The State Agrarian Register has launched a tool for farmers to apply for participation in the programme to compensate for the cost of demining agricultural land. The programme applies to land directly owned by the farmers and land leased by them.

The state budget allocated UAH 3 billion for the compensation programme.

"One of the goals of humanitarian demining is to clear land so that it can be safely used in the areas where military operations were previously conducted. Today, we have launched a tool in the State Agrarian Register that will significantly simplify the application process for farmers who want to clear their land with government support. The state covers 80% of the land clearance cost," said First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine Yulia Svyrydenko. 

The programme is open to farmers whose land is located in the de-occupied territories, where contamination or possible contamination with explosive hazards has been confirmed after a non-technical survey. The farmers themselves must not have tax debts, be bankrupt, belong to citizens of the aggressor state, or be on the sanctions list.

"The Ministry of Economy has prepared transparent procedures and unified rules for all programme participants. Both farmers and mine action operators will be able to see how prices are formed, who participated in the bidding and what the final cost of demining a particular area is. I hope that interested farmers will soon take advantage of this opportunity, and we will soon see the first auctions for the demining of agricultural land," explained Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Ihor Bezkaravainyi.  

The Centre for Humanitarian Demining verifies the applications submitted by farmers. It also announces auctions for demining services in the Prozorro system, and after determining the winning operator and the final cost of demining, 80% of the total cost is transferred to a special account. Another 20% is paid by the farmer.

"We have simplified the technical procedure for farmers to form an application in the State Agrarian Register (SAR) as much as possible. Most of the data is pulled up at the stage of registration of the farmer in the SAR. Then, filling out the application and applying a digital signature requires just a few mouse clicks. We aimed to make the application process convenient and understandable so that even a farmer who has registered in the system for the first time could do it," commented Volodymyr Baida, Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Demining, which jointly with the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine implemented this development.

Currently, two state banks, Privatbank and Oschadbank, participate in the programme. Over time, other banks with a state share of more than 50% will join the programme. Accordingly, farmers need to open an account with one of these banks to receive funds.

The mine action operator will receive the entire reserved cost after the demining process is finished and the Centre confirms that the work is completed. 

The application can be submitted via the following link: https://www.dar.gov.ua/ 

A farmer can also receive compensation for agricultural land that has already been demined during the period from 24 February 2022 to 15 April 2024. To do so, they need to fill out and submit an Application for Compensation to the Centre for Humanitarian Demining at [email protected]. 

The application signed by digital signature should also include the following:

• a copy of the contract with a certified operator for the provision of demining services;

• copies of acts of services rendered confirming demining;

• copies of payment receipts confirming payment for demining services.

In the first six months of the year, Ukrainian deminers cleared more than 156,000 hectares of agricultural land and returned it to use. The highest rate of demining is in the Kherson region - 146,000 hectares, which is almost 60% of the planned area for this year. In the first half of the year, 11,300 hectares were cleared in the Kharkiv region and 8,300 hectares in the Mykolaiv region.