The group of companies "BTU-CENTER" conducted a large-scale social survey, in which about 300 farms took part. The purpose of the study was to find out what is the state of the soil in Ukraine and what difficulties Ukrainian farmers face in connection with climate change.

“We interviewed 250 farms working with traditional cultivation technology, 35 with organic farming and 11 farms with resource-saving tillage technologies No-till, Strip-till, Mini-till. Also, 10 Ukrainian agricultural holdings took part in the survey,” says Tatyana Khomenko, commercial director of the BTU-CENTER group of companies.

Among the difficulties arising in the cultivation of plants due to climate change, 30% of respondents noted the impact on changing the sowing time, 28% - a decrease in yield, 20% - desertification, 15% noted a decrease in the effectiveness of fertilizers.

Among the surveyed, 51% of farms have soil with signs of degradation. Among agricultural holdings, this figure is not much lower - 50%. Depending on the technology of soil cultivation, the process of soil degradation in farms was noted at the level of:

• with traditional processing - 65%;
• in organic farming - 44%;
• with resource-saving technologies - 5%.

The greatest decrease in soil fertility was noted in the eastern part and north. These are Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as Kirovograd and Mykolaiv regions, where this problem was noticed by 80 to 100% of the interviewed farmers. Among farms from the central and western parts of Ukraine, a decrease in soil fertility was noted by 50 to 80% of farmers. Of the listed technological processes that contribute to the improvement of the soil, according to farmers, the following were identified:

• crop rotation - 36%;
• the introduction of microbial preparations - 27%;
• tillage technology - 26%.

Recall that the method of tillage has a direct impact on its compaction, which, in turn, determines the quality of development of the root system of plants.

As for the frequency of soil tests, 70% of the respondents conduct them 1-2 times a year, about 30% do not know about the composition of the soil with which they work. Basically, Ukrainian farmers carry out analyzes for chemical composition, complete chemical composition and agrochemical analysis. In particular, 45% of respondents analyze only by the amount of nutrients, ignoring the indicator of the number and ratio of microorganisms in the soil. Only 2% of respondents conduct microbiological analysis.

SuperAgronom.com