Ukraine is the world’s fourth largest exporter of wheat and corn. Despite the war, everything is done to maintain this production. Pbear feed the planet but also, first of all, to feed themselves. The tractors are again in the fields for a few days. Sometimes strange scenes of a farmer plowing between a checkpoint and a battery of rocket launchers…
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In a cloud of dust, Grisha crosses a huge plot of very black soil about forty kilometers from Odessa, in southern Ukraine: “We are sowing flax, we are also growing lentils and millet. We went back to work in mid-March, we spread the fertilizer… War is war. But you have to eat well!” Main challenge for Grisha’s farm: finding fuel. His boss struggles every day to gather the 2,000 liters needed to supply four tractors daily.
In the nearby village of Perchotravneve, Serguy owns a more modest farm. He had been able to fill his tank this fall. “Of course the war brought problems, he said. We’re having trouble finding herbicides and we don’t know how much it’s going to cost. For fertilizers, we have already paid twice as much.”
The workforce is there: farmers, who represent one in six assets in Ukraine, are exempt from mobilization. But for the mayor of the village, Vassyl Khmilenko, also a landowner, everything is still uncertain: “We are worried, like everyone else. The rockets fly, the bombs explode, the war is very close in the Mykolaiv region. But hey, we invest, we sow, and we hope that this war will end, in order to be able to reap .”
“The question is no longer whether it is profitable or not. We just have to feed the population and avoid famine.”
Vasyl Khmilenkoat franceinfo
It is obviously more complicated in the regions even closer to the fighting: around Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson, which are major grain-producing regions. In the offices of Demetra Agro, one of the ten largest seed companies in Ukraine, the founder Gennady Smolniuk presents his barley and maize grains ready to be sown. The fights, he says, are already weighing on his sales: “We had fewer orders in certain places affected by military operations. It is impossible to transport the seeds there. The drop is around 20%. And for the other customers, we have made payment facilities: the farmers will pay us when they have harvested.”
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According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Agriculture, the war risks amputating cultivated land by a third. Little respite for the wheat, sown in the fall, which is greening on the surface of the fields.
Normally, Ukraine produces ten times what its population consumes. And she has reservations, says Vladislav Tchertchel. He heads the Institute of Grain Culture in Dnipro: “Of 106 million tons of cereals, pulses and oilseeds harvested last year, half remains in warehouses in Ukraine. This corresponds to three years of national consumption. Buthe adds, certain stocks have already been seized by the Russians in the territories they occupy, notably in Berdyansk.”
As a precaution, three weeks ago the Ukrainian government imposed quotas or authorizations on most agricultural exports, which are at a standstill anyway. In the port of Odessa on the Black Sea, the grain terminal, with its huge metal silos, is completely at a standstill. “80% of our exports are by sea, but the Russian Navy is blocking everything, says Vadim Tereschuk, deputy chairman of the Odessa Economic Affairs Commission. 200 to 300 ships are blocked, and three merchant ships have even been bombarded. The Russians also hit the port of Mykolaiv, the infrastructure is affected. And we cannot export by train, there is no capacity.”
“If the war continues for another month or two, it will be a food disaster for the world.”
Vladislav Chertchelat franceinfo
It would also be a blow for Ukraine, which has to finance its war. Exports of agri-food products brought in 25 billion euros last year, or 15% of national wealth.