The claim
A year ago, Zelenskyy allowed the purchase of Ukrainian agricultural land by foreign companies. Three US corporations – Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto – have now bought up a third of this area.
Our conclusion
There is no evidence that the companies mentioned have purchased agricultural land in Ukraine. Selling agricultural land to foreign investors is not legally possible at the moment. This would only be possible after a referendum and only in 2024 if the citizens agree to it. The referendum has not yet taken place.
A German-Ukrainian influencer claimed on her YouTube channel that Ukrainian President Zelensky had allowed the sale of agricultural land to foreign companies in July 2021. Since then, three US companies – Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto – have bought a third of this area. A half-minute snippet of this video ended up on TikTok. It was shared there thousands of times, deleted in between, but has since been restored (as of August 31, 2022).
A relevant Russian disinformation : Kiev has sold 30 percent of the country's territory. The political right in Germany has also taken up these lies and says that 17 out of 62 million hectares of land are in the hands of “locusts”. Internationally, there is great concern that companies are securing these land areas that have no problem with the use of genetically modified seeds . An Australian debunking site assumes that the large figure of 17 million hectares originated here.
What is so interesting about agricultural land in Ukraine?
Black earth (chernozem) is one of the world's most fertile soils with a very high humus content. In its purest form, it is the typical soil of the steppe areas with warm summers and cold winters. Black earth occurs mainly in Eurasia in an arc starting from Hungary through Romania, Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. About a quarter of the world's chernozem soils are located on the territory of Ukraine. Around 32 million hectares of arable land (¾ of the total area) are cultivated annually, which corresponds to around a third of the arable land of the entire European Union.
“Already today [2015] Ukraine is the third largest corn and seventh largest wheat exporter in the world. The countries of North Africa and the Middle East in particular buy grain there. The global food crisis of 2007 and 2008 also had to do with the fact that the Ukrainian government temporarily stopped exports - after that, bread became more expensive in many countries around the world and hunger riots broke out. Since then, foreign investors have also become aware of how valuable Ukrainian land is. […] 'We are observing a competition between Russian and Western interests in Ukraine,'” Die Zeit Frédéric Mousseau.
The origin of the claims: the Oakland Institute paper
Frédéric Mousseau, quoted above, is Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, “where he coordinates the Institute’s research and advocacy activities on land investment, food security and agriculture.” “Interest representation” makes it clear that you cannot and do not want to work independently. This same Oakland Institute had already published a so-called “country fact sheet” in December 2014: The Corporate Takeover of Ukrainian Agriculture . The claims made there are repeatedly taken up in the conspiracy stories surrounding Ukrainian agricultural land.
The teaser for the document already contains serious allegations: The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund took advantage of the political upheaval to deregulate the country's agricultural sector and open it up to foreign corporations. And transnational corporations – including Monsanto, Cargill and DuPont – would not only invest heavily in the Ukrainian agricultural system, but would take over it by circumventing the land moratorium.
In the actual document, these allegations become even more explicit: “Agricultural land in Ukraine is currently subject to a moratorium that prohibits its sale until January 1, 2016. Despite this moratorium, at least 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian agricultural land are currently in foreign hands. Ten large companies would control up to 2.8 million hectares.
document from a large law firm as to how this can work : Investors can lease farmland for up to 49 years. And because the legal regulation only applies to agricultural land, it is legal to buy the industrial land for the processing plants. In any case, one should not let the moratorium “deter one from using the black, fertile land of Ukraine”.
“A second option for investors to get around the land moratorium is to buy shares in large Ukrainian agricultural companies,” suggests the Oakland Institute. This strategy was actually possible at that time, but the new law from 2020 explicitly prohibits the purchase of land by companies with foreign investments - see below. A look at the landmatrix.org confirms: None of the three companies has directly purchased land in Ukraine since records began in this database (2012). Nothing about this appears in the annual reports of Cargill , DuPont and Bayer
Interests of Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto in Ukrainian agricultural land
The traces lie in the past: the land distribution system of the 1990s often led to a concentration of land in the hands of a few. Agricultural entrepreneurs, like billionaire Oleg Bakhmatyuk, benefited massively from the legal situation in the years after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Before the Russian invasion, his company UkrLandFarming owned more than 670,000 hectares, making it the largest land bank in Ukraine.
