Where the Harvest Has Nowhere to Go

In the Kherson region, where shelling is relentless and anti-drone nets cover the roads, Russian attacks on export routes are driving a wedge between the value of grain abroad and what farmers can earn at home. The consequences extend beyond individual livelihoods to the survival of rural communities and the prospects of the next generation. South of Kyiv, heading toward the Black Sea, the country opens into broad expanses of farmland. Wheat, barley and sunflowers stretch into the distance on either side of the lightly traveled highway toward Odesa. It is watermelon season, and harvesting is under way. The sheer extent of cultivation gives a sense of the country’s agricultural reach, supplying markets far beyond its borders.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Grain silos rise beyond a sunflower field in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region on July 21, 2026. Across the country’s agricultural south, Russian attacks on export infrastructure have disrupted the routes connecting farmers to overseas buyers. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) As checkpoints begin to punctuate the road, damaged and abandoned houses become a familiar sight in the villages, their facades scarred by shrapnel. Fragments of rockets and drones lie along the streets, in courtyards and back gardens, while unexploded ammunition and mines remain scattered across land still being farmed. On the highway between Mykolaiv and Kherson, anti-drone nets enclose stretches of the route, extending onto the country lanes that lead toward the farms. Other Topics of Interest Kernel Pilots Modular Grain Storage to Cushion Export Disruptions Kernel built its first modular grain store in four days and has bought units to add 40,000 tons of storage, as attacks on logistics infrastructure disrupt Ukraine's grain exports. Some 30 kilometers (20 miles) outside Kherson, in the village of Posad-Pokrovske, a tractor is plowing a field beside one of these narrow roads. The front line once ran through this area; beyond it, toward the neighboring hamlet of Soldatske, Russian troops held the land until the Ukrainian advance that liberated Kherson in November 2022. I wait at the edge as the tractor approaches, then climb into the cab when the driver stops. His name is Vyacheslav Dolholutskyi. Short and stocky, with a full beard and a weathered face, he is dressed in shorts and sandals. His broad hands, thick fingers resting on the steering wheel, guide the machine back across the field. The noise is loud and the view restricted; the 38-year-old explains that he neither sees nor hears Russian drones while working. “You’re watching the machinery, the instruments,” he says. “There’s no time to think about whether something is flying above you or not.” Nowhere to hide Vyacheslav, known as Slava, farms roughly 100 hectares (245 acres) scattered across smaller plots around Posad-Pokrovske, working largely on his own. A second job maintaining the canals of the Inhulets irrigation system, which supplies water to farmland in southern Ukraine, provides a regular government-paid income. “I combine it. After work, on weekends, sometimes when they let me take leave during the harvest.” Vyacheslav Dolholutskyi inside his tractor in Posad-Pokrovske on July 26, 2026. He cultivates roughly 100 hectares alongside a second job maintaining irrigation canals. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) That job also brought him equipment he now uses on his farmland: a drone detector, issued to canal workers as Russian drone activity increased around the villages of Stanislav and Oleksandrivka, closer to the front. He describes watching for his own position in the drone’s camera feed on the detector’s screen – the view available to its operator. “If you see yourself, you have 30 or 40 seconds to jump out of the tractor and hide.” How can I hide in the middle of the steppe? But out on the exposed farmland he cultivates, even an early warning can leave him with nowhere to go. He recalls continuing to work after the detector picked up drone activity nearby. “How can I hide in the middle of the steppe?”Vyacheslav points out a crater in a nearby wheat field, where a Shahed drone once came down and broke apart. It is a consequence of interception he wants people to understand: wreckage still falls somewhere, sometimes into crops that have taken months to grow. “A lot of wheat has burned in people’s fields.”Beyond the threat to the harvest, military activity is woven into the working day: aircraft overhead, military vehicles passing through, strikes on neighboring settlements. He recalls glide bombs hitting nearby villages and attacks around fuel facilities, in daylight as well as at night. “Here, basically every day, you can understand that military operations are going on.”Taking back the landVyacheslav learned to drive a tractor while he was still at school. Around the ninth or tenth grade, he began working for a local vegetable grower to earn some money. “I started little by little around 2008 or 2009 — half a hectare, then a hectare of vegetables.”Today, he grows mainly winter wheat and winter barley, which he considers best suited to the region’s dry conditions. He plans to continue with both, possibly devoting more land to wheat.Back in February 2022, Russia’s full-scale invasion interrupted his preparations for spring planting. “Literally the day before the war started, I bought fertilizer.”He, his wife Liudmyla, and their daughter Zlata stayed at home for roughly a month, sheltering in the basement, before fleeing through Mykolaiv to the Vinnytsia region. “When they started shelling the village, we understood that we had to leave.” For Vyacheslav, the former front runs through the geography of his own farmland. “Here was the contact line, and there was the canal. The Russians were there, and ours were here.”After the Ukrainian counteroffensive drove Russian forces back across the Dnipro, the family returned to a village without electricity or running water. “There was patriotism. We believed in a quick victory, as they say – not in a prolonged war.”As the land had not been professionally cleared, he bought a metal detector and checked access roads and fields on foot before bringing in machinery. “It was the gray zone,” he says. “Everything was mined.”Over the years, he had worked through one setback after another, reaching a point by early 2026 where he hoped a successful season would allow him to formally register and expand his farm – only for the war to place another obstacle in his path.A harvest without a marketAt the end of the field, Vyacheslav turns the tractor and begins another pass.