These Ukrainian Women Farmers Fight to Keep World Fed

Published in partnership with The Fuller Project, a global nonprofit newsroom dedicated to groundbreaking reporting on women

It’s a late July morning, high summer in southern Ukraine, and Nadiia Ivanova’s farm blooms with waist-high sunflowers, golden stalks of flax and bushes of cilantro. The earthy smell of freshly harvested wheat lingers in the air.

Ivanova is doing her rounds of the sprawling farm, inspecting bags of mustard seeds, ensuring her dried peas are getting enough air and checking on the barley. The 42-year-old has known this land since she was a child, when her father was the manager, and she has a commanding presence when speaking with her workers.

Usually at this time of year, Ivanova is busy organizing transport of wheat—the farm’s main export— to nearby ports on the Black Sea, where it will make its way to shops and bakeries around the world. But months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war has brought Ukraine’s ports to a near standstill, exacerbating an already growing global food crisis.