Turf farming during wartime

This is a family business with an arable area of more than 500 hectares. We grow wheat, sunflower, canola, some corn here. 80 ha of irrigated land were used to produce turfgrass. I started growing turf in 2010, steadily increasing my experience and sales volumes. In peacetime, the total turf roll market in Ukraine was around 300 ha, involving up to 15 companies in different regions. The average turf cost is 2 $/m2. The common mixes are cool season (raygrass , Kentucky bluegrass and red fescue) grasses. I grow Kentucky bluegrass from Jacklin Seeds, I like it’s performance and appearance. Some small volume of tall fescue turf is also produced in the south devision. The technique I use is quite common for the turf production, Kesmac 2 x 2200 harvesters, robomax, big roll harvester, set of mowers & care, big tracks to deliver the sod, 6x Lindsay central pivots.

When a friend called me on 24.02.2022 at 5 a.m. and said that the war had begun, the first thoughts were to get to Kiev (to the north) where my house is and my wife and 2 young daughters were staying . It’s good that the car was fully refueled because all the fuel was instantly sold out at the gas stations and they closed. I had to drive only 300 km, but in the morning the military warehouse with shells near my route was bombed, and I had to take a big deviation. At the entrance to Kiev, I have never seen so many cars leaving it, a huge traffic jam stretched for 50 km in 5 rows. The Russians rushed to Kiev from 3 directions from the north, east and west, and only the road to the south was the safest one to go. It is still unclear what happened in the first days of the war, when Russian troops had no resistance and occupied territories comparable to a small European country. It is obvious that there was a betrayal of the country in the top of leadership. This topic has not been publically discussed until now, and there are definitely reasons why the current leadership of the country does not talk about it. Only thanks to the patriotism of the Ukrainian people who went to defend their land en masse stopped the occupiers, and with time and with the support of Western countries returned part of the lost territories.

For a while I forgot about business, helped with housing for immigrants from other areas. And providing all possible assistance to the military. We immediately handed over 2 companies trucks, later several pickup trucks, bulletproof vests, helmets, sights, thermal imagers. Military aviation pilots asked for modern electronic navigation aids. They were needed for transport aircract that usually fly quite high, but now they had to fly at an altitude of 10-40 yards, at the risk of hitting obstacles like a tower, or power lines. And thanks to private pilots from England, it was possible to get navigator implements with accurate and uptodate obstacle databases.

Our sales in year 2022 felt more than 2 times. The work of the farm in the south, which we put high hopes before the war, had to be stopped and about 15 hectares of lawn were ploughed under. For the first six months we experienced a large shortage of diesel fuel, the gas stations sold no more than 10 liters, despite the fact that a huge queue had to wait. Thank God we had several tons of diesel in stock on our farm before the war, which made it possible to carry out the necessary field work.

Last autumn, Russia launched missile strikes on Ukrainian power plants, one of them is located near our farm. I watched it being bombed myself. The problem is that not only electricity, but also hot water for heating is lost, and for some time without being powered the Internet and mobile communication also was gone.

Now, after a year and a half, lawn sales are gradually recovering. The irrigatable fields where the turf was grown were then sown with other crops. However, grain prices have also fallen at times, I plan to switch to technical crops as sugar beet and possibly vegetables in the south.

I hope the brave people of Ukraine will survive and elect a worthy future without being fooled by the oligarchs who monopolized TV. In any case, we have a long diffcult way ahead of us. We believe in victory!