Russian strikes leave Ukraine farmers with piles of unsold grain

More than four years ago, Ravil Dzhamally fled his farm in Ukraine’s Kherson region after it was overrun by invading Russian troops. When Moscow’s forces were driven back, he returned to clear his fields of mines and plant wheat, barley and sunflowers.

After investing his savings and borrowing from friends, the 38-year-old farmer barely broke even in 2025, his first season back. Still, he was encouraged by the prospects for a good harvest this year: the weather was favourable and his 800 hectares (1,977 acres) escaped the drone strikes that burnt some of his neighbours’ crops. But before Dzhamally could ship his produce, escalating Russian attacks on the key Black Sea port of Odesa cut exports to a trickle.

“When we started harvesting, the feeling was very positive,” Dzhamally said in a phone interview. “But now we’ve been brought back down to earth a bit.”

The strikes on the ports of Greater Odesa have been a body blow for the farming sector. They usually account for about 90% of Ukraine’s grain shipments, but flows have virtually halted just as harvests got into full swing. It’s also been a severe setback for the wider economy as agricultural shipments account for more than half the country’s export revenue.

Ukraine is one of the world’s leading exporters of grain, especially corn and wheat. The escalation in hostilities between Kyiv and Moscow in the Black Sea helped push wheat to a two-year high last month, and the disruptions to grain flows risk straining food supplies in some developing countries.

On Wednesday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had struck two dry cargo ships in the Black Sea, southeast of Odesa, a day earlier. Meanwhile, at least five grain ships have been attacked near the Russian Black Sea ports of Novorossiysk and Tuapse this week as Moscow struggles to continue exporting grain, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Farming is also a significant source of employment for the nation. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the sector employed more than 2 million people and contributed over 10% of economic output.

“Agriculture is the most important sector for Ukraine,” said Evghenia Sleptsova, senior economist at Oxford Economics. Its role grew during the war as the nation’s heavy industry was largely destroyed by Russian strikes, she added.

An estimate from Oxford Economics warns that the country could lose an equivalent of 1.8% of its GDP this year and 2.1% in 2027. “In the case of a prolonged severe disruption, Ukraine could lose an equivalent of 5.3% of GDP in 2027,” the report adds.

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Dzhamally and other Ukrainian farmers face an unenviable choice: hold onto their produce, or sell at a heavy loss into a depressed local market. With much of the sector dependent on harvest sales to fund day-to-day operations, the situation is rapidly becoming desperate.

For now, Dzhamally is sitting on tons of unsold grain, packed into 60-meter plastic sleeves laid across his fields. That could preserve his harvest until March, but Ukraine may exhaust its wider storage capacity by early November if export flows aren’t restored, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

The nation could lose up to $2.5 billion this year because of the export blockade, according to the Ukrainian central bank. That could trigger widespread farm bankruptcies, denting morale in the country’s rural heartlands.

Against the grain

“The situation is dismal,” said Oleksandr Havryliuk, who farms 3,000 hectares of land about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the front line of the war in the Kharkiv region.

Havryliuk doesn’t have enough cash to even transport his grain to storage facilities and fears that rain could destroy his harvest, leaving him in financial ruin.

The domestic grain market is effectively at a standstill. The few transactions taking place are at prices roughly a third of global rates, and well below what farmers say they need to cover production costs.

While Ukraine’s farmers have faced hardships before, they say this year’s crisis is significantly worse than the one that followed the full-scale invasion in 2022, when Russia’s military last blocked Ukraine’s grain exports through the Black Sea. The financial reserves that cushioned them through six months of disruptions then are now depleted.

Russian Shahed-type drones attack the area near the port of Odesa, Jan 2026.

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Havryliuk is still repaying loans he took out in 2021 to buy farming equipment, much of which has since been destroyed by Russian air strikes. Local banks have refused to restructure his debt, while insurers told him the war damage was not covered by his policy, he said.

Unable to sell his grain, he will try to borrow more to stay afloat. Losing his current harvest would probably mean bankruptcy, forcing him to sell the farm.

As Ukrainian farmers sit on unsold grain, another crunch is approaching, with more funds required for the fall planting season. Without financial support, some say they may have to delay planting, reduce the area they sow or shift toward crops that can be planted later.

Dzhamally will sell some grain at a loss to cover outstanding rent and the salaries of his farm workers. But by the fall, he will have to borrow more to sow next season’s crops.

Piles of barley after five Russian missiles struck a grain storage facility in the village of Pavlivka, Odesa region, 2023.

No way out

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine has approved subsidised loans for agricultural producers and plans further measures to increase storage capacity. Kyiv has requested a €220 million grant from the European Union to fund the measures.

The government is also trying to find alternative export routes, but rail corridors to the west have limited capacity, while low water levels are curbing traffic through Danube river ports. Those options are also more expensive than shipping through the Black Sea.

In 2022, overland routes through Eastern Europe offered a safety valve for the farming sector, but sympathy for Ukraine has dwindled in recent years, with Polish farmers periodically blockading Ukraine’s grain exports at border crossings.

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The upshot of the disruptions, particularly the bombing of Odesa, is stark. Wheat shipments could fall to 8.3 million tons in the 2026-27 season, from an earlier estimate of 17.6 million tons, according to the Agriculture Ministry.

Overall, the country would be able to export only about 30 million tons of agricultural goods this season even if it uses every alternative route, leaving the same amount in storage or rotting in fields, Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi said.

“We are heavily dependent on ports,” said Pavlo Martyshev, agricultural economist at Kyiv School of Economics, warning that a prolonged blockade would have wider repercussions. “There will be inflation, and GDP growth will slow down.” The impact can only be partly cushioned by foreign aid, according to him.

Government support and international aid will not replace lost export revenues, Martyshev said, but could help most farmers weather the blockade of Black Sea ports to a degree. The dispersed nature of farming has been an advantage during the war, making it far harder to disrupt production with drones and rockets, he added.

Still, drone strikes on his neighbourhood in Kherson forced Dzhamally to move to nearby Mykolaiv and commute daily to his farm. On weekends, Dzhamally sometimes gets to see his two daughters, who moved to Odesa at the outbreak of the war. Despite the difficulties, only a significant escalation in the fighting could keep him from his fields.

“This is my child, which I created from scratch again,” Dzhamally said. “You need to treat it like a person, and take care of it, hoping that it will grow up and then take care of you.”

© 2026 Bloomberg

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