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Image Acquired:  May 08, 2006

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Severe ice crusting during February and March 2003 smothered both winter grains and alfalfa fields throughout central and southern Ukraine.

Ukraine agriculture has been evolving since it achieved independence in 1991, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. State and collective farms were officially dismantled in 2000. Farm property was divided among the farm workers in the form of land shares and most new shareholders leased their land back to newly-formed private agricultural associations. The sudden loss of State agricultural subsidies had an enormous effect on every aspect of Ukrainian agriculture. The contraction in livestock inventories that had begun in the late 1980's continued and intensified.