Russia has blockaded and occupied all of Ukraine’s seaports meaning about 22m tonnes of produce is stuck Igor Shumeyko pointed to where a Russian rocket landed near his farmhouse Three more missiles fell on a neighbouring plot but didn’t explode “I was on my land when the invasion started But our guys are going to kick them out,” Shumeyko predicted the 42-year-old farmer acknowledged his industry is facing a heap of war-related problems The biggest is what to do with this season’s crop currently growing on his 1,000-hectare estate The wheat is due to be harvested in late June and July Next come sunflowers in August and September Shumeyko would load the grain on to a truck It would be transported 15 miles from his village of Velykyi Dalnyk to Odesa food products continued their journey by ship across the Black Sea Ukraine’s grain helped feed an estimated 400 million people Local farmer Igor Shumeyko says he is running low on fertiliser It has seized Mariupol and Berdiansk on the Sea of Azov allowing it to control shipping to and from the Dardanelles strait Ukraine can no longer export its agricultural produce Many farmers say they have no space to store this summer’s harvest Shumeyko says he is running low on fertiliser His last sacks of ammonium nitrate are stored next to his red tractor The UN World Food Programme has warned that millions of people will die if Ukraine’s ports remain blocked Vladimir Putin has offered to open up a sea corridor but only if the west lifts what he calls “politically motivated” sanctions Sanctions on Russia have no connection to the unfolding global food crisis and threat of hunger is the Russian military physically blocking 22 million tons of Ukrainian food exports in our seaports said he discussed the crisis with Boris Johnson as well as the related issue of military aid The Ministry of Defence points out that Ukraine has deployed maritime mines “because of the continued credible threat of amphibious Russian assaults from the Black Sea” It says Moscow is falsely trying to present itself as a “reasonable actor” it is leveraging global food security in order to advance its “political aims” and “to blame the west for any failure” Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 29 May 2022 Find out more about the UK government's response: https://t.co/uOVOzCZE8O🇺🇦 #StandWithUkraine 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/f1hL0W2AGs Ukraine’s former defence minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk said Russia would break any maritime deal to which it agreed He has suggested Turkey and the UK send vessels to enforce a waterways equivalent of a “no-fly zone” in the north-west Black Sea “We need to unblock it militarily,” he said “Ukraine is an agricultural superpower,” he added We are talking about hunger of huge proportions here.” Village mayor and farmer Denis Tkachenko wants the blockade lifted and believes Putin won’t attack English ships Photograph: Luke Harding/The GuardianOn Saturday met with other Odesa region mayors to discuss the blockade is unlikely to facilitate road shipments without the lifting of western sanctions Poland uses a different track gauge to Ukraine have twice fired cruise missiles at the bridge over the Dniester estuary in Zatoka closing off a vital land route to the south-west and Romania One small-scale solution is to take the grain to the Ukrainian port of Izmail on the Danube river But this is costly for farmers at a time when diesel prices are going up It was Ukraine’s main port,” Tkachenko said He described a tentative UK-Turkish plan to create a humanitarian sea corridor as “realistic” adding: “Putin won’t attack English ships.” His 100-hectare farm grows wheat irrigated by water taken from the Dniester through a network of Soviet-era canals The Ukrainian army has sealed off the port area There are sandbags and checkpoints in the city’s historic centre The Potemkin steps – made famous by the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein in his 1925 film Battleship Potemkin – are no longer accessible to the public The Potemkin steps in Odesa with the statue of Catherine the Great at the top Photograph: Loop Images/Universal Images Group/Getty ImagesRussia’s apparent plan to storm Odesa from the sea has not yet happened dog-walkers and kids on scooters go up and down Primorsky Boulevard Swifts screech in the sky; the air is heady with the scent of elderflower blossom; a Pushkin statue has the inscription “Odesa resident” Nearby was a rusting three-masted sailing ship The state-owned port and private tug company are the biggest employer in Odesa Their salaries contribute to the city’s budget “It’s very difficult to transfer last year’s harvest by road We need to lift the blockade,” Obukhov said He added: “Even if Putin died and the war stopped it would take half a year to ship the grain we already have.” The Russians have fired long range missiles at Odesa on several occasions But it has been spared the destruction meted out to other Russian-speaking Ukrainian cities including Mariupol and Kharkiv One explanation is the Kremlin thinks it enjoys some local support – a view not borne out by polling data and by non-scientific conversations conducted by the Guardian has dumped his previous Russian-friendly position and is now a Ukrainian patriot Moscow still plans to capture Odesa and to create a land corridor stretching to Transnistria a breakaway pro-Russian republic of Moldova The whole of Ukraine and Moldova as well,” Obukhov said Russian troops advancing from Crimea captured large chunks of southern Ukraine They include the agricultural heartlands in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions Kyiv says Moscow has stolen grain from local producers as well as farming equipment and agri-drones Satellite photos suggest thousand of tonnes have been loaded on to ships in Crimea and sold abroad Read moreThis theft has painful historical echoes about 4 million people died as a result of Stalin’s state-engineered famine in Ukraine Teams of Communist party enforcers went to villages and individual houses The famine – known as the Holodomor – had a political aspect It was designed to wipe out support for Ukrainian independence Shumeyko said he would sell his wheat and vegetables on the domestic market which involved spending time outdoors amid a blooming landscape of fields “A good harvest requires professionalism and protecting crops