Ukrainian Farmers Work The Fields As Shelling Continues

Ukraine is one of the world's largest exporters of wheat, corn, and sunflower oil, but the war and a Russian blockade of its ports have halted much of that flow, endangering world food supplies. Many of those ports are now also heavily mined, Anca Ulea reported for Euronews.

Photo Insert: Ukraine has been unable to export millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products due to the war and a Russian naval blockade of its Black Sea ports.

So are many of the fields recaptured around Ukraine's second-biggest city Kharkiv, in the northeastern part of the country. As shelling continues a few kilometers north, tractors seed as much land as possible, as fast as possible, wherever possible.

Working in tandem, the drivers coordinate with each other by sight to avoid the craters left by the strikes.

"We don't have strikes right now, but in other fields, there is shelling and there are rockets (left on the ground), we drive past them and still seed. What can we do?" said one tractor driver seeding sunflowers in the village of Cherkaska Lozova, the Associated Press (AP) also reported.

After recapturing many of their fields from the Russians, they must now contend with a lack of working equipment. "The situation now is that we don't have machines,” said farmworker Mikhaylo Petrushenko.

“We recovered the land that is not mined where we can work, but not the machines because they were mostly destroyed." But even if farmers do manage to secure their next harvest, there may not be space to store it.

Ukraine has been unable to export millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products due to the war and a Russian naval blockade of its now heavily-mined Black Sea ports.

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