Many farmers in Ukraine have spoken out about the dangers of landmines and unexploded grenades, as well as the imminent threat of rocket attack as they continue to harvest their “deadly crop”. In May, it was estimated that 10 million hectares of farmland, a third of Ukraine’s total farmland, have been forced to stop production due to occupation or the ruins of military equipment.
CNN journalist Ivan Watson noted the “remarkable courage” of farmers across Ukraine when he met a farmer in Mykolaiv, southern Ukraine, who spoke to the reporter about his experience.
Mr Watson described harvesting the “farmer’s deadly crop” after the farmer collected Russian missiles and nose cones from his fields in recent weeks.
Mr Watson said: “All over southern Ukraine you see people harvesting wheat and grain and they are doing it amid artillery and frontline fighting that is very close.”
Watson said there had been 28 artillery strikes in the area in the past 24 hours, killing at least five civilians in what he described as “the reality of life” in Ukraine.
He added that explosions could be heard from the farm and burned-out military equipment can be seen lining the various farms as farmers harvest what can be salvaged.
With Ukraine’s fertile soil and land suitable for agriculture, the country’s high production of wheat and grain has earned it the nickname ‘the breadbasket of the world’.
Mykhailo Amosov, a land use expert with the Ukrainian environmental NGO Ecoaction, spoke to POLITICO in May about the six or seven million hectares of extremely fertile land in Ukraine that are now out of use.
Mr Amosov said: “They have mined everything they can get, and officials say it will take about three to five years to clear this area.
“I see a lot of farmers working in bulletproof vests because it’s dangerous to stand on the field.”
Ukrainian farmer Grygorii Tkachenko, 54, spoke about the process of rebuilding his 1,500-acre farm in the northeastern Chernihiv region, which was destroyed at the outset of the conflict in March during a three-day attack on his village, Lukashivka.
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Mr. Tkachenko’s farm produced cow’s milk, maize and potatoes and he said: “They fired a lot at us and we had a lot of unexploded missiles.
He called the Russians “savages” after they “hunted” the cows that were not killed in the attacks or by shrapnel, and who also looted women’s underwear from his family’s property.
Mr. Tkachenko promised: “I will rebuild my farm; it will be even much better than before the war. There will be no second coming of this f†s.”
Ukraine’s wheat, oil and maize production usually allows the country to feed ten times its own population and exports much of its produce to North Africa and the Middle East.
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Not only are Ukrainian farmers struggling to harvest their crops, fierce fighting and the Russian blockade in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports have prevented the products from leaving the country.
An estimated 20 million tons of grain are trapped in silos near Odessa and dozens of ships have been stranded by the blockade.
Fears are mounting over the inflation of global food prices and over feeding the world’s population, as the conflict has rocketed the prices of grain, oil and fertilizers.
The US Department of Agriculture predicts that wheat production in Ukraine will fall by 33 million tons to 21.5 million tons in the 2022-2023 harvest year.