Where Food Security Begins: One Ukrainian Farm’s Story

The fields that were supposed to be prepared for wheat, corn, and sunflowers were unsafe - mines and unexploded missiles scattered across the land made it impossible to enter safely.

His Naporivske farm in Lukashivka village had been under Russian military occupation for about a month. Russian troops had taken control of it in the first weeks of the full-scale invasion. The area was hit with missiles; Hryhorii later said around 60 landed in the village and his farmland. By the time Ukrainian forces pushed Russian troops out at the end of March 2022, not a single building on the farm remained untouched.

For Hryhorii, this was not only a business loss. He, his wife, and their four children had built the farm over many years from a small family holding into one of the largest employers in the area. They began with a few cows, several hectares of land, almost no equipment, and little starting capital. Most of the early work was done by hand. Over time, the farm grew into a modern agricultural enterprise with around 1,500 hectares of land, hundreds of cattle, crop, dairy production, and dozens of workers.

During the first weeks of the invasion, Hryhorii and his team continued milking the cows as long as they could, even under threat of missile strikes. The processing plant could no longer collect the milk because of shelling, so the farm distributed milk to nearby villages. Some of it was taken by the Red Cross to orphanages and hospitals. Even under attack, the farm was still trying to feed people.

Then the Russian military occupied the farm.

When Hryhorii returned a month later, after the Ukrainian army liberated the village, he found that more than 100 of his cows and calves had been killed. Some had died during shelling; others, he said, were shot. Calves were left without their mothers. Carcasses were scattered across the land.

"The Russians butchered nearly half of my cows and made them into kebab meat which they barbequed at the village church," he told The Telegraph. "They went on safari," he said, describing the shooting of animals as cruelty rather than necessity.

Dairy farming depends on routine and care: feeding, milking, cleaning, treatment, breeding, and the daily attention of people who know the animals. The slaughter of the cattle was thus not only an economic blow - it destroyed living systems that had taken years to build. It left Hryhorii and his team with grim but necessary tasks: removing carcasses, checking damaged buildings, searching for surviving animals, repairing what they could, and assessing if the fields were usable again.

There was little time to grieve: spring planting had to begin. But the fields were dangerous, fuel was scarce, equipment was damaged, fertilizer stores had been hit, and roadsides were littered with unexploded ordnance. Mines and active rocket warheads had to be found before machinery could move safely through the land.

At first, Hryhorii said, he could not even imagine what to do. Then the practical reality became unavoidable. The surviving animals needed care while fields had to be planted. Workers needed jobs while villages were starving for food. Rebuilding was not a slogan; it was a list of exhausting tasks.

"I realise we have a lot of people who rely on working here and I have to make the process go on," he said.

What happened at Naporivske was not isolated from the rest of the world. When farms like Hryhorii's are destroyed, the consequences move far beyond one village. Milk deliveries stop, fields are left unsown, and food that should have fed people around the world never leaves the farm. In March 2022, as Russia's war disrupted agriculture and exports from the Black Sea region, global food prices reached record levels. Later, the UN-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative helped move nearly 33 million tonnes of grain and other foodstuffs from Ukrainian ports to 45 countries - a reminder that food systems far beyond Ukraine's borders depend on its farms.

Food security begins on individual farms. It depends not only on international agreements but, in the case of Ukraine, on several key factors. A farmer must be able to enter his land safely. The cow herd needs to survive. The grain dryer must still work. Workers should remain in the village. Roads and storage facilities need to function well. Finally, a family business must handle losses that could wipe out many enterprises.

The Naporivske farm has slowly returned to work. Its fields are being cultivated again. The farm has rebuilt part of its herd. The war also forced changes; the farm began moving into milk processing, including cheese production.

The farm may recover, but the scars of its destruction remain. Hryhorii keeps the reminders of what happened: ammunition used against the area, damaged equipment, and the memory of animals killed and buildings destroyed.

His story is not simply about resilience in the sentimental sense. It is about responsibility. He returned because there was work to do, because people depended on the farm, and because land cannot rebuild itself. The global consequences of the war may be measured in prices, exports and tonnes of grain. But they begin in places like Naporivske, where one farmer returned to dead cattle, mined fields and shattered machinery - and chose to start again.