus, phosphorus, and nitrogen and extends deep into the ground, as much as 1.5 meters.Increased toxicity and reduced diversity of microorganisms, for example, have already reduced the energy corn seeds can generate to sprout by an estimated 26%, resulting in lower yields, he said, citing the institute’s research.

US academics Joseph Hupy and Randall Schaetzl coined the term “bombturbation” in 2006 to describe war’s impact on soil. Among the unseen damage, bomb breaches in bedrock or soil layers can change the water table’s depth, depriving vegetation of a shallow water source, they wrote. To be sure, World War I lasted four years, and the war in Ukraine only one year so far, but lead remains a key component of many modern munitions, Rintoul-Hynes said.

 

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