Ukraine starts 2024 with record-warm temperatures

By Anders Lorenzen

The country that’s at the heart of a cruel war and major geopolitical crisis and that also serves as Europe’s breadbasket has had its fair share of challenges in recent years.

Now a new one for the country and its struggling economy as one of the main drivers of its economy, even in war-torn times; cereal production and in particular wheat, are heavily impacted by extremely warm temperatures recorded for this time of the year. 

While it is too early to say how much of this freak weather event is due to climate change, scientists are saying there’s no doubt that the increase and severity of extreme weather events around the world is due to the burning of fossil fuels. This is consistent with an increase in extreme weather events year after year as the warming continues to increase in line with emissions.

Impacts on winter crops

Even at a time of war, Ukraine has maintained a high and stable production of cereal grains predominantly wheat, but the warm conditions and frequent thaws could have a negative impact on those yields classified as winter cereals as the variant is hardy enough to grow across the winter period. 

According to the consultancy APK-Inform government scientists have said: “Changing temperature conditions, prolonged thaws, restoration of growth processes during overwintering – all this leads to … reduction of winter hardiness of winter crops”, and further explained that the potential risks under changing weather conditions are quite high.

Historically winter wheat has accounted for about 95% of all the wheat grown in Ukraine, but the yield depends largely on favourable weather conditions from autumn to late spring. The second half of December and the beginning of January had been characterised by abnormally warm weather, but the thaw has now been replaced by deep frosts over almost the entire territory. But even though it is now colder, sudden large swings in temperatures are not favouring crops, even hardy crops like winter wheat struggle to cope with sudden temperature swings.

Europe’s breadbasket

Ukrainian farmers sowed around 4.2 million hectares of winter wheat for the 2024 harvest versus 4.5 million a year earlier, with the country’s first deputy minister Taras Vysotskiy having predicted at the end of 2023 that the country could harvest up to 20 million metric tons of winter wheat from the sown area.

In 2023 Ukraine harvested more than 22 million tons of wheat.

Ukraine is among the world’s top agricultural producers and exporters and is often described as the breadbasket of Europe. During the 2020/21 international wheat marketing season (July–June), it ranked as the sixth largest wheat exporter, accounting for nine per cent of world wheat trade.

A study published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment in November last year outlined the increasing impact climate change has in diminishing yields in a variety of cereal crops grown in many different areas around the world.