Front Line Farming: Bombs Disrupt Critical Ukraine Industry
CISR
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(AP) An unexploded rocket sticks out of a field, and another is embedded in the ground of the farm compound. Workers found a cluster bomb while clearing weeds, and there’s a gaping hole in the roof of the shrapnel-scarred livestock barn.
All work has halted on this large eastern Ukrainian farm, whose fields and buildings have been hit so many times by mortars, rockets, missiles and cluster bombs that its workers are unable to sow the crater-dotted land or harvest crops like wheat.
Returning to planting and harvesting “will be difficult, very difficult,” said Viktor Lubinets, who handles crop production at the Veres farm. Even if the fighting ends, the fields must first be cleared of unexploded ordnance and shrapnel.