Impact of the Russian invasion on wheat crops in Ukraine

In March 2022, Russia invaded part of Ukrainian territory. As the world’s fifth-largest wheat exporter, Ukraine’s war amplified an already mounting global food crisis.

However, the war’s effects on different links in the supply chain, from the agricultural fields to the port terminals, remain complex to untangle. Specifically, the impact of the war on field yields had not yet been quantified.

Through this study, we demonstrated that the war caused a 20% decline in biomass production in wheat fields near combat zones. Scientists from CNRS Terre & Univers (see boxed text) interpreted this result as a consequence of farmers abandoning their fields, leading to irrigation deficits and, most notably, a lack of nitrogen inputs during the crop season.

These conclusions were obtained using the AgriCarbon-EO processing chain, developed at CESBIO, which combines a crop growth model with satellite imagery to estimate biomass at an unprecedented fine scale (spatial resolution: 10 m or approximately 33 ft).

Satellite observations are indispensable for obtaining a realistic representation of crop evolution in the absence of on-the-ground data, as is often the case in war zones or in remote, technically and humanly underserved areas.

The images provided by the Sentinel-2 mission were pre-processed using the MAJA atmospheric correction software, designed at CESBIO and developed by CNES. The classification of wheat plots was carried out by Kermap, a startup employing artificial intelligence methods to identify crop types across Europe.

Biomass mapping of wheat fields in two regions of Ukraine (Poltava in the north and Kherson in the south). A biomass decline is visible in the Kherson region in 2022 only, confirming it was caused by the Russian invasion. @See reference

This study highlights the value of remote sensing for analyzing agricultural production on a large scale in difficult-to-access regions such as conflict zones. It underscores that war disrupts the grain supply chain starting at the agricultural fields, not just during “transport.” It opens up new perspectives for real-time analysis of agricultural conditions at a fine scale in heavily disrupted areas (conflict, climatic events).

References:
Antonenko, V., Al Bitar, A., Danylenko, I., Wijmer, T., Colin, J., Dejoux, J.-F., Lefebvre, A., Knibbe, M., Ceschia, E., & Gascoin, S. (2024).
Impact of the Russian invasion on wheat biomass in Ukraine.

Tags: Ukraine, Russia, Production, wheat, yields, fields, global food crisis, biomass