Grid reports:

It is a slow, silent process — and it unfolds in the dark. Yuriy Russu, who works on a farm near the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, describes it this way: After sunset, he and his fellow farmers shut off the lights around their fields. Buildings, streetlights — everything goes dark. Then they wait for the skies to fall silent — the threat of airstrikes is ever present, Russu told Grid. “We wait for the fighter jets to fly away,” he said. Next, they maneuver their tractors to the patch of land earmarked for sowing. “We use the light from the tractors to plant crops,” he explained. “Nothing else. We have to keep a low profile.”

Russu plants a variety of crops on the fields he works on — from beets to wheat. It is essential work, and not only for the people of Ukraine. The country is a major supplier of key staples — in particular corn, wheat and sunflower oil. Countries around Europe and beyond depend on the land long known as a “bread basket” of Europe; there were nearly 50,000 active farms across Ukraine prior to the war. In the most recent estimates, roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s domestic wheat supply came from Ukraine; in Indonesia, the figure was almost a third. All told, Ukraine accounts for roughly 16 percent of the world’s exports of corn, and around 10 percent of global wheat and barley. For sunflower oil, the figure is more than 40 percent. And as Grid has reported, war has interrupted these supplies. Now, the spring planting season — which begins during March and April — is unfolding against the backdrop of a Russian invasion.

All of which means that the world is watching — not only the military movements of the war in Ukraine, but the movements of Yuriy Russu and the nation’s farmers as well. The question is critical for Ukraine and all those countries that depend on it: Can a nation plant and harvest its crops in the middle of a war? [Continue reading…]