Once called “black gold,” the world’s most fertile soil is now fueling conflict, turning farmers against each other and deepening tensions between Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan

The first time you hold chornozem in your hands, it doesn’t feel like dirt. It feels like promise. Soft as sifted flour, dark as spent coffee grounds, it carries the faint, sweet smell of damp leaves and rain. Farmers in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan have an old name for it: “black gold.” For generations, this rich, crumbly soil has been a quiet, patient force, feeding millions and shaping whole nations. Today, it is also shaping something far darker—borders, battles, and a tug-of-war over who gets to feed the world. And whether we like it or not, that story reaches all the way to Australian kitchen tables.

The Secret Life of the World’s Darkest Soil

Across a vast band of Eurasia, from the rolling plains of central Ukraine to the wide, wind-brushed steppes of Kazakhstan, lies one of the planet’s most extraordinary natural treasures: chornozem, or black soil. If you could slice into the ground there, you’d see a thick, velvet-black layer running as deep as a shovel’s handle, sometimes more. This is not just “good soil.” It is the kind of earth farmers dream of—naturally rich in nutrients, effortlessly fertile, and capable of producing yields that can change the fortunes of a family, a region, or an entire country.

For thousands of years, grasslands grew and died here, layering organic matter through countless seasons. The cold winters slowed decomposition; the wide-open spaces encouraged deep roots. Slowly, quietly, the land built itself into an agricultural powerhouse long before anyone spoke of supply chains or export tonnages.

Under Soviet rule, much of this black soil became part of a tightly managed grain machine. Massive collective farms stretched to the horizon. Tractors moved in proud, straight lines across fields that looked uniform and unending. Wheat from these steppes helped feed the Soviet population, and in good years, much of Europe beyond. After the Soviet Union dissolved, those endless fields fractured—into private plots, into newly independent countries, into competing visions of what this soil should be for.

The result is a region where the ground beneath people’s feet is both livelihood and leverage. The power of this “black gold” isn’t only in what it grows—but in who gets to decide how it’s used.

When Soil Becomes a Battlefield

For most Australians, the war in Ukraine first arrived as a headline, an image on the news, a spike in global fuel prices. But for many Ukrainians, it arrived through their fields. Columns of tanks cutting through wheat. Missiles shattering grain silos. Farmers climbing onto tractors not to plant or harvest, but to tow away abandoned military vehicles.

Much of Ukraine’s black soil lies in regions now contested or scarred by war. Fields are mined, irrigation canals bombed, machinery destroyed. Some farmers disappeared into uniform; others fled. Those who stayed behind face a brutal calculus—plant and risk your life, or abandon the land and lose your future.

Soil that once symbolised wealth and stability now sits at the centre of a harsh strategic reality. Ukraine’s chornozem and its grain exports are part of the country’s bargaining power in the world. Disrupt that flow, and bread prices rise in Cairo, Dhaka—and yes, quietly, in Sydney and Melbourne too. Russia knows this. Kazakhstan feels it. And farmers caught in the middle are paying the heaviest price.

In Russia and Kazakhstan, black soil is also becoming politically charged. Land reforms, foreign leasing deals, and large agribusinesses moving in on traditional farming communities are stirring resentment. In some rural districts, neighbours fall out over who has access to which plots, whose father once ploughed which boundaries, who signed what contract under pressure. Land that once symbolised shared survival is becoming a fault line, pushing farmers against each other.

Old Neighbours, New Lines in the Dirt

On a windy steppe in northern Kazakhstan, imagine two brothers who grew up side by side, their family fields separated only by a row of poplars. For decades, they shared machinery, seed, even labour. Then a new agribusiness operation arrives, offering leases that seem generous—at first. One brother signs, the other refuses. Suddenly, their boundaries matter in ways they never did. Access roads are blocked. Irrigation channels are redirected. What was once a shared landscape turns into a map of winners and losers.

