In historical retrospect, the largest decline in agricultural production occurred in 2022 – minus 25.3 %. At the same time, Ukraine's agriculture has shown greater resilience to the crisis factors provoked by the russian-Ukrainian war than other sectors of production. The livestock sector proved to be more resilient than the crop sector to the crisis factors caused by the russian-Ukrainian war: in 2022, the decline in crop production was 28.2 %, while livestock production fell by 11.8 %.
A distinctive sectoral response to the war is that in 2022, territories (entire regions and parts of regions) that play an important role in the production of domestic agricultural products were in the zone of temporary occupation and hostilities. Their quota in 2022 accounted for 23.7 % of crop production and 18.2 % of livestock production. This explains why domestic livestock production in 2022 suffered less losses compared to crop production.
The crop industry has a high recovery potential – in 2023, amid active large-scale warfare, it grew by 113.9 %, while livestock farming stagnated (100.4 %). The main reason for this is the consistently high demand on the global market for Ukrainian agri-food products of plant origin, such as wheat and corn grain, rapeseed, soybeans, sunflower oil, etc. Production in the food industry, as an integral part of the agricultural sector, increased 2.4 times between 2000 and 2023. In 2022, the decline in production was 21.6 %. The food industry in Ukraine has a high recovery potential: after a sharp decline in 2022, production growth in 2023 was 115.6 %. The growth impulse was of external origin - easier access of Ukrainian food products to the EU market and increased demand for the industry's products from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
The prospects for the development of domestic agrarian production, both under martial law and in the period of post-war economic recovery, should be considered within the framework of two parallel strategies:
– increasing the capacity of the domestic market;
– expanding the presence of agricultural products on the foreign market, primarily the EU market.
Key words
agrarian products, martial law, renewable potential, agriculture, food industry, global demand, EU market, strategy, market capacity