Thousands of hectares of arable land flooded in Ukraine

[April 19, 2023]  KYIV (Reuters) - More than 9,000 hectares of agricultural land have been flooded in five Ukrainian regions because of the spring snow-melt and heavy rain, the state emergencies service said on Tuesday.

It said a seasonal rise in water levels had been registered in the Volyn, Dnipro, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Rivne, Poltava, Cherkasy and Chernihiv regions.

"The hydrological situation is currently under control," the service said on Facebook.

Ukrainian farms have already started 2023 sowing, but heavy rain across most of the country has significantly delayed work in the fields.

Ukraine expects reduced sowing this year because of Russia's invasion and the Russian occupation of swathes of territory.

Farmers sowed only about 120,500 hectares in the first seven days week of April, the agriculture ministry data showed.

(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)

[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.