“To send a person to blow themselves up? I can’t do that.” “I cannot send (my workers) to a field where I know mines and bombs are,” Uskhalo said.
“We can go on for another year,” he said. Inside a bombed-out grain shed lies piles of wheat grain - Ushkalo’s entire prewar harvest - rotting under the sun. Oleh Uskhalo’s land in Potiomkyne is awash with ammunition, the vast wheat farms reduced to a graveyard of scorched equipment. Meanwhile, some farmers won’t risk planting their fields. Shipping by sea accounted for 75% of Ukrainian grain exports at the start of the year. Now it pays $80-$100 per ton, Vadaturskyi said,īut those routes are slow and costly. Nibulon once paid an average of $12 to ship a ton of grain from the southern port city of Odesa. “No one is paying attention to the fact that already 40% less wheat has been seeded (this year), and we expect 50% less corn will be seeded in Ukraine,” he said, drawing on data from 3,000 farmers. Most must sell their grain at a loss.įarmers are responding by seeding less, said Andrii Vadaturskyi, CEO of Nibulon, a top Ukrainian grain shipping company. High costs of fuel, fertilizer and quality seeds only add to farmers’ woes. Transit costs, now four to six times higher than prewar levels, have rendered grain production prohibitively expensive. Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports stripped the country of the advantage it once enjoyed over other grain-exporting countries. “But if we don’t do anything, we will have nothing.” “If we sow, if we grow crops, people will have jobs, salaries and they will have a means to feed their families,” Shkuropat said.
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