FROM WHERE I STAND….. the flat lands of western Ukraine stretch out before me. And to Ukrainians this farmland matters.
It matters a lot. Seven million fellow countrymen starved to death when Stalin sought social change in 1933, so the land’s productive ability is very close to the hearts of Ukrainian folk.
Golden wheat fields beneath an azure blue sky comprise the national flag[. They reflect this young nation’s status as bread-basket of Europe and the Soviet Union in recent decades.
So protecting the national land asset is a priority, no matter how the western media tries to portray Ukraine as a cesspool of industrial pollution.
I saw no such thing. No doubt industry happens, as in the UK, and no doubt it isn’t quite up to scratch. But an hour of flying over western Ukraine revealed a landscape no different to East Anglia – flat, occasionally rolling, fields of wheat, barley, rape and oats, between green woods, rows of trees, streams and lakes.
What’s more government officials police pesticide use and finance the conversion of abandoned farmland back into productivity.
The Kiev stock market is rising, sucking in investment for infrastructure at a striking rate. Make no mistake, Ukraine is a sleeping grain giant, easily capable of putting wheat on a ship for £45/t, all costs covered. It is a giant that is only just awakening.
* Watch out for more from Ukraine in Farmers Weekly magazine on Friday 20 July - and on fwi at www.fwi.co.uk/ukraine.