Ukraine: The World’s War-Torn Bread Basket

The Russian invasion of Ukraine was launched on February 24, 2022 with a Russian offensive targeting the capital city of Kyiv. 19 months after the invasion, Russia now controls 18% of Ukrainian territory near the southern and eastern borders, which poses a serious problem for one of the major agricultural centers of the world where Ukraine ranks in the top ten in global production of six major crops. Examining the effects of the Russian invasion on Ukrainian agricultural production is therefore significant to national and global food security.

This research project uses satellite imagery to examine and monitor Ukraine’s agricultural activity by applying a change detection analysis on affected Ukrainian farmland before and after the Russian invasion. The analysis begins by developing a proof-of-concept on some severely disturbed farmlands in the Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson and Kharkiv. Imagery provided by Planet at a spatial resolution of 3-4 meter resolution was used in the analysis. Time-series analysis in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was then applied to estimate the extent of damage in the study area. Results show the impact of the war on Ukraine’s farmland and the implications it has on their overall agricultural production.