In 2014, the multinational food and feed group Cargill acquired a stake in UkrLandFarming by 5 percent of the company's shares. However, this investment only lasted until 2016 . These shares then reverted back to Bakhmatyuk, who at this point again owned 100 percent of UkrLandFarming. As early as 2012, the Kyiv Post leaked the Ukrainian government's plans to lease large parts of unused, state-owned agricultural land to private entrepreneurs. These plans were not implemented 1:1, but some of the concepts developed can be found in amendment to the Land Code of Ukraine, see below.
“While it is unclear what became of this program, it is clear that significant parcels of land have become the property of foreign investors in recent years. As already mentioned, at least 1.6 million hectares of Ukrainian agricultural land are foreign-owned,” claims the Oakland Institute, referring to its own paper Walking on the Westside .
“So while the land moratorium has created obstacles to full ownership of Ukraine's black earth, there are opportunities to exploit this rich resource.” The fact sheet then goes on to list the agricultural activities of Monsanto, Cargill, Monsanto and the Chinese State Bank. However, there remains a lack of evidence that the three companies mentioned actually came into legal possession of arable land.
Legal basis
Land Code of Ukraine of 2002, it is not possible for foreigners, stateless persons and foreign legal entities to acquire land in Ukraine or to participate in land ownership through shares or similar. A new law passed in 2020 amending the land code provides for changes that cannot come into force until a Ukraine-wide referendum has been held on the matter.
According to this law, it would also be possible for foreign companies to acquire land in Ukraine from 2024. The corresponding referendum has not yet been held. According to a survey from June 2021, 84 percent of the population is against such an opening step.
However, there is a legal loophole in how foreign companies can still control Ukrainian agricultural land. The Ukrainian law firm DLF explains how to do this: Since July 1, 2021, citizens have been allowed to purchase arable land of up to 10,000 hectares. The foreign company looks for a loyal third party to purchase the leased land for them. A right of first refusal will then be anchored in the new, long-term lease agreement, but this can only be exercised after the referendum and in 2024 at the earliest.
Calculated briefly: In order to control a third of the 42 million hectares of arable land, i.e. 14 million hectares, at least 1,400 of the above-mentioned lease agreements are necessary. In practice, there would probably be many more: a process that would undoubtedly have caused a corresponding media outcry and further political measures to contain it.
The story of the 17 million belonging to US companies sounds like fake news that distracts from the important fact that US and European companies and investment funds have significant interests in Ukrainian land and agriculture.
Frédéric Mousseau, August 2022
Conclusion
According to the current legal situation, it is not possible that US corporations have bought large parts of Ukrainian agricultural land in the last two years. The law also explicitly excludes the detour via company investments. Nothing about this appears in the annual reports of Cargill, DuPunt and Bayer, nor in the landmatrix.org database.
Frédéric Mousseau of the Oakland Institute also calls the latest claims false. “It is highly unlikely that the president could sell a significant amount of land.” Ukrainian law prohibits such sales, and even if they were allowed, the companies mentioned would not purchase large tracts of land. “There is no doubt that Cargill, Dupont and Monsanto have major business interests in Ukraine, but not through their direct control over the country.” This statement is in direct contradiction to that of 2014, but it is a given.
Sources:
https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/2768-14#Text (The Ukrainian Land Law of 2002)
https://zakon.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/552-IX# Text (The amendment to the Land Law of 2020)
https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-03/ukraine-landwirtschaft-schwarzerde-monsanto/komplettansicht
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/corporate-takeover-ukrainian- agriculture
https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/walking-west-side-world-bank-and-imf-ukraine-conflict
https://www.mondaq.com/land-law-agriculture/206580/starting-agricultural- production-in-ukraine
https://www.ulf.com.ua/en/company/history/ (UkrLandFarming company history)
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/cargill-withdraws-among-ukrlandfarmings- shareholders.html
https://www.farmlandgrab.org/post/view/21068-ukraine-may-dole-out-huge-tracts-of-unused-farmland (information about government plans leaked by Kyiv Post)
https://kiis .com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=1051 (survey results: 84% of Ukrainians are against liberalization of the land market)
https://dlf.ua/de/wie-koennen-agrarunternehmen-ihre-bewirtschafteten-soils -in-der-ukraine-control/
https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/not-a-grain-of-truth-in-ukrainian-farmland-claim/
https://perma.cc/WQS7 -EFP2 (TikTok video with false claims)
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