Five years after Ukraine opened its agricultural land market, transactions cover more than 1.15 million hectares with a combined declared value above 51 billion hryvnias. The feared mass concentration of farmland did not occur, while the market continued operating through the full-scale war.
The opening began in July 2021. After a sharp wartime decline to about two thousand hectares traded in the second quarter of 2022, activity recovered to roughly fifty to fifty-five thousand hectares per quarter by late 2023. Legal entities entered the market in 2024 without producing a speculative surge.
Land prices and a new investor segment
The average reported price reached about 88.5 thousand hryvnias per hectare by May 2026, while the weighted average was close to 65.8 thousand. KSE estimates that the weighted price increased 119 percent nominally over five years and about twenty-five percent after adjusting for inflation.
About thirty percent of buyers now come from outside traditional agriculture. Some investors who previously focused on apartments are turning to farmland leases, attracted by a productive asset and increasingly transparent transactions.
Prozorro.Sale auctions have leased more than 237 thousand hectares. Agreements can generate up to 2.7 billion hryvnias annually for communities, although failed auctions and the cost of preparing lots still limit participation.
A major unresolved issue is collateral. Farmland remains difficult to use for bank lending, which reduces its ability to finance small and medium agricultural businesses. The next phase of reform therefore depends on stronger mortgage tools, auction discipline and transparent valuation.
