Transnational Institute of Social Ecology

Collaboration and mutual aid in rural Ukraine during the war

Written by Natalia Mamonova. Excerpt from her piece Food sovereignty and solidarity initiatives in rural Ukraine during the war.

Wars and armed conflicts cause the destruction of rural infrastructure, the loss of livestock, the widespread use of land mines, and the population movements, which lead to long-term food security problems (Teodosijevic 2003). In such circumstances, the resilience of food systems is critical to the survival of affected communities. Studies on household resilience in the context of a food security crisis have demonstrated that localised food systems are more resilient and autonomous, as they do not depend on external resources and international trade (Béné 2020; Ansah, Gardebroek, and Ihle 2019). Local production, distribution and consumption are carried out through informal networks and involve reciprocity and mutual help, which increase the ability of households and communities to adapt and transform in the face of adverse events (Zerbian, Adams, and Wilson 2022).

Extreme instability – caused by war or military conflict – forces members of the community to make concessions to each other and share the responsibility, called social solidarity, in order to normalise chaotic situations and restore stability (Durkheim 1984). This may trigger button-up social actions that were not present in normal settings. In her study of self-organisation and food sovereignty in war-torn Syria, Jasim (2019) demonstrated how the conditions of war and ensuing food shortages force communities to work in drastically different ways, refocusing their efforts − beyond immediate survival − on the restoration of dignity, which entails taking control over communities’ food production and pursuing food sovereignty.

The ways, in which food producers and providers respond to major disruptions, may bring about the collective rethinking of existing relationships in agriculture and the questioning of the mainstream models of food provisioning, as demonstrated by Zerbian, Adams, and Wilson (2022) on the example of the Covid-19 pandemic. Food aid organisations and national governments have frequently been presented as supporting short-term strategies that concentrate on emergency patchwork and sacrificing long-term solutions. Meanwhile, grassroots solidarity initiatives within localised food systems are able to develop more sustainable structural solutions, which could challenge conventional food systems (Zerbian, Adams, and Wilson 2022).

Farming in a military context performs more functions than just meeting nutritional needs. It could be a ‘weapon of the weak’, as suggested by Wendler (2018) in her study of Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank. While for many Palestinians, farming is a coping strategy, for some it is a non-violent practice of resistance against the Israeli occupation. Wendler (2018) observed a group of farmers who pursued independent and self-sufficient farming, thereby, resisting the control of and dependency on Israel. Some of the farms are located in the hardest environments of the West Bank and function as a symbol of hope for Palestinians, demonstrating their visibility on the other side of the wall.

Farming, as a symbol of hope and a morale-boosting activity, was also practised by urban and suburban populations in several Western countries during World War I and World War II.[1] Then, governments encouraged people to plant the so-called ‘Victory Gardens’ not only to supplement peoples’ rations, but also to boost solidarity among the growers, and to help lower the price of vegetables needed to feed the army (Tung, Rose-Redwood, and Cloutier 2022). Similar initiatives emerge today in response to major crises (see Music et al. [2021] on the pandemic victory gardens).

While there is no universal response of rural communities to war and military destructions, nor are there universal forms of food sovereignty in such a context, the extreme instability accelerates grassroots solidarity initiatives and creates ‘openings for contestations’ (Tarrow 1998) that allow to challenge the current neoliberal agri-food model. These openings are currently used by food sovereignty movements to call for the transformation of neoliberal agriculture into a more sustainable and crisis-proof local farming model (La Via Campesina 2022).

Collaboration and mutual help

The war has sparked a massive wave of solidarity initiatives and collective action, of which the most common are informal initiatives.

Reciprocity, mutual assistance and good neighbourly relations help people cope with the hardships of war and grow, harvest, prepare and share their food. According to Anastasiya Volkova from the ‘Green Road’ initiative, the war has accelerated the processes of solidarity and mutual help within their network of eco-villages and beyond it. She described the processes in her village that helped overcome social divisions and led to the emergence of collective action:

In addition to internally displaced persons and refugees, many farmers and agribusinesses are fleeing the regions with active hostilities. The Ukrainian government has initiated a relocation programme for businesses. The most popular destinations are the Transcarpathia, Lviv and Chernivtsi regions. In the Lviv region alone, more than 300 locations are prepared to receive agricultural enterprises, and, by the end of May, 13 food producers from the Kyiv, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv, Kherson and Donetsk regions found a new home there (the Lviv Regional State Administration 2022).

However, many resettlement initiatives take place at a community level and are not initiated or supported by the government. According to Olena Borodina, private farmers and smallholders support and share their land with their fellows, who escaped the war. This support is informal and no money is asked for in return. Olena refers to the example of a young woman – a farmer from the Melitopol region, who found refuge in Transcarpathia. She received a small plot of land from local farmers to set up a rabbit farm there to be able to sustain herself. She will not return home until Melitopol is liberated.

There are also examples of smallholders gathering their animals in collective herds for various reasons: the destruction of their farms and related equipment, more efficient collective dairy production in wartime, evacuation of smallholders, or labour shortages. Marina Radchenko, the former head of the village council in Nalivaykovka, from where many smallholders were evacuated due to the occupation by the Russian army, describes their initiative: