Since the beginning of the second phase of land reform in Ukraine, which allowed legal entities to purchase agricultural land, 148,000 plots of land totaling 442,700 hectares have been acquired through purchase agreements. These transactions pertain to land designated for commercial agricultural production.
This is reported by Business • Media
Results of Opening the Market to Legal Entities
According to the Minister of Agrarian Policy, Vitaliy Koval, legal entities have purchased only 1.77% of the total area of agricultural land, which in Ukraine amounts to 24.9 million hectares. Concerns about mass land acquisition by large players have not materialized, as there has been no significant increase in land concentration in a few hands following the market’s opening to legal entities.
“Considering that the total area of such land in Ukraine is 24.9 million hectares, since the market was opened to legal entities, they have acquired only 1.77% of the total area. Thus, the concerns that raising the limit on land purchases in one hand would lead to mass acquisitions by large players, leaving small farmers without access to the market, have not been confirmed,” noted Minister of Agrarian Policy Vitaliy Koval.
Market Structure and Price Dynamics
Vitaliy Koval emphasized that only one legal entity – the company “Zemelny Krai” (owned by the wife of the president of the Kernel agroholding) – has approached the established limit of 10,000 hectares “in one hand,” having acquired about 9,000 hectares of agricultural land. Among nearly 1,900 companies that participated in land purchases, only 18 acquired more than 1,000 hectares. This indicates a lack of mass concentration of land assets in the hands of the largest market participants.
Furthermore, the opening of the market to legal entities has positively impacted the value of agricultural land. If in December 2023 the average price per hectare was 38,800 hryvnias (equivalent to $929.8), by March 2025 it had risen to 53,100 hryvnias ($1,273), representing an increase of nearly 37%.