Farmers in Ukraine are being “blown up by mines” in their fields every week, according to the Ukrainian Agri Council (UAC).
Andriy Dykun, head of the UAC, said that there are also daily reports of mines damaging and destroying agricultural equipment.
“Small farmers often mine fields for sowing on their own, which has catastrophic consequences, as people die. Due to the threat to life, most farmers skip the sowing season altogether,” he said.
The UAC said that some large agricultural enterprises in the Kherson region did not even start the spring sowing season.
Mines
Rescuers working on the frontline in Kharkiv, Kherson, and Mykolaiv, territories no longer occupied, are receiving “tens of thousands” of requests for farmland de-mining every week, the UAC said.
However, due to a lack of resources the Ukrainian State Emergency Service “does not hide the fact that the wait will be long” for farmers.
“In this situation, farmers risk losing their crops for the second year in a row, and even worse, they risk their own lives by going out into the fields to prevent a food crisis,” it said.
The largest area of land contaminated with mines is in the south and east of Ukraine.
“In Ukraine, about 174,000km2 of land are currently potentially contaminated.
“This is the land that is a source of food for about 81 million people around the world. This is an extremely large amount of work that Ukraine can accomplish only with the help of the international community.
“Humanitarian de-mining of Ukrainian territories requires ten times more specialists trained to international standards than are currently working in Ukraine.
“We must all work together to solve this problem to save the world from a food crisis and the lives of Ukrainian civilians from the deadly danger posed by mined areas,” Dykun said.
Farmers
The World Bank estimates that the full range of humanitarian de-mining activities in Ukraine will cost about $37.4 billion.
According to preliminary estimates, $1.5 billion alone is needed for surveying and prioritising the de-mining of agricultural land alone.
Currently, the cost of de-mining ranges from $600-3,500 or more per hectare, but none of the farms that need de-mining can afford it.
In the absence of de-mining, the UAC said that dairy farmers will not be able to prepare enough roughage for their livestock and will be forced to significantly reduce or even close their business.
Vasyl Kalgan, who is farming in the Kharkiv region, said: “If there is no de-mining, we will completely lose not only the livestock sector but also the farm as a whole.
“We don’t have a single field that has been explored. The stocks of fodder for cows will last only until July this year.
“It is critical to clear the fields of mines during the summer. This will give us a chance to save the farm.”
