WAR AND THEFT THE TAKEOVER OF UKRAINE’S AGRICULTURAL LAND
The Oakland Institute
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The war in Ukraine has been at the center stage of foreign policy and media reports since February 2022. Little attention, however, has been given to a major issue, which is at the core of the conflict – who controls the agricultural land in the country known as the “breadbasket of Europe?”
This report addresses this gap – identifying the interests controlling Ukraine’s agricultural land and presenting an analysis of the dynamics at play around land tenure in the country. This includes the highly controversial land reform that took place in 2021 as part of the structural adjustment program initiated under the auspices of Western financial institutions, after the installation of a pro-European Union (EU) government following the Maidan Revolution in 2014.
With 33 million hectares of arable land, Ukraine has large swaths of the most fertile farmland in the world.1 Misguided privatization and corrupt governance since the early 1990s have concentrated land in the hands of a new oligarchic class. Around 4.3 million hectares are under large-scale agri- culture, with the bulk, three million hectares, in the hands of just a dozen large agribusiness firms.2 In addition, according to the government, about five million hectares – the size of two Crimea – have been “stolen” by private interests from the state of Ukraine.3 The total amount of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt individuals, and large agribusinesses is thus over nine million hectares, exceeding 28 percent of the country’s arable land. The rest is used by over eight million Ukrainian farmers.4
The largest landholders are a mix of oligarchs and a variety of foreign interests – mostly European and North American, including a US-based private equity fund and the sovereign fund of Saudi Arabia. All but one of the ten largest landholding firms are registered overseas, mainly in tax havens such as Cyprus or Luxembourg. Even when run and still largely controlled by an oligarch founder, a number of firms have gone public with Western banks and investment funds now controlling a significant amount of their shares.
The report identifies many prominent investors, including Vanguard Group, Kopernik Global Investors, BNP Asset Management Holding, Goldman Sachs-owned NN Investment Partners Holdings, and Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway’s sovereign wealth fund. A number of large US pension funds, foundations, and university endowments are also invested in Ukrainian land through NCH Capital – a US-based private equity fund, which is the fifth largest landholder in the country.
