Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is urging farmers to sow as many fields as possible to protect the food supply. The country should organize a full-fledged sowing campaign in all of its territory “to the extent that’s possible,” Zelenskyy said in a video released Friday.
One of Ukraine’s largest agricultural companies, UkrLandFarming, said several company managers had been killed in Sumy in northern Ukraine, and in Kyiv. UkrLandFarming has lost at least 120,000 hectares (297,000 acres) of land in the Kherson, Odesa and Mykolayiv regions to the Russian invasion, or about a third of its land portfolio. It has been forced to shut three egg farms including Europe’s largest, the Chornobaivka factory near Kherson, where 3.1 million laying hens are dying, the company said.
IMC SA, another agricultural company, wants to keep its operations going, but it isn’t allowing workers into many fields because of worries about their safety, Chief Executive Officer Alex Lissitsa said Friday in an interview with Bloomberg. Lissitsa, a board member of the Ukrainian Agribusiness Club, said summer crops such as corn could be affected more severely, with only about half the normal area planted because of the fighting and severed logistics. “All depends on people and the situation, because this is about life.”
