“They were super brave”: Ukrainian farmers on the front line

Two hours north of kyiv, after taking a road streaked with chains of Russian tanks and passing several checkpoints with wary soldiers, under a scorching sun, a farm landscape appears out of a post-apocalyptic film. Decapitated sheds and warehouses; gutted grain silo; caretaker’s hut pulverized; graveyard of charred trucks and farm machinery. And here and there, large craters piercing the earth…

“The Russians were ten kilometers away, between Chernihiv (not far from the Belarusian border) and here. At the beginning of March, they bombarded us with heavy artillery. Then, a little before the end of the month, they targeted with missiles for several days,” says Vyacheslav Tsarev, the farm’s director of security. We found about 30 of them.”

Miraculously, no employee was killed. But the destruction – they will cost between 2.5 and 3 million dollars – is colossal: nearly a third of the machines and vehicles are unusable. In any other country, the farm would have been declared a disaster area. Not in Ukraine. During our visit, employees are busy around a vehicle: it does not take long to take the direction of the fields to spread fertilizers for corn. Even the “black soils”, the most fertile in the world – with the famous chernozem rich in humus and several meters thick – need it, assure the peasants, who then prepare for the wheat harvest.

Part of the fields still inaccessible

Started at the end of July, this harvest is a miracle. It would have been impossible without the heroism of local farmers. In the middle of the bombardment, Petro Cham, the head of engineering, who lives a few kilometers away, did not hesitate to go to the farm by car every day to save what could be saved. “I only arrived on site on March 20. We started to evacuate the equipment, the batteries and the electronic navigation systems for tractors”, relates this robust man with a benevolent look. He and his team of mechanics manage to move combines and small tractors to a “more or less safe” place. But the intrepid commando must give up their mission under the fire of a plane.

“The employees were super brave: they are Ukrainians!”, smiles Vyacheslav Tsarev. After the departure of the Russian troops, impatient to make up for lost time, the peasants resumed work on April 4. They have to restore electricity and the telephone, make the first repairs on buildings and machines that can still be saved, find fuel… and secure the ground.

Army specialists come to put out of harm’s way the missiles fallen on the field. “But a perimeter of more than 600 hectares (out of 8,800 dedicated to wheat, corn, sunflower, rye and soybeans), deemed too dangerous because of the possible presence of mines, is still prohibited from access, the weather that it be carefully examined by experts”, continues this 53-year-old giant, in his office whose windows have been blown. The team purchased six mine detectors. You can never be too careful: several peasants have jumped on explosives in recent months.

After the big clearing, the agricultural work can begin. “When we returned to the fields, at the end of April, we sowed where we could, late in relation to the schedule and without respecting the usual procedures”, recalls Petro Melnyk, the boss and co-owner of the company Agricom (which owns three farms and a factory, including that of Chernihiv), joined by video. The main thing was to have a harvest. Dark green cap and overalls, Hryhoriy Legkobyt, the stock manager, in the front row during the bombardment – he lives in Krasne, the village next door – tries to be positive. “It’s harder to work with fewer machines, he confesses. But we have no choice, we have to earn a living, and fortunately, not everything has been destroyed,” he says. pointing with satisfaction to large sacks full of fertilizer.

Farmers’ incomes have collapsed

It didn’t take long. “A few hours before the offensive, I made the decision – painful – to dispose of the 80 tons of our fuel reserve in the sewers. The initial objective was to prevent the Russians from seizing it, but it saved us by avoiding a huge explosion”, specifies the CEO. About 30 kilometers to the west, the company’s oatmeal factory suffered a different tragedy: it was not bombed, but occupied by the Russians. Half of the stocks were stolen as well as the computer equipment. Above all, one of the two security guards was kidnapped and executed. But there too, the machines were reconnected in record time – just over a week after the premises were vacated. Petro Melnyk, on the other hand, no longer has any news of his farm in the Luhansk region, in the Donbass, in the occupied zone.

All in all, the harvest this summer should be abundant. But this is far from enough to reassure the peasants. Thanks to the agreement signed on July 22 with the UN, Russia and Turkey, the departure of the first cargoes from Ukraine – the world’s fifth largest exporter of wheat last year – certainly opens up encouraging prospects: the total volumes of Exports (sea, land and rail) could thus return to pre-war levels in the coming months, some analysts say. But they depend on the goodwill of Moscow…

Due to the Russian blockade, farmers’ incomes collapsed during the first six months of the war. Deprived of outlets outside the country, they have had to sell their production on the Ukrainian market, where prices are very low. “If I can’t export, I have to sell my wheat at only 100 dollars per ton, in Ukraine – while the international price is 400 euros [il est depuis redescendu autour de 300 euros]… At this price, I cannot buy fertilizer – the price of which has tripled – nor pesticides and fuel for next year’s harvest”, sighed at the beginning of July Petro Melnyk, for whom he was playing then the “survival” of the group.

Like him, many farmers were afraid of not being able to sow in the fall or of having to cut back for lack of cash. At the Chernihiv farm, as elsewhere in the country, this summer’s harvest will pile up on that of the previous year – some 20 million tonnes of cereals were still stored in the country at the beginning of August. Unlike some of its competitors, storage is not much of a concern for this operation: it is used to placing its harvest in sturdy bags. Still, cereals may spoil if they sleep too long.

While waiting for the Black Sea to open up for good, the teams in charge of logistics are working to identify alternative export circuits (road, train, barges in the Danube Strait, etc.). But everything is more complicated. By road, trucks sometimes queue for up to five days at the Polish border before they can leave the country. As for trains, they are in high demand, and therefore expensive. Not to mention the gauge of the rails, which is not the same between Ukraine and Poland (or Romania).

“In the government, we thought, at the start of the war, that agriculture would collapse because of the massive attacks on warehouses, the lack of fuel and fertilizers, acknowledges Taras Kachka, the deputy economy minister. But in reality, our farmers managed to sow all the available land, that is to say 80% of the surface of the previous year. Only 20% were not, in the occupied areas. Our farmers, set us an example! They even planted on the front line!”

This article is from our special issue “We Ukrainians”on newsstands August 24, in partnership with BFMTV.