USAID AGRO to provide Ukrainian farmers with mineral fertilizers for 2025 harvest

MOSCOW. June 11 (Interfax) - The United States government will provide 6,600 tonnes of mineral fertilizers for free under the AGRI Ukraine initiative for 3,300 Ukrainian farmers growing crops in 2024-2025, Ukrainian media reported citing the Agrarian Policy and Food Ministry.

The support is intended for farmers cultivating from five to 500 hectares of farmland in the Dnepropetrovsk, Sumy, Kharkov, and Chernigov regions and in the Kiev-controlled parts of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson regions, growing grain or oilseed crops, and registered as legal entities or individual entrepreneurs, including as family farms, it said.

Eligible applicants cultivating from five to 25 hectares of their own or rented farmland will be entitled to receive one tonne of fertilizers each, and those cultivating from 25 to 500 hectares two tonnes each. This support is expected to be used to grow grain and oilseed crops for the 2025 harvest.

Farmers applying for support are expected to register with the State Agrarian Register in the Available Programs section. Applications will be accepted from June 11 to 25, and the program will run until the expiration of its volume, the ministry said.

The fertilizer distribution campaign is part of the United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities Activity (AGRO) for Ukraine under the AGRI Ukraine initiative. From December 2023 to January 2024, USAID AGRO provided mineral fertilizers to over 7,680 Ukrainian farmers for the 2024 spring sowing campaign. In 2023-2024, USAID AGRO provided fertilizers to over 14,000 Ukrainian farmers, enabling them to grow at least 2 million tonnes of grain on over 460,000 hectares.