The land market opens

From 2001 until 2021 agricultural land in Ukraine could not be bought or sold. Around seven million people held land shares from the dissolution of collective farms, and they could lease them but not sell them.

Why the ban lasted so long

Because the fears behind it were reasonable, and worth stating fairly. That land would be bought cheaply from people who did not understand its value. That ownership would concentrate in a small number of hands. That foreign capital would acquire the country's most valuable asset. That elderly rural shareholders, with no other capital and no advice, would be the ones who lost.

The counter-argument was equally real. An asset that cannot be sold cannot be used as collateral. A farmer who cannot borrow against land cannot invest in it, and land held on short leases is not improved by anyone.

The design of the opening

The 2021 law tried to answer the fears directly. Only individual Ukrainian citizens could buy at first, with a cap on holdings. Legal entities were excluded until a later phase, and then admitted with their own limits. Foreign ownership was left to a referendum, meaning not permitted. A minimum price was set at the normative valuation.

What the early evidence showed

Transaction volumes were modest at first, which is what you expect when a market has no price history and everyone is watching to see what the neighbour gets. Prices settled well below comparable land in central Europe.

The reform I would judge on a longer horizon than has yet passed. Whether it delivers depends on whether banks actually lend against land, and that depends on registers, valuation and enforcement rather than on the law that opened the market.

How a twenty-year ban was lifted mattered more than that it was lifted: a phased opening, an area cap and closure to foreign buyers answered most of the fears. The reforms that last are always like this — not by ignoring the objectors' concern but by writing a clause for it. The early evidence bore the design out.