Sowing Seeds of Change: Two Years into Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Tetyana Vovchenko owns a farm about half the size of New York City’s Central Park in southwestern Ukraine where she and her two children cultivate wheat, barley, sunflower, corn, and rapeseed. After two years of war, she looked out at her fields with growing uncertainty.  

“Our resources are depleting, my agribusiness is becoming unprofitable,” said Tetyana, who established the Alex-Agro farm with her husband, who is now deceased, 18 years ago.  

Tetyana’s experience is like what many Ukrainian farmers have faced since Russian forces invaded Ukraine two years ago. Once known as the breadbasket of Europe because of its abundant agricultural production, Ukraine, along with Russia, used to produce 30% of the world’s wheat. Since the war, Ukraine’s agricultural sector has suffered $80 billion in losses, including $35 billion in crop production alone, which has driven up global food prices—something particularly painful for those in lower-income countries. 

Due to disruptions in logistics, low grain prices, and the exhaustion of their own resources, small farmers like Tetyana are often unable to purchase the fertilizers necessary to boost production. The cost of sowing in 2023 increased by 45-50% compared to 2022. Many farmers have responded by reducing fertilizer application by half, which results in lower yields, negatively impacting the long-term sustainability of the Ukrainian agricultural sector and global food security. 

Breaking Ground, Breaking Barriers  

To foster agricultural production, the USAID Agriculture Growing Rural Opportunities (AGRO) Activity provided 14,000 metric tonnes of fertilizer to 7,621 agricultural producers in Ukraine, including Tetyana, between November 2023 and January 2024. AGRO prioritizes women farmers like her to help them take on leadership roles, access training and resources, and contribute to the well-being of their families and communities.  

“This assistance is a beacon of hope, enabling us to continue working against all odds,” said Tetyana, whose farm products help to feed families in Ukraine and abroad.  

 

To receive fertilizer, farmers apply through the State Agrarian Register administrated by Ukraine’s Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food. Recognizing the heightened challenges faced by women in sustaining agricultural production during the war, AGRO tried a positive discrimination approach when selecting applications for inputs into the register.  

AGRO approved all eligible applications from women before proceeding with the remaining applications. As a result, of the 7,619 farms selected to receive the fertilizer, 2,113 (28%) are owned or managed by women. This is a considerable improvement considering that women own or lead 19.9% of the grain farming businesses in Ukraine. Notably, AGRO reached 48% of all women-owned farms that cultivate 5 to 500 hectares of grain included in the State Agrarian Register. 

Providing mineral fertilizer and other critical inputs for farmers falls under the larger scope of AGRO as it implements USAID’s Agriculture Resilience Initiative-Ukraine (AGRI-Ukraine), which USAID launched in 2022 to address the worldwide food crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  

For the 2023-2024 growing season, AGRO provided key inputs within AGRI-Ukraine to one-third of Ukraine’s registered farmers, enabling them to produce an additional 278,000 metric tonnes of grain with aggregated revenue of over $127.8 million. This supplemented over $250 million in farmers’ own financing to catalyze the production of over 2 million tonnes of crops with an estimated value of up to $464 million.