Ukraine’s frontline farmers face Russian rockets and rock-bottom prices

Less than 30 km (19 miles) from Ukraine's southeastern front line, rural farmers whose businesses have survived Russian rockets now fear another hammer blow to their livelihoods: rock-bottom prices for their harvest. The price which Ukrainian farmers receive from traders for their produce plunged to painful lows in July, when Moscow abandoned a UN-brokered deal that allowed agricultural exports from Ukraine to be safely shipped via the Black Sea. With that route now closed, farmers all over Ukraine, one of the world's largest growers of wheat and sunflowers, face a losing battle to get their produce out through land and river, routes that can only take a fraction of normal export volumes.