War in the Breadbasket of Europe: Sergij’s Story

My name is Sergij, and I’m a family farmer.

I’m 34, and my family started raising cows when I was about 6. At first, we didn’t have the farm. We just kept ten cows at home, and we grazed them with the other cows from the village.

Back then, twenty-five years ago, our village had about seven hundred households, and every household had, at a minimum, one cow.

Now, there are about thirty cows total in the village that I know of, not counting ours. Someone, probably, has a pig, and that’s it.

This is just our one village, but there are many friends nearby, and it’s the same in every village.

We raise cattle, but, because everything depends on price policy, we also grow corn, barley, wheat and, sometimes — it depends on the year — we grow sunflowers.

Also, we have two horses. They are very hard-working now that we’ve had so much trouble getting diesel fuel. They’ve helped, done all the jobs. But that’s all we have on the farm — not counting ducks and chickens, which are more like a hobby. We just keep them for ourselves.

Everything depends on the harvest

The economics of farming are obviously hard, but I wonder — what is going to happen in 15 years? Because I have a daughter, and I’m worried about what she will eat and drink in 25 years.

The big agri-firms, they have storage places, so they have large contracts with the ports and the mediators, and they’re all tied with each other. If the price is good, then everything transports abroad.

Some farmers have agreements with mediators and with the ports, so when they harvest they send the grain abroad, or, if they have storage, they can save it, waiting for a better price.

In general, though, we sell to the local market because we don’t have high volume.

Since we deal with pigs and cows, we’ve suffered losses, because the price of meat fell. The price we purchased grains at was higher last year than the cost of raising cattle.

Everything now depends on how the harvest will finish this year, and how our state will help the agricultural sector, because if we are left aside, there won’t be anything good. We’ll leave our farm and that’s all. We’ll have to let it go to weed.

Renewal and recovery

In Kherson, Melitopol, those regions, where the buildings are destroyed, it might take up to 10 years there to renew the agriculture industry. I don’t know the scale of destruction in those regions where it was the strongest shelling, but my guess is that we’ll need up to 10 years for the grain industry to recover, and for the farms producing milk, it might take 20 years there.

Luckily, I’m in the heart of Ukraine, and we don’t have any strategic targets here.

The planes patrol — we used to count up to 15-18 a day, flying above the village. But we didn’t have any explosions or anything like that.

Once there was the missile attack on the Cherkasy dam about 12 miles from us, but here it’s mostly quiet, thank God.

We’re still farming in the old buildings left after collective farm. Even before the war, these buildings were on the verge of destruction, and to build new ones we would need big investments. But taking out loans is risky. Me and my father, we’re against it, because, in our country at the moment, it is like selling your life. It’s very dangerous, because big loans…if there isn’t a good harvest or there isn’t a good price — that’s the end, collapse.

The next year, they’ll come and take everything — cows and buildings, and lands, everything.

Long hours in a hard year

Right now, my father works 20 hours a day at the farm.

Usually, I only help in the summer. In the spring, I would go to Finland, work there and then come back in the autumn for the harvest to gather the fodder — the feed for the animals.

This year, though, I’ve been helping my father all year.

And now that the war has started, we have some fodder for the cattle, but still there’s no benefit from it, no money.

Right now, though, we don’t think of the prices. We don’t care about them.

We just have to keep working, even when we’re losing money, because many of my friends are at the front. We send them meat. We still do our best.

The world market

Our agricultural industry affects the world market. It’s on TV now, a news feature. A few grain tankers start transporting, and it’s like “Hooray, Ukraine started transporting!”

If Ukraine delays delivering grain, it will be a great trouble for all the world, because the millions of tons of grain, Ukrainian grain, that feeds the world.

I mean, as hard it could be, we would keep going, trying, working. We are a nation that can keep working and fighting.

Ukrainians will work and fight until the last breath.

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