Which country's Chernozem 'black earth' is Europe's richest soil?

Ukraine, which holds something like a quarter of the world's chernozem - a metre or more of dark, humus-rich soil formed under grassland over thousands of years, and among the most naturally fertile ground on Earth. It is why the country is a major exporter of wheat, maize, barley and sunflower oil.

The soil has been a strategic object repeatedly. Germany shipped trainloads of it out during the occupation in 1943, literally removing the topsoil; and the region's grain has made it a target for longer than that. Around a fifth to a quarter of the world's traded wheat and a very large share of its sunflower oil come from Ukraine and Russia together, which is why the Black Sea grain corridor became a global food security question in 2022 rather than a regional one.

It also produced one of the worst famines of the twentieth century. The Holodomor of 1932-33 killed millions in the most fertile agricultural region in Europe, through grain requisitioning quotas, blacklists that cut villages off from supply, and restrictions on leaving - and it is recognised as a genocide by a growing number of states and disputed as such by others. The Soviet Union denied it entirely until 1987.