Stories like this, while often invisible to the wider world, are multiplying. Land is being bundled into vast holdings managed from distant boardrooms. Decisions about which crops to plant—and for whose markets—are made with spreadsheets rather than seasons. Farmers who feel pushed aside or betrayed look for someone to blame: the neighbour who signed over his land, the official who approved the deal, the foreign buyer who never set foot on the farm. Tension slowly clings to the soil like dust to boots.

In parts of Russia, similar fractures are forming, especially where rich black soils attract big investors. While some farmers welcome new equipment and capital, others see their independence erode. In villages where everyone once helped bring in the harvest, quiet hostility now lingers over fencelines and at local markets. Soil, that most basic element of life, has morphed into a currency of power and division.

A World Fed by Black Gold—and Jolted When It Falters

Australians might feel far removed from frozen Ukrainian fields or dusty Kazakh plains, but our daily lives are woven into this story in subtle ways. The global grain market is a tightly stretched web; pluck it in one place and it trembles everywhere.

Before the war, Ukraine was one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat, corn, and sunflower oil, with much of it flowing through Black Sea ports. Russia, too, became a grains superpower, leveraging its own black soil regions to push record exports. Kazakhstan, landlocked but strategic, supplied wheat and flour across Central Asia and beyond.

When conflict and sanctions hit, that flow staggered. Shipments slowed, insurance costs climbed, and uncertainty wrapped itself around every future harvest. For importing nations, especially those in North Africa and the Middle East, this meant genuine fear of food shortages. For food-exporting nations like Australia, it meant both opportunity and responsibility.

Australian wheat suddenly looked more attractive—and more expensive. Local farmers in WA, SA, NSW, and Queensland found themselves in a market where global supply gaps boosted prices. That’s good news at the farm gate, yet it can mean higher costs for millers, bakers, and ultimately shoppers. The ripple moves from a shelled-out Ukrainian paddock to the price of a family’s weekly bread and pasta in Perth or Hobart.

In this intertwined world, the health of someone else’s soil can alter the choices you make at a suburban supermarket. The black earth of Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan is not just their story—it’s threaded quietly through our own.

Comparing the Soils: Eurasian Black Earth and Australian Ground

Australia’s relationship with soil is different—more fragile, more hard-won. Where chornozem lies thick and forgiving, much of our country sits atop older, leaner, more weathered soils. To grow food here, Australian farmers have had to become some of the most resourceful on Earth, coaxing life from landscapes shaped by drought, flood, and fire.

Still, we share something profound with grain growers on the other side of the world: the emotional tether to land, and the anxiety that comes when that land is caught up in forces beyond the farm gate—be it war, corporate power, climate change, or trade politics.

Region	Soil Type	Key Crops	Main Challenges
Ukraine	Deep chornozem (black soil)	Wheat, corn, sunflower	War damage, land mines, export blockades
Russia (black soil belt)	Chernozem, fertile steppe soils	Wheat, barley, oilseeds	Sanctions, land concentration, climate shifts
Kazakhstan	Black and chestnut steppe soils	Wheat, barley, pulses	Aridity, land conflicts, infrastructure limits
Australia (major grain belts)	Older, more weathered soils	Wheat, barley, canola, pulses	Drought, salinity, soil degradation, climate extremes

Looking at this simple comparison, the irony is sharp: the regions with the richest soil are often those with the most fragile politics. Meanwhile, countries like Australia, with relatively stable governance but more modest soils, shoulder a growing moral weight—how to help feed the world without stripping our own land bare.

Australian Paddocks in a World on Edge

Out on a wheat property in the Mallee or the WA wheatbelt, the horizon feels a long way from Kyiv or Kursk. The sounds are different too: instead of distant artillery, there’s the whine of a header at harvest, the soft crackle of stubble under boots. Yet conversations at Australian kitchen tables and in ute cabs are tinged with the same awareness: the world is watching our crops.

Global turbulence has made Australian grain more critical and more exposed. A dry spell in one hemisphere, a blockade in another, and suddenly the phone calls come: new buyers, urgent inquiries, nervous traders. Prices surge, then slip. Shipping routes adjust. The sense of playing in a bigger, more precarious game is impossible to ignore.

