Ukraine War Q&A Series: Why Worry About Ukraine’s Agriculture Exports?

The fourth question of the Q&A series is…why am I so worried about agriculture exports coming out of Ukraine?

Ukraine’s preferred route for its bulk wheat and maize exports has always been water—specifically via the Black Sea. Now you’re probably thinking, “Even with seaborne export routes being blocked by Russia, can’t Ukraine just send stuff by rail to neighboring countries?” Theoretically, yes, but there are a few problems.

There are two sizeable hurdles to overland transit. The first is limited rail capacity and differing infrastructure. Ukraine’s Soviet past means its rail lines are of a different gauge than most of Europe, forcing it to rely on aging legacy connectivity in Romania and Poland. And now there is a new issue on the horizon. As Ukraine started dumping more and more grain into its neighboring EU countries, the local economies took a hit. Resulting in many of these countries refusing Ukrainian grain in support of their local farmers. It can still pass through, but it can’t stop there.

As Ukraine’s exports now need to go further, new infrastructure is required, and profits will get even lower. There isn’t a quick fix for this. To add insult to injury, Russia will soon target Ukrainian agricultural infrastructure. Meaning last year was likely the last time Ukraine would be a significant producer of foodstuffs for the world.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TRANSCIPT

And why do I care so much about agricultural shipments? I mean, Ukraine only has one water frontage. It’s got Poland through the northwest and Romania to the southwest. Why can’t it ship stuff by land? Well, agricultural products really doesn’t matter what it is, have a very high weight and bulk to value ratio. So transport really is important from a cost point of view. And on average, as you know for me, blah, blah, blah, blahing forever, it costs about 12 times as much to ship anything by truck as it does by water. And so Odessa and Kherson are the big blue water ports in the area, it’s always been easier in the Russian and Ukrainian spaces to get the stuff on water wherever you can and send it out. In this case, there’s another problem.

There are rail connections that go into the countries to Ukraine’s west, and some grain has gone there. But two problems, number one, there’s not nearly enough of them and capacity is limited. So you’re talking about maybe one fifth of Ukraine’s pre-war grain could have made it out through the western zones by rail. But problem number two, the rail gauge is different. So once these carriages get to the border, they either need to be on a special kind of carriage where you can adjust the rail gauge car by car at the border, or you need to switch the cargo to a new carriage in order to go into Europe. And I guess there’s a third problem, too. What has happened for the first years in order to maximize that 20%, they’d be going in Romania or Poland or Hungary, and then they dump their cargo and then the railcars would come back empty to get loaded up again. That is what allows Ukraine to hit that 20% number. The problem is Romania and Hungary and especially Poland are all grain producers and exporters and all this Ukrainian grain getting dumped on the local market was pushing down the cost of local grain and forcing the Poles, the Hungarians, Romanians, to then increase their shipments out. Well, that meant they had to pay the transport costs now as well, and it was starting to drive some local farmers out of business. So what we’ve seen in the last three months is most governments on the entire swath of European countries that border or near Ukraine have stopped accepting Ukrainian cargo as an end destination. You can still trans ship to get it through, can still get to a port, no problem. But that means that the carriages that used to be able to do short back and forth now has to go all the way through these countries to get to another country or to get to the coast. And then it takes up port space. And so that’s taking that 20% and probably cut it at least by a third, maybe as much as half. And the only solution to this that isn’t waterborne is to lay twice as many tracks or get a lot more rail cars. That’s not something you do in a few months. And so we are now looking at an environment where maybe 10% of Ukraine’s grain can get out this year. And once the Russians actually start going after the infrastructure, especially in places like Odessa, those venues close off completely.

So last year was probably the last year that Ukraine is going to be a significant producer of foodstuffs for the world. Next question.

Sooner or Later: Oklahoma’s Time to Shine

That pan-shaped state above Texas offers much more than just tornados and sports. The Sooner State has done most of the heavy lifting in establishing itself as an agricultural, precision manufacturing, and energy state. All that to say, Oklahoma is not only a leader in the US but globally as well.

