Farmers in Ukraine are at great risk for thinner harvests

The fighting has severely disrupted the current planting season, forcing farmers to work under bombs and despite difficulties in finding fuel. At the satellite level, the difference in normal weather is already visible, confirming the predictions of analysts.

The images were recorded between April 14 and 22, less than two months after Russia invaded the country, via NASA’s Terra satellite, and then analyzed by Kayrros.

The specialist in satellite imagery and geolocation applied to the environment relies on the so -called the normalized difference vegetation indexa precision infrared analysis that evaluates the state of plants and thus predicts cereal production.

At this point, Ukraine could produce 21 million tons of wheat in 2022, 12 million less than in 2021, Kayrros estimates, with a decrease in yield 23% lower than the average of the last five years. .

As the fighting continues and most of the country’s wheat production comes from the regions of eastern Ukraine, where the conflict is most intense, the actual number of production is likely to be lower.warning of analysts.

Farmers managing sowing will in any case face a storage problem, exports by rail and road will only be able to compensate for a small portion of the removals of goods by of the boat.

Russia maintains its blockade of Ukrainian ports, both in the Black Sea and in the Azov, severely hindering trade.

The conflict promises to exacerbate the weaknesses of countries highly dependent on Russian and Ukrainian grain exports, such as Somalia or the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa, where Russia and Ukraine account for 30% of trade. in the world in this commodity.

To address this, major agricultural powers, including the European Union, the United States, Canada and Australia, pledged on Friday to ensure world food security despite the shocks caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Farmers cheat death

Since the war began, Ukrainian farmers have found themselves at the forefront of the Russian invasion, leaving large quantities of mines, shells and unexploded missiles across the country.

There is a high risk of triggering one of these devices. According to police, the latest accident occurred in the Kyiv region on Wednesday. A farmer driving his tractor hit a mine, seriously injuring his arms and legs.

Maria Kolesnyk, of analysis company ProAgro Group, estimates that about twenty similar incidents have been recorded since the start of the war, without knowing how many were fatal.

In today’s farming community, the most sought after occupation is the sapper.added the analyst toAFPFrance Media Agency : We desperately need the help of the international community, because professionals work in Ukraine 24/7.

During this planting in one of the world’s breadbaskets, local farmers needed bulletproof vests and deminers to destroy the bombs dropped on their farms.

” This is an incredible logistical challenge, and we know that cultivated areas will be smaller. “

In Igor Tsiapa’s farms, in the southwest of the country, an unexploded missile lay on a patch of black soil, untouched while the rest of his cornfield had already been plowed and planted.

We first saw the projectile ten days ago, but we didn’t touch that part of the farm, we continued preparing seedlings.explanation of the soon-to-be 60-year-old farmer, a few meters from the acting deminers.

Everything must be done on time if you want to have more or less proper harvest […] We had to keep workingcontinued Igor Tsiapa, whose farm is located around Grygorivka, a village in the Zaporijia region.

In his field, the group of deminers, blue helmets with the Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations on their heads, placed small explosive bricks the size of a fist along the missile, before turning a mound of ground above.

” Every day since the war began, unexploded ordnance has been found and destroyed. “

When the farmers started working on the farm, we started receiving regular calls telling us about the availability of new machines.he added, noting that during this sowing, his team is destroying up to three per day.

And farmers don’t always have the patience to wait for the arrival of deminers. They were regularly absent when Dmytro Polichchouk and his colleagues arrived, who only marked the presence of the bombs with a stick decorated with a bottle or a plastic bag.

This practice is dangerous: there is no guarantee that a missile that has fallen intact will not explode, as some are equipped with a self-destruct device, warns Polichchouk.

But farmers in Ukrainian regions not occupied by Russia have no time to wait. In this important region for the supply of cereals on the planet, farmers may have a duty to replace those who have blocked work, believes Igor Tsiapa.

We have double responsibility and double pressure for a good harvest. There is no active fighting here, so we can workhe believes.

Ukraine is the largest producer of sunflower oil in the world, and also among the top five exporters of corn and wheat in the world. And disruptions from the war, from the forced evictions of farmers to fuel shortages, are causing concern to many countries that rely on its exports.

In Igor Tsiapa’s field, the work of the deminers abruptly ends with a controlled missile explosion, which emits a plume of black smoke and echoes into the valley.

Once calm returned, the farmer jumped into his red van and drove off. He went back to work.