Using Remotely Sensed Data to Assess War-Induced Damage to Agricultural Cultivation: Evidence from Ukraine

Klaus W. Deininger, Daniel Ayalew Ali, Kussul Nataliia, Guido Lemoine, Andrii Shelestov and Leonid Shumilo

No 11221, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: This paper explores whether satellite imagery can be used to derive a measure to estimate conflict-induced damage to agricultural production and compare the results to those obtained using media-based conflict indicators, which are widely used in the literature. The paper combines area for summer and winter crops from annual crop maps for 2019–24 with measures of conflict-related damage to agricultural land based on optical and thermal satellite sensors. These data are used to estimate a difference-in-differences model for close to 10,000 Ukrainian village councils. The results point to large and persistent negative effects that spill over to conflict-unaffected village councils. The predicted impact is three times larger, with a distinctly different distribution across key domains (for example, territory controlled by Ukraine and the Russian Federation) using the preferred image-based indicator as compared to a media-based indicator. Satellite imagery thus allows defining conflict incidence in ways that may be relevant to agricultural production and that may have implications for future research.

Date: 2025-09-25
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