The combine lies crippled in a field in eastern Ukraine, surrounded by a blackened patch of farmland.
The machine was rumbling through a pasture outside the village of Maidan – some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the front line of Russian forces – when it struck a mine, according to farmer Pavlo Kudimov.
A front wheel was ripped off and the huge rotating pulley yanked aside as the cabin was engulfed in flames.
The next morning, the driver remained hospitalized with severe burns as the wreckage still smoldered, a reminder of the risks of tending the land in a breadbasket that has become a brutal war zone.
“Farming has always been difficult, but now it’s even more difficult,” Kudimov told AFP.
In early August, the first shipment of grain left Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion and blockaded the ports of Kyiv on the southern Black Sea.
Ukraine accounts for 10 percent of the world wheat market and is the boat left under a Turkey-UN brokered deal seeking to ease a global food price crisis that is hitting poor nations.
Inside Ukraine, the embargo on grain exports has created a crisis for farmers.
Without access to international markets, the silos are full, prices have fallen and the supply chain has yet to unwind.
– ‘Risk our lives’ –
Peasants in the Donbass — the eastern region where the war with Russia shifted after the Kremlin’s gambit to seize Kiev failed — face threats on two fronts.
Donbass includes the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and is the industrial and agricultural heartland of Ukraine.
But the air raid sirens sound every day. Rockets rain down, military jets attack ground targets and cluster bombs dot fields.
Endless sunflower pastures are now crisscrossed with defensive ditches.
Last year, farmer Sergey Lubarskyi received up to 8 hryvnia ($0.22) for every kilo of wheat.
Since the blockade, he can only get 3 hryvnia – if he can transport them to the Kramatorsk regional hub.
In the front village of Rai-Aleksandrovka, he can get only 1.80 hyrvnya.
“Drivers are afraid to come here,” he says.
Eduard Stukalo, 46, farms 150 hectares on the outskirts of the city of Sloviansk.
About 30 hectares of wheat were “completely burned down,” he suspects, as a result of artillery fire.
It’s a struggle to convince the workers to collect the crops that remain near the front lines.
“Farmers like us will go bankrupt this year,” he says. “No one wants to go there to harvest because everyone is afraid of incoming missiles.”
“We also risked our lives when we seeded the fields in April and May this year,” he added.
“Cluster bombs hit our fields. Bombs exploded 100-200 meters from us.”
But some are being pushed to farm the land despite the risks posed by wartime austerity.
“We go to the fields because there is no other occupation here,” says 57-year-old Svitlana Gaponova, who is picking eggplants in a field outside the besieged Soledar settlement.
“It’s scary, but it’s distracting,” she said as the sound of munitions explosions rolled over the horizon.
– ‘Nothing left’ –
There is also a strong tradition of subsistence farming in this impoverished part of Ukraine.
At the Sunday market, stallholders sell the meager produce they can cultivate in their personal plots.
“People plant their gardens and work there all the time,” said Volodymyr Rybalkin, head of the military administration of the Svyatohirsk frontline district, about the reluctance of residents to leave the place.
“We’re constantly explaining to people what’s happening in the area and trying to motivate them to evacuate to safer cities.”
While these conspiracies do not tip the scales of world trade and politics, they are not exempt from the dangers of war.
In the early hours of last Monday morning, an approaching fire ravaged the space behind the modest cottage of 57-year-old Lyubov Kanisheva on the outskirts of Kramatorsk.
Next door, more than a dozen beehives were smashed and turned upside down. Now the swarming hum of bees merges with the rushing air raid alarm siren.
On Kanisheva’s property, vines were caked with dust and tomatoes were smashed into the ground.
“The garden was just for our needs, but we managed to grow a lot,” she said.
“There’s nothing left of that.”
#Farming #fire #front #eastern #Ukraine