“I thought harvesting would be the problem, with the shelling and so many fields burning. But now it turns out the problem is selling the grain.” “We managed to grow it. We managed to preserve it. We harvested it. And now there is nowhere to sell it. In roughly two weeks, he says, the price he was being offered for wheat fell from $150–160 per metric ton to around $90. Barley has fared no better. “Five days ago it was $148. Two days later, $97.” The figures reflect local prices, while those at export terminals or on international exchanges can be considerably higher. “We managed to grow it. We managed to preserve it. We harvested it. And now there is nowhere to sell it.” Farther west, he reasons, a farmer might store the harvest and wait for a better price. He lacks the money for a storage facility – and even if he had it, the investment would be a gamble. “You can build a warehouse – and it can be destroyed.” He gestures toward the wheat still standing in the surrounding fields. Some farmers, he explains, cannot move their harvest on; even loaded trucks can be left waiting. “There is nowhere to put it. There are no vehicles. There is nowhere to take it.” Larger agricultural companies, he says, can afford to wait longer, drawing on their own grain stores, financial reserves and better access to aid. The bottleneck at sea The ports are central to Vyacheslav’s explanation. A farmer may own the grain and have someone willing to buy it in principle, but the transaction depends on trucks, warehouses, terminals and ships continuing to work beyond his field. “Ships are afraid to enter,” he says. “People are killed, ships are damaged.” The former Hotel Odesa beside the port’s passenger terminal, photographed on Aug. 9, 2026. The building was severely damaged in a Russian attack on Sept. 25, 2023. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) Access to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports deteriorated sharply over the summer. By mid-July, the Ukrainian Agrarian Council estimated that Russian attacks had reduced grain-export capacity by about a third, to roughly 4 million metric tons (about 4.4 million tons) a month. Four major terminals had stopped purchasing grain. Freight costs were rising, while shipment delays and storage shortages carried the disruption inland. On July 13, a Russian strike hit a Togo-flagged merchant vessel carrying mineral fertilizer in the Odesa region, killing five crew members and injuring ten. Less than two weeks later, another ship carrying nearly 2,800 metric tons of corn – about 110,000 bushels, or roughly a 100-truck convoy – was hit twice and set ablaze as it left a port in the region. In early August, the agriculture ministry estimated that continued restrictions on maritime trade could cost the sector $1.5 billion to $3 billion. More than 90% of Ukraine’s grain exports had been moving through its seaports. A proposed rail route through Moldova to Romania’s Constanta port could carry an estimated 4.5 million metric tons (about 5 million tons) a year – roughly a tenth of the country’s originally forecast annual grain exports. “Trucks and trains are small compared with what goes through the Odesa ports,” Vyacheslav says. Cargo cranes at Odesa’s port at dawn on Aug. 10, 2026. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) Cargo diverted to the Danube faced congestion, low river levels and further Russian attacks on ports including Izmail, in southwestern Ukraine near the Romanian border. In the first twelve days of August, grain exports were already down 76% from the same period a year earlier. By the end of the month, about 80 vessels were waiting near Romania’s Sulina Canal to reach Ukrainian river ports. A shortage of pilots, frequent air alerts and limited inspection capacity compounded the delays. The attacks continued into September, threatening the land routes as well. On Sept. 9, Russian drones struck the Starokozache border crossing with Moldova, killing two civilians and injuring three. Further deadly strikes hit Odesa itself in the following days. Earlier that month, the agriculture minister said favorable conditions might allow monthly agricultural exports to reach 2 million tons, still only around 40% of the volume needed. The river and land routes were moving cargo, but they were not replacing the capacity lost at sea. The breadbasket paradox The shortfall reaches countries that depend on Ukrainian harvests, including buyers in Africa whom Vyacheslav sees as an important market. “We are the breadbasket. We play a major role.” That dependence is reflected in international markets, where disruptions to Ukrainian exports can drive prices higher even as grain piles up inland. By Aug. 20, Chicago wheat futures – a benchmark for wheat prices – had risen more than 17% since early July, while domestic quotations in Ukraine fell by roughly 15% for both wheat and barley between Aug. 3 and Sept. 7. For now, Vyacheslav’s irrigation salary helps pay for electricity, gas, water and groceries, keeping the family going when grain provides no reliable income. Still, he is preparing for another sowing season, hoping exports will recover. But by the end of the year, he fears he could reach a limit. Without enough money from the harvest to buy fuel and fertilizer, he may struggle to finance the next crop. Whether farming can still provide a living is becoming harder for him to judge. “Honestly, I don’t even know.” “There will be no village” I climb out of the tractor and look across the farmland. In a region so dependent on agriculture, a