Ukrainian agriculture: challenges and ways of development under the climate change

Abstract

The article identifies and substantiates the challenges and prospects of agriculture under the climate change. Ukrainian agriculture serves as an important component of global food security, whose further development is dependent on natural resources, the environment and climate change. Agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, however, at the same time, it is suffering from the climate change itself. Although Ukraine is not included in the list of the most vulnerable to global warming regions on our planet, if no appropriate urgent action is taken, the climate change will continue to pressure on the agricultural ecosystems. The authors highlight positive (changed terms and conditions of harvesting, increased efficiency of fertilizers, etc.) and negative (deterioration of grain quality, increased frequency of droughts, etc.) effects of the climate change on agriculture; they identify and summarize the main measures to reduce the negative impact of agriculture on climate change and propose various basic adaptation measures that would mitigate the negative impact of the climate change on agriculture. Under the conditions of climate change, an important factor in improving the efficiency of agriculture is a rigorous distribution of arable lands between separate crops with regard to climate change. One of the important measures to improve the crop rotation pattern is including so called "niche" crops that have a significant potential for the diversification of the oilseed-and-grain pattern, which dominates in the crop rotations in southern Ukraine.