Russian invaders blew up a dam at the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station on the night of June 6. Ukrhydroenergo said that the station was completely destroyed and cannot be restored.

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Sergey Ivashchenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Grain Association, in an interview with NV spoke about the consequences for agribusiness and how this will affect this year's harvest.

According to the expert, the occupied left bank of the Kherson region, where the main production of agricultural products is located, suffered more from the dam explosion..

“In fact, there are two tragedies here - first flooding, and then a drop in the water level.. The first is the flooding of vegetable farms, orchards, berry fields, and grain and oilseeds.. We do not have statistics on sowing in the occupied territories. However, in 2021, which was a record year, Kherson region harvested just over 4.5 million tons of grain and oilseeds. In particular, a little over 2 million tons of wheat, 1 million tons of barley, about 0.5 million tons of sunflower and the same amount of corn,” he said..

During the occupation, farmers did not sow such large areas. And this is 1.3 million hectares in the Kherson region, of which the vast majority are located on the left bank of the Dnieper. When the water settles, irrigation problems are expected, because the water level will drop significantly.. Kherson region is one of those regions where irrigation systems are well developed, so farmers will obviously receive less water. “Yields will fall significantly. However, the damage is still difficult to assess.. We can say for sure that now we are talking about the survival of farmers working in the Kherson region,” he said..

As for watermelons, according to the expert, they were usually grown on the left bank. Problems with their supplies will be and even get worse.

Despite the difficult situation, the expert assured that there would be no shortage of grain in Ukraine.

“According to our forecasts, which we update monthly, excluding the occupied Kherson, part of the Zaporozhye, Lugansk and Donetsk regions, the grain and oilseeds harvest will amount to 68 million tons. This is three times more than what is needed for domestic consumption in Ukraine,” Serhiy Ivashchenko summed up..

Recall that the drainage of the bottom of the Kakhovka reservoir and the leakage of water from it will most of all affect the lost fish resources of Ukraine. 11 reserves will suffer from this.