harvest that brings in too little money threatens livelihoods far beyond Vyacheslav’s own household. Under that pressure, communities rely all the more on mutual help. A friend brings a crate of tomatoes from the next village. Someone a couple of streets away has watermelons to share. When a car will not start, a neighbor helps repair it; when a job needs more hands, others lend theirs. For Vyacheslav, helping one another extends to sharing the fieldwork with other farmers. “They help me with their combines; I plow or disk their fields.” To him, family farms are part of what holds these communities together. “If we don’t have small farmers, there will be no village.” From dawn to dusk Back on the main highway between Mykolaiv and Kherson, dubbed the “Road of Death,” I come to a field worked by Fedor Shpak, right beside the route. The sun is low as he shuts off his tractor’s engine. Behind him, smoke rises above a neighboring village a few kilometers away. Farmer Fedor Shpak beside his tractor in Posad-Pokrovske on July 29, 2026, as smoke rises above a neighboring village following a Russian strike. He grows wheat, barley, sunflowers and peas on 100 hectares. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) Shpak cultivates 100 hectares (about 247 acres), growing wheat, barley, sunflowers and peas. “We do not grow vegetables because there are no people. There is no one to do it.” He links the labor shortage partly to military mobilization. More capable machinery would help him manage with fewer workers, but he lacks the money to replace what he has. “We are working with old wrecks.” Like Vyacheslav, the 49-year-old combines farming with work for the Inhulets irrigation system, where he operates an excavator for its canal administration. He lives with his wife, Aliona, and their 11-year-old daughter, Bohdana. He works from dawn to dusk, relying on both incomes to keep the family afloat. “Up at five, and off you go,” he says, a brief smile crossing his face. Out in the fields, he relies on what he can see or hear to detect approaching drones. Farmers across the area call to warn one another, but there are times when the danger forces him to stop work altogether and leave the field. He shows me metal debris he has collected at the edge of the field – remnants of earlier attacks that cultivation still brings to the surface. “You work it for a year, and it still comes out of the ground.” “This is our home” At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Fedor’s family and their neighbors took shelter in a nearby cellar. His wife and daughter left as the strikes drew closer, while he stayed with his father-in-law until an impact close by prompted them to leave too. “I left on March 23. Thank God, we made it to Mykolaiv. Shelling started at the bridge, but we got through, thank God.” Five months passed before he saw his wife and daughter again in Zakarpattia, in western Ukraine. Yet after just three days together, he returned to Posad-Pokrovske. “You had to work. There was rent to pay. Everything had to be paid for.” It is ours. This is our home. We traveled around – who needs us? Nobody needs us. Nine months after fleeing, the family was finally reunited in the village. “When we came back, we were shocked. They had taken everything, even out of the house and the garages. We had to start from scratch.” He had grown up here and invested years of work in the property. Elsewhere, the family had no equivalent place or established life. “It is ours. This is our home. We traveled around – who needs us? Nobody needs us.” Fedor Shpak sits beneath grapevines in Posad-Pokrovske on July 29, 2026. After fleeing in 2022, he returned and gradually rebuilt his farm with his family. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) Beyond the next harvest Fedor faces the same squeeze affecting farmers across the Kherson region: rising costs for fuel, seed and agricultural chemicals. Nitrate fertilizer alone, he estimates, has roughly doubled in price. “Grain, on the other hand, is getting cheaper. It has become much cheaper.” Beyond the price, there is the question of who will collect his harvest. “Practically nobody wants to come, because it is dangerous. You can understand people not coming.” His frustration extends to the lack of support for small farmers. He says he has received no meaningful compensation or benefits to help cover the costs of rebuilding and keeping the farm running. “The fighting is not far away. We cleared all the metal out of the fields ourselves, and we still pay taxes. I cannot understand it,” he says. What troubles Fedor is the future awaiting Bohdana here. With no functioning school or kindergarten in the village, his daughter’s lessons take place online. New educational facilities were supposed to be ready in 2025, he says, but not even the foundations have been laid. “They keep promising.” Vyacheslav shares that concern for his own daughter. After Kherson’s liberation, she too had wanted to come home. Now he describes a harder life than the family had hoped for, with Zlata missing out on everyday school life and activities with other children. As a father, he has begun considering whether housing compensation or a housing certificate could help them buy a home somewhere safer, where the 9-year-old could attend school in person. Vyacheslav Dolholutskyi at the wheel of his tractor in Posad-Pokrovske on July 26, 2026. “When you work, you rest mentally. You forget about the war,” he says. (Photo by Korbinian Leo Kramer) In the meantime, he is still preparing the land. Farming offers him a measure of peace. “When you work, you rest mentally. You forget about the war.” Vyacheslav finds a simple satisfaction in seeing a crop through to harvest. “You made it with your own hands. You grew it.” The sun is setting over the countryside outside Kherson. Pink spreads along the horizon above the yellow-green fields. Houses with damaged facades stand among trees still thick with leaves. Along the road, the drone nets remain overhead. Across the region, the shelling continues. For now, the last light falls on grain still waiting to be harvested.