The sale of agricultural land has been illegal in Ukraine since the Moratorium Act of 1992. Despite many promises, no administration liberalized a market in agricultural land. Nonetheless, a black market in farmland has thrived. Now it is becoming one of the largest illegal markets in Eastern Europe in sales of truckloads of the earth, with approximately $900 million in annual sales.The black market has the backing of local state officials. Corrupt bureaucrats abuse their power to stuff their pockets with cash while they are stripping the nation of important natural resource and robbing poverty-stricken rural population of their private property. The black market causes environmental degradation and undermines sustainable economic development in Ukraine, one of the world’s top grain exporters.

The moratorium has never stopped the black market in Ukraine. According to Ukraine’s State Committee on Land Resources (SCLR), almost 20 percent of farmland changed ownership in the last decade.