Ukraine’s agriculture is diverse and so is the equipment on Ukrainian farms.
Near my town, a German-made NEXAT transformer unit is working in the fields and is one of few in the world. It’s a massive all-in-one machine that handles every step in crop production: spring cultivation, seeding, crop protection and harvesting.
While this is the cutting edge, you’ll also find many farms with equipment familiar to Canadian farmers: powerful tractors and combines, super-technological 24-row planters, beautiful self-propelled sprayers and many other pieces of modern agricultural machinery.
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But nearby, in the machine yard of the farm, there are old, rusted agricultural machines, some of which probably saw the Caribbean Crisis, as we call the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Thrifty
Ukrainian peasants are very reluctant to get rid of old things. Based on habits inherited from distant ancestors, they believe these items can still be useful.
I personally have such a habit hidden deep inside, and without understanding why, I carefully keep at home giant chains for cattle, antlers for putting pots in the oven, rockers for buckets, and even a flail with which my ancestors threshed grain.
Farmers who cultivate relatively small areas of land by Ukrainian standards still use old tractors and combines, not to mention plows and cultivators. When you see such veterans in the field or on the road, you generally wonder how such equipment can be started and driven somewhere. But people work, not wanting to spend money on new agricultural machines.
The equipment arsenal kept by farmers who cultivate small acreages is extremely varied. They have small hand-held tillers to which trailers are attached, or bought or even homemade tiny tractors. Sometimes you even see a small field being plowed with the help of horses.
Similarly, we still have horse-drawn carts, although this is rare. In my town, there seems to be only one horse left. My friend keeps him at home as a pet. In his youth, he worked at a stable and retained his love for horses throughout his life.
Limping along
The villagers repair this old agricultural machinery on their own and look for spare parts from old stocks. Thanks to this, we still have many people who can fix tractors, trucks, motorcycles, and anything else.
In addition, hundreds and thousands of small repair enterprises operate throughout Ukraine, mostly on farms. Some of them can repair machinery and also create new designs: harrows, cultivators, liquid fertilizer barrels and trailers.
It might seem like a primitive thing tied to the past, but in 2014, when Crimea was invaded by Russia, it showed that such a network was valuable and needed.
At the time, Ukraine had thousands of units of military equipment, but most of it was in storage and in bad condition. Military trucks, tractors and infantry fighting vehicles all needed repair and farmers helped restore them. No one forced them to do this, and farmers repaired military vehicles with their own money, and also provided their own machinery – trucks, excavators, even tractors.
The start of a full-scale war in 2022 raised new challenges for Ukrainian society. The larger war revealed unexpected moments.
On the one hand, we urgently need high-precision weapons – anti-aircraft defence, long-range missiles, modern tanks, airplanes and helicopters. This allows us to effectively destroy the enemy, minimizing the loss of soldiers.
But on the other hand, war is not a movie in which your army wins beautifully. It is constant exhausting work, it is fatigue, it is blood and sweat, and also countless small stories.
Basic needs
You need to bring food, ammunition and various equipment to the soldiers. You need to evacuate the wounded from the battlefield, transport fuel, transport soldiers closer to the front line; also, transport goods across the country, build fortifications, demine fields and roads – many, many things.
The success of the country’s defence against the enemy largely depends on how successfully we deal with these logistical and economic challenges. And so depends our lives and the lives of those we care for.
That is why apparently every Ukrainian voluntarily gave money to buy cars for the army – jeeps, trucks, minibuses, and various engineering equipment. This is the lifeblood of the country’s defence system.
Over the past 20 months, hundreds of thousands of vehicles have passed through the crucible of war. A significant number of them have then turned into scrap metal, having fulfilled their main mission to help save human lives.
It is difficult to imagine from which hiding places Ukrainian volunteers pull these vehicles from all over Europe. Most often, they are old SUVs that need repair. They can be purchased for a few dollars, then repaired and sent to the front.
The life of such cars can vary widely. Sometimes it literally takes two or three hours, because the car can immediately come under fire or hit a mine and be destroyed.
Then there’s the kind of work the vehicles do, mostly near the front line. Military, unofficial volunteers, medics, they all drive through mud and over hills, often at breakneck speed because even a moment’s delay can cost lives. Having a reliable Jeep can frequently be more important than even a tank.
Deep support
Every time I talk to another Ukrainian farmer, when I ask how they are supporting the army, they say they have transferred several trucks from their company to our defenders. This is a sign of good morale and Ukrainian farmers consider it their duty.
But most of them are not limited to this and they actively look for and then buy cars abroad: pickup trucks, Jeeps, minibuses, trucks, everything that can drive in extreme conditions.
In addition, some farmers independently make small buggies for the military using spare parts from old cars. These designs can be quite interesting, but so far, there are few.
Sometimes cars that have been in the war drive into our relatively peaceful town. They have a shocking appearance, riddled with shell fragments and bearing holes from automatic bullets. They can be so dirty that it is not clear what colour they are. But external beauty is not the main thing for them. These are cars that save human life.
Internal sources
In the 1990s, mass production of domestic vehicles neared extinction in Ukraine, a loss we are feeling deeply now. Our factories produced simple cars and trucks that were not distinguished by reliability, but they were cheap and easy to repair.
As the experience of war has shown, we could really use several tens of thousands of domestically produced mini SUVs and any trucks that could meet the needs of the army. It is better than looking for old cars of different models from all over the world.
I can say the same about national production of agricultural machinery. Although our farmers are already used to using the machinery of the best global brands, it is very good that Ukraine produces its own planters, cultivators, sprayers and other agricultural machinery. During the war, this makes it possible to buy and repair machines for work in the field.
Globalization may work in times of peace, but during times of war, a country wants the factories that produce those things necessary for function and defence: trucks, tanks and agricultural machinery.