For Australian consumers, the effects can sneak in quietly. Pasta that costs a bit more. A bakery raising prices to cover its flour bill. A school canteen trimming back. We might not link those shifts to a mined field in Donetsk or a disputed land lease in Kazakhstan—but the connection is there, under the surface.

This is the uncomfortable truth of our era: we no longer eat just from our own soil. We eat from a global patchwork of fields, each one vulnerable in its own way. And when some of the best soils on Earth become battlegrounds—literal or political—the whole network shudders.

Lessons We Can Dig From the Dirt

What, then, can Australians take from a story that begins in faraway black earth? Perhaps the first lesson is humility. Those deep, dark soils are a reminder of what a long, slow miracle true fertility is—and how quickly it can be squandered by short-term thinking, greed, or conflict.

A second lesson is solidarity. Farmers in Ukraine marking their fields with skull-and-crossbones signs to warn of land mines, growers in Kazakhstan negotiating with powerful companies, Russian villagers living between economic sanctions and political pressure—these are not abstract figures. They are peers to the Australian grain grower trying to stretch a rainfall event, or the mixed farmer in northern NSW rotating crops to keep soil alive.

There is also a warning here. When land becomes too tightly bound to geopolitics or too concentrated in too few hands, it ceases to be a shared foundation and becomes a weapon, a bargaining chip, a cause of resentment. If that can happen in the world’s most fertile regions, it can happen anywhere.

And finally, there’s a call to care. For Australians, that might mean supporting policies that protect our soils from erosion, salinity, and exhaustion. It might mean valuing local food systems, or simply remembering, as we pour flour into a bowl or slice into a loaf, that somewhere, someone is risking their future on the next harvest.

Black Gold, Red Lines, and Our Shared Future

Soil is easy to overlook. It lies underfoot, unassuming, taken for granted. But the story of the chornozem stretching across Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan refuses to stay buried. In those black grains of earth lie older stories—of wild grasses and ancient herds—and newer ones—of tanks, charred wheat heads, border checkpoints, and tense negotiations behind closed doors.

Once, calling this soil “black gold” was a way of honouring its generosity. Today, the label feels sharper, edged with conflict. Gold attracts attention, competition, jealousy. So does land that can feed half a continent.

As Australians, standing on a very different continent with very different soils, we are still part of that unfolding tale. Through the bread on our tables, the grain leaving our ports, the policies debated in Canberra, and the quiet work of farmers who rise before dawn to watch the sky, we are linked to black fields half a world away.

Perhaps the most honest thing we can do is to look down at our own paddocks, our own gardens, our own patches of ground, and recognise them for what they are: not just property, not just resource, but living, fragile, and profoundly political. Because in the end, whether it’s the dark chornozem of Ukraine or the pale, seasoned soils of inland Australia, the earth we walk on is more than background. It is the stage, the script, and sometimes, tragically, the battlefield.

FAQ

Why is the soil in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan called “black gold”?

It’s called “black gold” because it is extraordinarily fertile, dark in colour, and capable of producing very high agricultural yields. Like mineral wealth, it has enormous economic and strategic value—hence the comparison to gold.

How does conflict in these regions affect Australia?

Disruptions to grain exports from Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan change global supply and pricing. That can create higher export opportunities for Australian farmers but also raise costs for local food producers and, ultimately, consumers.

Is Australian soil similar to chornozem?

No. Most Australian soils are older, more weathered, and generally less naturally fertile. Australian farmers rely heavily on careful management, rotations, and inputs to maintain productivity, whereas chornozem is naturally nutrient-rich and deep.

Are Australian farmers benefiting from the war in Ukraine?

Some Australian grain growers have seen better prices due to tighter global supply, but they also face higher input costs and market volatility. It’s a complex situation, with ethical and practical challenges rather than simple “benefits.”

What can Australians do to support more secure and fair food systems?

Australians can support policies that protect soil health, back sustainable farming practices, value local food where possible, and stay informed about how global conflicts impact food security. Recognising soil as a shared, finite resource is a crucial first step.