The western tip of Crimea. Monumental road signs and steles bearing the names of state farms remind us that the peninsula was once an important agricultural region. Now the collective and state farms have long disintegrated and only the ruins of cowsheds, the parking of abandoned equipment at the site of the machine and tractor stations (MTS), and the aforementioned road signs remind of their existence.
Our trip to the abandoned places of Crimea did not ignore several cemeteries of agricultural machinery – parking lots of rusty, abandoned machinery, and this time I want to show you one of these places in the vicinity of the former state sovkhoz Kirovsky.
Abandoned farm machinery stands in an open field. There is no fence, no prohibiting signs, but the cars do not represent any special value in this state. The state of technology is best described by the word scrap metal. The technique is old, still Soviet, and in recent years the agro-industrial sector in Crimea has been almost completely updated, and such rarities are practically not used. Technique rusting in the steppe is a legacy of bygone times.
On the other hand, this does not negate the fact that after the collapse of the USSR, only a few collective and state farms were able to stay afloat and such parking lots with abandoned farm machinery reflect not only the events of the past seven years.
The fact is that after 2014, the North Crimean Canal, which provided over 70% of the peninsula’s water needs, was closed. 135 thousand hectares of land in need of irrigation began to experience an acute shortage of water and part of the sown area had to be abandoned.
The inside of the trucks and farm machinery looks even worse than the outside.
It was in the arid regions of Crimea that I came across old, abandoned equipment most of all. This is because the transition to new farm machines here happened earlier since the old Soviet technology in the changed conditions could no longer provide the required performance.
If you look into the cabins of the combines, it becomes obvious that there is zero sense from them – the equipment is completely disassembled and only the frame remains of it.
The skeletons of rusty farm machinery and the “pieces of iron” scattered across the field really resemble the bones of antediluvian metal animals. A textured place, perfect for photoshoots in the post-apocalyptic style, if you wait for more suitable weather, of course.
From the air, the site with the abandoned farm machinery looks very tiny.
But from above, the bad state of trucks and combines is even more obvious.
The photos were taken by the Nordskif & Co. They are photographers and explorers. The Nordskif & Co has been documenting urban decay, industrial abandonments, and rural decomposition since 2010.
