In this Oct. 12, 2019, photo, Tetiana Petrovych, a postmistress, speaks to The Associated Press as she delivers the mail on her bicycle, in the village of Nebelytsia, Ukraine. Most of Ukraine’s rich farmland is carved up into small plots owned by about 7 million people, like Petrovych. They are banned from selling it, although the country’s new president wants to open the land market. (AP Photo/Andrew Mosienko)

NEBELYTSIA, Ukraine (AP) — Most of Ukraine's rich farmland is carved up into small plots owned by about 7 million people, like Tetiana Petrovych, the postmistress in this village west of the capital. They own the land but can't sell it.

Ukraine, which is one of the top grain exporters in the world and recently overtook the U.S. as the leading exporter of corn to China, forbids the sale of agricultural land.

This seems about to change. Ukraine's new president wants to open the land market, a step long pushed by economists and international financial institutions to stimulate investment in an agricultural sector with much untapped potential. Not everyone is happy, though.

The government's plans are stirring fears that Ukraine's coveted black earth will be bought up by foreigners, including Russians.

It's a sensitive subject, given the ongoing fighting in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed separatists. About 100 protesters marched through Kyiv, the capital, in October carrying signs that said, "Sold land is lost territory."

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his government have given assurances that Ukrainians will have preference in buying land, but there are potential loopholes and the fears persist.

Most small landowners lease their plots so they can be farmed more efficiently. That's the case with Petrovych and others in Nebelytsia, a village of several hundred people. She and her daughter own plots of two hectares (five acres) each, which they lease to Serhii Halusyn, who farms the cornfields that stretch out from the village.

"Thanks to Halusyn, our lands don't choke with weeds and I have corn," Petrovych said. Instead of cash, she takes her yearly payment in corn and uses it to feed her cow. And because she has milk and cottage cheese to share with her neighbors, they give her carrots, beets and pumpkins from their gardens.

Petrovych, 61, earns a little money by delivering the village mail on her bicycle. On a recent Saturday, her pouch was stuffed with electricity bills and an envelope of cash for a woman who receives her alimony through the post office. She also delivers monthly pensions of about $80 to more than 40 elderly villagers.

She has no interest in selling her land, hoping some of her 10 grandchildren will one day want to live in the village, about a 90-minute drive from Kyiv. She also opposes allowing land sales in general, a view widely shared in the village.

"If foreigners come, they will take away our only possibility to work," Viktor Romaniuk, 52, said as he drove a combine harvesting the last of this year's corn crop. "They will give us only a little money and crush small- and medium-sized business. I'm against the sale of land."

When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, farms were collectivized with all land in state hands. After the Soviet breakup in 1991, those who worked on the farms were given shares of the land, although it took years to formalize. There was then a brief period when land sales were permitted, but a moratorium was imposed in 2001 until a legal framework could be created to regulate the market. It has never been lifted.

In a country of 42 million people, 7 million own the small plots that add up to the roughly 32 million hectares (79 million acres) of farmland in private hands. The remaining 10 million hectares are owned by the state.

That's just fine with Halusyn, who farms land around Nebelytsia and leases about 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres). He worries that without access to affordable credit, he won't be able to compete with big Ukrainian or foreign firms, which he fears would offer villagers so much money for their land that they would be unable to refuse. As it is now, he pays them the equivalent of $100 per year per hectare, the going rate for that type of land.

To protect his crop from theft, Halusyn hired guards to patrol the perimeter of his fields day and night, which they do on foot with a large guard dog, a Caucasian Shepherd.

Halusyn, who was among those who protested in Kyiv, wants the government to buy the land and lease it to Ukrainians.

"We have an interesting situation when the government understands that completing the land reform would be the right thing for the country, for the economy and for the landowners, but the voices that are opposed to this land reform sometimes sound louder," said Natalia Shpygotska, senior analyst at Dragon Capital.

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