From doom-scrolling the Ukraine/Russia war it is pretty obvious that Ukrainian farmers have not been idle. Battles are being fought in the treelines and along rivers next to plowed and planted fields. Hopefully some of these crops are harvested and make it to market.
I heard an interview with a farmer in Western Ukraine today. His area isn't immediately affected by the war (as in, no bombs, no mines, no occupation). His stores are still full with the 2021 harvest. The regular route would be via the black sea, but that's blockaded. He has a contract to ship some of the stored grain via train to Poland. But there's very little capacity to store his 2022 harvest.
> Hopefully some of these crops are harvested and make it to market.
There are unfortunately a lot of problems here which make me seriously pessimistic:
- Ukraine will need a lot of the harvest for itself, given how Russians raided crop silos [1] and what they can't raid they bomb to pieces [2]
- No one knows if Russian operatives didn't poison crop silos - there are a number of poisons that are very stable in the environment and very hard to detect if you don't know what you are looking for, and Russians have proven over and over that they have an awful lot of skill in dealing with poisons
- Russians looted a lot of agricultural machinery, and a lot more got destroyed or seriously damaged - and the Ukrainians repurposed a lot of stuff either to tow off Russian tanks or to convert into technicals
- fertilizer is made of natural gas which is in short supply, which in turn will massively impact yields
- similar to the post-war situation in Yugoslavia, fields will need to be de-mined extensively, and they need to be cleansed off of shrapnel and fuel
- even if there are quantities to export, you need a way to transport them. The railroad track width is different in Ukraine (Russian wide-gauge) and Europe (standard), there aren't many re-trackable cargo wagons, a lot of rail equipment and bridges got blasted by Russians or by Ukrainians for sabotage. God knows in what state the sea ports are, there has been heavy fighting, not to mention the sea mines that are already causing chaos [3]
All in all it will be years if not decades until Ukraine can be a serious player on the crop market again.
