Ukrainian farmers enter this year's sowing under extremely difficult conditions: mined fields, blocked sea routes for the sale of crops, rising prices of fertilizers, seeds and fuel.

At the same time, the agricultural sector is almost the only hope of the Ukrainian economy for salvation in the conditions of a full-scale war, says TSN. 

A 10-meter-deep crater remained from a huge warehouse of an agricultural enterprise in the Mykolayiv region.

The explosion there was widely circulated by Russian propagandists in their Telegram channels, passing off the destroyed saltpetre warehouse as an Armed Forces base. 

The director of the enterprise assures that neither the military nor military equipment was even close to the enterprise.

The Russians shelled the enterprise for seven months.

The front line was about a kilometer from here.

Almost everything that had to be plowed, sown and transported was destroyed - half a hundred expensive units.

For example, the cost of one of the tractors is 100,000 dollars.

"The equipment is standing, it has copper wires, some Buryat removed the wires, melted the parts.

What level can you imagine.

A tractor costs $100,000, and it can remove wires.

To destroy the country is not only to kill soldiers at the front, this equipment is also the country," says the director. 

This broken farm is an illustration of the stress faced by our farmers before this year's plowing.

For the first time in many years, farmers worked without profit.

"The harvested crop for most producers, if we are talking about grain, brought a loss.

We had a closed sea, this is 98% of our exports," explains Roman Slastyon, general director of the Ukrainian Agrarian Business Club.

In some places, under shelling, among fires, as farmers from the Mykolaiv region, they gathered last year's harvest, but there was no way to sell it.

"Currently, due to blockages, such as passing inspection in the Bosphorus, the domestic price is quite low.

As of today, unfortunately, it is close to zero profitability.

Almost two-thirds of what could be obtained for Ukrainian grain was consumed by logistics, and only one-third was the money that remained with the farmer in the end.

This created unprofitability," says First Deputy Minister of Agricultural Policy and Industry of Ukraine Taras Vysotskyi. 

If the producers from the western regions were still able to make money, then in the east and south it was sometimes cheaper not to harvest at all, but to let it rot.

"If we take the price of the same corn - in the Sumy region, the price was about UAH 4.5 thousand per ton.

Whereas on the western border it was UAH 7 and even higher per ton.

You understand what a serious difference there was," adds Roman Slastyon.

It is surprising that even during the war, our farmers managed to harvest a very decent harvest.

Compared to 2021, when Ukraine harvested a record harvest of more than 100 million tons, 2022, of course, was poor, but it still fed the country and the world - 70 million tons.

For this year, the forecasts are much worse, but surprisingly, Ukraine will earn almost the same.

"The physical volume will decrease, but since the prices for oil crops and processing products are higher than for grain, we do not expect a decrease in the export of products in terms of currency.

It will be at the same level," Taras Vysotskyi explains.

In the Mykolaiv region, the only surviving tractor of the enterprise is already working.

Of the 13,000 hectares, only 2,700 will be planted. The remaining 70 percent of the fields are completely contaminated with shells.

Although they still take a risk, the tractor driver Serhiy finds a piece of shell.

Petro, who was a farmer himself until February 24, now doesn't even know what to call himself, works nearby.

"I also had all my equipment destroyed.

It was like I was a small farmer, but I remained a beggar.

Everything was crushed, killed.

They threw me back 20 years, if not more", - says farmer Petro.

In tilling the land, he hopes for the help of his colleagues and believes in the Ukrainian sunflower.

"They will process their own, then they will stop by, help, and we will sow.

I will try to sow the seeds.

The winter ones have blown through, the spring ones will give little, I don't know what the weather will be like.

And the seeds can pop out," says the man. 

The State Emergency Service calls 4,700 square kilometers risky for agriculture and once again asks not to take risks.

"Of course, this tractor may not drive for a long time.

We had a case literally two weeks ago when a tractor driver blew up together with a vehicle," - say explosive technicians. 

Demining fields is a long and very expensive process.

You can wait for free humanitarian aid from the state, or order it with your own funds, but it is almost impossible to pay off such a crop.

"When the cost of demining exceeds UAH 40,000 per hectare, it is obvious that you are working for nothing, at best," explains Slastyon.

"Most likely due to landmines and other wartime circumstances, about half a million hectares will not be available for farming this year," adds Taras Vysotskyi.

These are not all the problems: the prices of fertilizers have risen, farmers simply don't have anything to buy them with, so this is also a big minus from the harvest.

However, Ukraine itself will definitely have bread.

Despite the devastation, the threat of being blown up, the loss of equipment and grain stolen by Russia, the farmers have been in the field for a long time.

The Ukrainian land will not and cannot stand still.

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