The focus of this battle is Pavlo Serhienko. The 24-year-old is the third generation of his family to run a farm in Zaporizhzhia’s Vasylivka district. Since his father died of coronavirus, Serhienko has been managing the 3,000-hectare farm by himself.
But nearly half the land is now too dangerous to farm, he told CNN on Saturday. “We can’t even get there. It’s either mined or close to the occupied, literally on the front lines. We had occupiers in some of the fields.” Serhienko has literally seen his family’s business go up in smoke. “For the last four days all our knees are covered in blood, we are dying [fires in] the fields. They [the Russians] especially you strike the fields — fields of wheat and barley — every day.’ He said he had lost 30 hectares of wheat and 55 hectares of barley in the past few days. And “those 1,200 acres that I can’t get to are also burning. But what can I do? I won’t even go there.” The sowing season was equally dangerous. “We sowed a 40-hectare field. We had to leave the field four times to finish it. Every time we left, they bombed the place immediately. At one point, 23 mortars hit.” His buildings and equipment have also been hit — the animal farm and all the warehouses built over the past 20 years were destroyed. “The planter was crushed, the winter workshop, where we repair tractors and combines, was also demolished.” There are hundreds of farmers in a similar situation. Many are likely facing bankruptcy.

Targeted attacks

Ukrainian officials have no doubt that part of Russia’s strategy is to destroy Ukraine’s agricultural wealth.
Last week, police in the southern Kherson region, one of Ukraine’s most productive arable regions, opened criminal proceedings for “deliberate destruction” of crops by the Russian military. Police accused Russian forces of “bombarding agricultural land with incendiary shells. Large-scale fires are occurring daily, hundreds of hectares of wheat, barley and other grains have already burned.” “To save at least a part of the crop, the villagers are working on machinery next to a wall of fire,” police said. Once fires start, there is little chance of them being extinguished. Many contested areas are without piped water and it is often too dangerous to try to fight the flames. Kherson police claim that “the Russians are deliberately not allowing anyone to put out the fires,” citing a fire that burned 12 hectares and adjacent pine forests in the occupied territory around the village of Rosliv. Active front lines in the conflict stretch for more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) — mostly through farmland. In the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the regional military command, said that “the enemy has started to use the tactic of destroying fields where the harvest is going on.” Ukraine’s emergency services have released images of wildfires that swept through Donetsk’s farmland last week. Ikhor Luchenko, a former member of parliament now in the army, posted a picture showing a major fire south of Bakhmut, an area of ​​Donetsk under almost constant attack. “The fields are burning here,” Luchenko told CNN last week. “We saw the Russians firing incendiary munitions. This is to burn our positions.” The image was reposted by the Ministry of Defence, which added: “It’s not Ukrainian wheat that’s burning, it’s the world’s food security that’s burning.” A little further west, the city council in Kramatorsk — an area under increasing Russian fire — also released images of burned fields, some with the remnants of Russian missiles still visible. He said 35 hectares of crops were destroyed in the latest fires.

Battle on multiple fronts

The summer harvest is just beginning, so it is not yet possible to estimate the total damage caused by the fires. On Friday, the Agriculture Ministry said farmers had gathered the first million tonnes of grain of the 2022 season from just over 400,000 hectares — but that represents just 3% of the sown area. In addition to the fires, Ukrainian farmers face many challenges. Those near the front lines must deal with the risk of harvesting and the lack of adequate storage. Dozens of silos and some of the largest export terminals have been destroyed by Russian bombing. One of the largest — in the southern city of Mykolaiv — contained about 250,000 tons of grain before it burned in June. In addition, some analysts say there are challenges in obtaining diesel fuel due to the destruction of refineries, which means some crops will not be harvested. Wherever they are, farmers face a logistical nightmare exporting their grains and oilseeds because the Black Sea ports are virtually closed. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization launched a $17 million emergency program to help address storage problems. The US has also pledged to help build temporary silos in Poland, which borders Ukraine to the west. Even before the fires, Ukraine had forecast a sharp drop in its grain and oilseed harvest this year, compared to last year’s record output. Last week, Ukraine’s grain traders association said it expected a grain and oilseed harvest of 69.4 million tonnes, marginally higher than earlier forecasts but well below the 106 million tonnes harvested last year. Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskiy said the grain harvest could be at least 50 million tons, compared with 86 million tons in 2021. At least half of that output is for export, according to the traders’ association. Wheat production and export in an already tight global market may be at greater risk. French consultancy Agritel said last week it expected Ukraine to harvest 21.8 million tonnes of wheat this summer compared with 32.2 million last year. Consultant Dan Basse of the Chicago-based consulting firm AgResource told the AgriTalk podcast in late June that due to logistical challenges, he doubts Russian exports can cover the Ukrainian wheat shortfall, and the world market could be short about 10 million tons of wheat. This year. After a recent decline, wheat prices are nearing their highest levels for the year. Some of what would have been Ukrainian products are now in territory held by the Russians and their allies in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). DPR leader Denis Pushilin said last week that the wheat harvest there will be much larger than in 2021. Pushilin published photos of meetings with farmers and said they had discussed “the sale of the products”. He also said that the DRC plans to use the port of Mariupol to export the harvest. Agritel estimates that up to 3.7 million tonnes of wheat could be harvested from some southern and eastern regions under Russian control. Russian operators go to great lengths to disguise the origin of the wheat in an attempt to sell it abroad. They are transporting grain at sea in an apparent attempt to disguise their origin, according to satellite images reviewed by CNN, and merchant ships are turning off their transponders. What is not clear is whether the Russian-backed authorities in the occupied territories are paying market prices for the products. Ukrainian officials said that, in some areas, the Russians are insisting on steep discounts. There is anecdotal evidence that some Ukrainian farmers chose not to harvest at all.

“Cynical Strategy”

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said last week that Russia had a “well-thought-out and cynical strategy” to destroy Ukraine’s agriculture. “The Russian naval blockade of Ukrainian ports has already destroyed global food supply chains,” Kuleba said. “Adding insult to injury, Russia steals Ukrainian grain and bombs Ukrainian granaries.” “Russia is essentially playing hunger games with the world by holding the naval blockade of Ukrainian ports with one hand and blaming it on Ukraine with the other,” Kuleba added. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of paralyzing commercial shipping by mining coastal waters. Negotiations on the safe passage of merchant ships, brokered by Turkey, have not yet made progress. It is not only this year’s harvest that is at risk. Independent farmers make up a large part of the agricultural sector in Ukraine and do not have deep pockets. AgResource’s Basse told AgriTalk: “Funding is drying up. I will tell you that as I talk to my friends and clients, we’re going to have farmers going bankrupt. And of course, as that happens, we’re going to have real problems with the next wheat crop and the next corn crop. So I’m actually more concerned about 2023 production than 2022.” So does Serhienko, who says a combination of port closures, higher freight costs and lower prices means there is “no doubt” his profits will disappear this year. He estimates his losses so far at about $10 million, in terms of lost production and damaged infrastructure, and he doesn’t know if the family farm will survive until 2023.