War and the Disrupted Relationship with Land
The war in Ukraine has not only devastated cities and infrastructure — it has also torn apart people’s connection to land. Small farms, once the foundation of local food production and community resilience, now face mined fields, destroyed irrigation systems, and collapsing logistics networks.
Before 2022, small and family farms were responsible for a large share of Ukraine’s domestic food supply. Agriculture employed roughly 22 percent of the population, with millions more engaged informally. Today, hundreds of thousands of hectares are inaccessible. The cost of demining — up to 50,000 UAH per hectare — makes recovery unattainable for most households.
The consequences reach far beyond the countryside. Ukraine once provided up to 40 percent of the grain used in UN humanitarian food programs. The destruction of ports, silos, and transport routes has rippled through global markets, threatening food security from North Africa to the Middle East.
In this sense, food security must be recognized as a form of human security. The same financial systems that sustain the arms industry and fuel war later fund demining and reconstruction — while the people who grow food are left without the means to cultivate it.
Every missile that lands on fertile soil transforms life into wasteland. Investments in weapons lead to mined fields, poisoned ecosystems, and an economy where the most basic human right — the right to feed one’s family — becomes precarious.
Social and Gendered Dimensions of Rural Transformation
The war has deeply reshaped Ukraine’s rural demography. According to national and UN data, more than six million Ukrainians currently live abroad — the majority of them women with children. This large-scale migration has altered gender and labour structures both within Ukraine and across Europe.
Inside the country, rural communities face a marked shortage of men of working age. Many have been mobilized into the armed forces, some have been killed or wounded, and others avoid formal employment or visibility to escape conscription.
This demographic gap has created severe labour shortages in agriculture and placed additional burdens on women, older people, and internally displaced families.
Women in rural areas now carry overlapping responsibilities: maintaining small farms, providing care for children and the elderly, and sustaining household food production with minimal institutional support.
Their work sustains both local food systems and community life, yet it remains largely unacknowledged in national recovery strategies.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian women abroad continue to perform essential, low-paid care labour in European economies — cleaning, nursing, and caregiving — while sending remittances home. This transnational chain of care connects survival across borders but rarely features in policy frameworks. It demonstrates both the resilience of women’s everyday strategies and the invisibility of their contribution to global economies.
The Ecological Cost of Militarisation
The environmental damage of the war compounds decades of ecological degradation. Soil and water are contaminated with heavy metals, fuel residues, and unexploded ordnance. Forests and wetlands have been burned or destroyed, and biodiversity has declined sharply in frontline and liberated regions.
These processes reveal the deep contradiction of militarized recovery: vast sums are allocated first to arms production, then to demining, and only last — and insufficiently — to ecological restoration and sustainable livelihoods.
This pattern perpetuates dependence on industrial and military economies while undermining the foundations of human security — food, water, and care.
From War Economies to Peace Economies: A Feminist Perspective
A feminist peace framework challenges the current logic of international spending. Instead of reproducing cycles of destruction and repair, it calls for redistributing resources from militarization to the infrastructures of peace — food systems, ecological restoration, and social care.
Key recommendations for international actors:
- Reprioritize global budgets: Redirect funds from arms production toward agricultural recovery, land rehabilitation, and sustainable food systems.
- Integrate demining with livelihood recovery: Link technical clearance with agricultural restoration, irrigation repair, and local employment.
- Support women-led farming and cooperatives: Offer grants and microloans for women farmers in frontline and de-occupied areas.
- Recognize care work as central to recovery: Include both domestic and transnational care labour in reconstruction policies and donor frameworks.
- Ensure ecological and gender accountability: Embed gender-sensitive and environmental indicators in all post-war aid and investment programs.
Conclusion
The future of Ukraine’s recovery depends not only on the end of war but on how peace is financed.
If global resources continue to prioritize militarization, the same land that feeds the world will remain unsafe and uninhabitable.
A feminist understanding of peace begins with the soil — with the right to live, cultivate, and care. Redirecting investments from weapons to life is not only an ethical choice but the only sustainable path toward real security.
