Ukraine’s harvest becomes the new battlefield as fires blacken its farmland

‘I don’t know where to hide’: This is life on Ukraine’s front line 2:56 (CNN) — Across Ukraine, in intense heat, there’s an image becoming familiar this summer: combine harvesters sweeping grain fields in a race against rapidly spreading fires. The front lines of the conflict stretch across some of Ukraine’s richest agricultural land. Whether by accident or design, the fires that darken the summer sky are eating away at a crop that was always going to be hard to harvest and even harder to export. Pavlo Serhienko is in the crosshairs of this battle. The 24-year-old is the third generation of his family to run a farm in the Vasylivka district of Zaporizhia. Since his father died of the coronavirus, Serhienko has managed the 3,000-hectare farm alone. But nearly half the land is now too dangerous to farm, he told CNN on Saturday. “We can’t even get there. It’s mined or close to the occupied territories, literally on the front line. We have occupants in part of the fields,” he explained. Serhienko has literally seen his family’s business go up in smoke: “For four days now, all our knees are covered in blood, we are turning off [incendios en] fields. They [los rusos] they especially hit the fields — fields with wheat and barley — every day.” He said that in the last few days he had lost 30 hectares of wheat and 55 of barley. And “those 1,200 hectares that I can’t get to are also burning. But what can I do? I’m not even going there.” The planting season was just as dangerous. “We planted a 40-hectare field. We had to leave the field four times to finish it. Every time we went out, the place was bombed instantly. Once there were 23 mortar hits.” Pavlo Serhienko said he has had to put out many fires that have started on his farm. His buildings and equipment have also been hit: the animal farm and all the warehouses built in the last 20 years. were destroyed. “The planter was crushed, the winter workshop, where we repair tractors and combines, was also smashed.” There are hundreds of farmers in a similar situation. Many are likely to face bankruptcy. Targeted raids Ukrainian officials do not they doubt that part of Russia’s strategy is to destroy Ukraine’s agricultural wealth.Last week, police in the southern region of Kherson, one of Ukraine’s most productive agricultural areas, opened criminal proceedings for “intentional destruction” of crops by the Russian army. The police accused the Russian forces of “bombing agricultural land with incendiary shells”. Fires break out every day ios on a large scale; Hundreds of hectares of wheat, barley and other cereal crops have already burned.”
“To save at least part of the harvest, the villagers work with machinery next to a wall of fire,” police said. Once fires start, there is little chance of extinguishing them. Many of the disputed areas lack running water, and it is often too dangerous to try to tackle the flames. Kherson police allege that “the Russians deliberately do not allow anyone to put out the fires”, citing a fire that burned 12 hectares and the adjacent pine forests in the occupied area around the town of Rozlyv. 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 administration, said that “the enemy began to use the tactic of destroying the fields where harvesting is taking place.” Can there be a diplomatic solution between Russia and Ukraine? 3:27 Ukrainian emergency services released footage of the fires that had swept through Donetsk farmland last week. Ihor Lutsenko, a former member of parliament who is now in the military, posted an image showing a major fire south of Bakhmut, an area of ​​Donetsk that is under almost constant attack. “The fields are on fire here,” Lutsenko told CNN last week. “We witnessed how the Russians dropped incendiary ammunition. This is to burn down our positions,” he added. The image was republished by the Defense Ministry, which added: “It is not Ukrainian wheat that is on fire, it is the world’s food security that is on fire.” A little further west, the Kramatorsk city hall — an area coming under increasing Russian fire — also posted images of scorched fields, some with traces of Russian rockets still present. He said that 35 hectares of crops had been destroyed in the latest fires. Battle on multiple fronts The summer harvest has just started, so it is not yet possible to assess the global damage caused by the fires. This Friday, the Ministry of Agriculture said that farmers had collected the first million tons of grain of the 2022 season in just over 400,000 hectares, but that represents only 3% of the planting area. In addition to the fires, Ukrainian farmers face multiple challenges. Those near the front must deal with harvest risk and lack of proper 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 some 250,000 tons of grain before it was burned in June. In addition, some analysts say that there are problems to obtain diesel due to the destruction of refineries, which means that some crops will not be able to be harvested. Wherever they are, farmers face a logistical nightmare exporting their grain and oilseeds because Black Sea ports are essentially sealed. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has launched a $17 million emergency program to help overcome storage problems. The United States 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 decline in the grain and oilseed harvest this year, compared to last year’s record output. Last week, the Ukrainian Grain Traders Union said it expected a grain and oilseed harvest of 69.4 million tonnes, slightly higher than previous 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 tonnes, up from 86 million tonnes in 2021. At least half of that output is for export, according to the union. of merchants. Wheat production and export in an already tight world market may be the most threatened. French consultancy Agritel said last week that it expects Ukraine to harvest 21.8 million tonnes of wheat this summer, up from 32.2 million last year. Consultant Dan Basse of the Chicago-based consultancy AgResource stated in late June on the AgriTalk podcast that due to logistical problems, he doubts that Russian exports can make up for the Ukrainian wheat shortfall, and that the world market could suffer a deficit of about 10 million tons of wheat this year. After a recent drop, wheat prices are close to their highest levels of the year. Some of the Ukrainian production is now in territory held by the Russians and their allies in the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR, respectively). DPR leader Denis Pushilin said last week that the wheat harvest there would be much larger than in 2021. Pushilin posted photos of meetings with farmers and said they had discussed “the sale of products.” He has also said that the DPR plans to use the port of Mariupol to export the crop. Agritel estimates that up to 3.7 million tons of wheat could be harvested in some southern and eastern regions under Russian control. Russian operators are doing their best to disguise the origin of the wheat in an effort to sell it abroad. They are transferring the grain at sea in an apparent effort to disguise its 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 zones are paying market prices for the products. Ukrainian officials have said that in some areas the Russians insist on deep discounts. There is anecdotal evidence that some Ukrainian farmers have chosen not to harvest. Cynical Strategy Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said last week that Russia had a “well thought out and cynical strategy” to destroy Ukrainian agriculture. “The Russian naval blockade of Ukrainian ports has already ripped apart global food supply chains,” Kuleba said. “Adding insult to injury, Russia steals Ukrainian grain and bombs Ukrainian granaries.” “Russia is essentially playing the hunger games with the world by maintaining the naval blockade of Ukrainian ports with one hand and shifting the blame for it to Ukraine with the other,” Kuleba added. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of bringing about a halt to merchant shipping by mining coastal waters. Negotiations on the safe passage of merchant ships, mediated by Turkey, have not yet produced any results. It’s not just this year’s harvest that’s in jeopardy. Independent farmers make up much of the agricultural sector in Ukraine, and they don’t have deep pockets. AgResource’s Basse told AgriTalk, “The funding is running out. I’ll tell you, from what I talk to my friends and customers, there will be farmers going out of business. And then, of course, when that happens, we’ll have problems with the next harvest of wheat and the next corn crop. So I’m more worried about 2023 production than 2022.” So is Serhienko, who says the combination of port closures, rising transport costs and falling prices means there is “no doubt” his profits will vanish this year. He puts his losses so far at about US$10 million, in terms of lost production and destroyed infrastructure, and he doesn’t know if the family farm will survive into 2023.