The south of Ukraine suffers from the large -scale invasion of locusts. Kherson, Zaporizhzhya, partially Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions were most affected. According to environmentalists and agrarians, the situation has become unprecedented - insects destroy green spaces, leaving behind the "burned land".
“The locust eats everything in its way. It is like Mongol-Tatars-it flew, destroyed everything living and flew on. The crop can be lost up to 100%, ”says ecologist Vladimir Sheludko. According to him, sunflower, corn, sugar beet, vegetables suffer the most. Cereal crops, including wheat, are less vulnerable if they are already ripe, because the locust is mainly powered by green mass.
The reasons for the massive pest reproduction were favorable weather conditions - drought, heat, as well as the drainage of the Kakhovka reservoir, which changed the microclimate of the region. The problem was largely complicated by the fact that the struggle against the lounge was not coordinated at the state level, and the efforts of individual farmers were insufficient.
"Abandoned fields and untreated lands have become peculiar" reservations "for lounges, the number of which has increased sharply because of the war," Sheludko adds.
Kherson agrarian Igor Yosypenko calls the situation a complex agro -ecological catastrophe. According to him, in May, 55,000 hectares of winter crops were killed in the Beryslav district due to ecological and technogenic factors, including the consequences of the Kakhovsky hydroelectric power station. The total losses of farmers are estimated at about one billion hryvnias.
"The drought such as this year, local agrarians are not remembered in the last 30 years," says Yosypenko. Previously, farmers were asked to introduce special mode in the region and develop compensation and support programs. But there was no reaction from power.
The locust is massively attacking the remains of green spaces that survived after drought. In the Zaporizhzhia region, since July 15, a special regime of plant protection is applied. Areas with wild vegetation are processed - it is "feeding" for insects. Today, the infection has covered about 20,000 hectares.
In the Kherson region, this regime has been in force since June, and as of the end of the month only about 300 hectares were processed. Nevertheless, the local authorities have already considered the issue of abolition of the special regime, which caused indignation among agrarians.
In early July, locusts were also found in the Odessa region, in particular near the village of Mirnopillya. According to the State Consumer Service, it is about the larvae of the Italian Prus - one of the species of locusts. Mass treatment is not currently carried out because the number of insects is "lower than the economic threshold", but farmers are warned: sunflower is actively destroyed and can lose up to 25% of the crop in individual farms.
According to Sheludko, the locust invasion can reach other areas.
In particular, "Clouds of locusts" move towards the Poltava and Kirovograd regions. There is information that pests have already been found in Kyiv and even individual areas of Zhytomyr regions. However, it is not the fact that in these regions, the locust will be able to spread massively, because the microclimate is completely different - in particular, more moist.
“In order to localize pest invasion, it is necessary to treat large arrays of Earth with heavy insecticides. I repeat: it should be the most comprehensive processing, the efforts of individual farmers do not overcome the problem, and chemistry is far from everyone, ”the ecologist notes.
There are also "biological" methods of protection. For example, locusts "do not like" millet, so fields with other crops are recommended to "border" millet crops.
However, it is obvious that this should be done in the spring and coordinated at the state level.
“Farmers are unlikely to sow millet at their own expense if the cultivation of this culture had economic sense. Moreover, at first no one expected that it would come to the locust invasion, ”Sheludko adds.
At the same time, the total harvest at the level of the country's invasion is not significantly threatened.
According to the Ministry of Agrarian Policy, in 2025 the total area of sown lands is more than 23 million hectares (about 11 million of them under grain). The hordes of pests were covered up to about 30 thousand hectares - this is where their maximum concentration was found and emergency treatment is performed. That is, it is an area of up to 0.15% of the entire agricultural array.
“We are still dealing with local crop losses. Of course, many local farmers suffer, but there is no catastrophe in the country. Another important thing is that there has never been a similar invasion of locusts in Ukraine. As a phenomenon, this is more inherent in regions with subtropical climate. This means that the climate in Ukraine is changing rapidly, and in the future a hostile pest can really be a serious threat to our agricultural sector, ” - summed up the head of the Economic Discussion Club Oleg Pendzin.
