The ordered rows of farmland in this southwest corner of Ukraine can feel like an anomaly in a country under attack.
Fields and pastures in other regions are pockmarked by shelling, with farmers unable to work their land.
Here, in countryside just west of the Black Sea port city of Odesa, trucks spraying insecticide move through planted crops in long, slow sweeps, the metal arms that carry the nozzles spread wide like a dragonfly’s wings.
Baby sunflower plants are already reaching skyward and fields of wheat are just starting to deepen in colour.
But with Ukraine’s major ports either under Russia’s control or
