Melioration in Ukraine Will Be Transferred to the Jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy

As part of the irrigation reform, the State Agency for Water Resources will transfer the authority to reclaim agricultural land to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy. This was stated by the head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Roman Leshchenko.

All types of reclamation work, including drainage and irrigation, will be transferred to the ministry. Roman Leshchenko announced the launch of a global land reclamation project in the southern regions of Ukraine. First of all, the project will be implemented on the territory of Mykolaiv, Kherson, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia regions, which are most affected by drought. Reclamation measures will affect 4 million hectares of land resources.

Today, reclamation canals in the southern regions of Ukraine are in poor condition. According to the minister of the agro-industrial complex, water, which was previously supplied to Crimea, will be directed to irrigate lands suffering from drought. Leshchenko believes that if the irrigation reform and all additional laws are adopted, the yield on agricultural land in the south of Ukraine can be doubled.

The yield of winter wheat in the Zaporizhzhia region on non-irrigated lands is 2.9 tons per hectare and 6.3 tons per hectare on irrigated lands. As for soybeans, their yield increases from 0.72 tons per hectare on non-irrigated land to 2.79 tons per hectare under irrigation. Leshchenko called irrigation reform the second priority after land reform, and also announced the creation of the State Agency for Land Reclamation and Fisheries.