Oklahoma is like Texas’ little brother…they do a lot of the same things, but trying to compete with the big dog is pointless. However, that doesn’t mean Oklahoma cannot progress along the value-added chain in preparation for the collapse of globalization.

Oklahoma already has a robust refining industry. It wouldn’t take much to start producing the plastics, housewares, and synthetic rubbers that could face supply chain issues in the coming years. They have all the raw goods; they just need to build out the last step…and some better rail lines wouldn’t hurt either.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Oklahoma where the winds are strong and the gasoline is so cheap. Anywho, as I’ve been traveling around the country for work, I’ve been doing little bits like this on where I see these various parts of the country go in and what they need to do to do better and what their strengths and weaknesses are. In the case of Oklahoma, they already have most of the hard work done. This is an agricultural state. This is a precision manufacturing state. And this is an energy state. So a lot of the sectors in which the United States already excels, Oklahoma is a leader not just within the United States, but globally. But there are some opportunities they could take advantage of if they do a little bit more.

So one of the problems that Oklahoma faces is it’s right next door to those damn Texans. And anything that Oklahoma attempts to do, Texas can do at scale with a larger population and better transport modes to the rest of the world. So the best way for Oklahoma to compete is to not. They will never be able to outcompete Texas on the things that Texas does well, however they can feed the beast. So we’ll come back to that in just a second. The whole issue is to move up the value added supply chain. Second, a lot of the processing that happens in raw commodities around the world doesn’t happen in the United States. I mean, we’re the world’s largest refinery. So I probably phrased that wrong. But in terms of our exports, we export a lot of raw commodities, most notably foods and energy. But a lot of this stuff is then taken by other countries with China at the top of the list and then processed locally. And the world we’re moving into, a lot of that is going to break down any sort of security complications in, say, the Indian Ocean or the East China Seas. And you’re going to see the Chinese lose the ability to access that stuff in volume. And that’s going to generate a lot of volatility across the entire commodities space, which means that a lot of that capacity is going to become stranded. And if you’re in a place like Oklahoma that exports a lot of the raw product, you’re not going to have enough people in the outside world to process it anymore. So you might as well do it yourself.

Now, Oklahoma already has a very robust and advanced refining industry, but you can take things a step beyond that. You can not just produce the methanol, you can start producing the plastics. You can produce some of the housewares that come from this sector. You can produce synthetic rubbers. These are all things that exist in terms of the raw form in the Oklahoma system, but they need that next step in order to get value out and go into manufacturing proper.

Oklahoma is also a significant producer of wind power with some great resources, and every fistful of electrons that Oklahoma generates for its own domestic electricity system frees up a handful of molecules for export or use in other projects. Now, Oklahoma has always been a little obsessed with getting into manufacturing and never going to try to talk them out of that.

But they have a problem both in terms of the add on processing and the add on manufacturing when it comes to transport. This is a state that has a robust pipeline infrastructure, most of which goes into Texas, but it doesn’t have good other transport options. And a lot of these products that Oklahoma probably will be very good at in the not too distant future are large and bulky. And right now everything has to be shipped by truck. A better rail system, particularly with an intermodal somewhere in the Oklahoma City, Tulsa area, would be a really good idea because it would then provide the transportation backbone for companies to have confidence to expand into these areas at scale. The alternative is to just keep shipping raw commodities down to Texas and watch the Texans take up this entire product sector.

So from my point of view, all you have to do is build some rail lines. That’s a really easy carry. And Oklahoma’s future, even without that, looks pretty good…with that, it should be fantastic. 

Alright. That’s it for me. Take care.

Russia Targets the Ukraine Grain Deal

The changing situation with the Ukraine Grain Deal has given me plenty to ponder while tromping through Fjordland in New Zealand. Due to the war, Ukrainian agricultural exports were reduced to a fraction of their pre-war numbers. The grain deal brokered by the UN was a glimmer of hope that perhaps exports wouldn’t entirely fall off the map…

With winter on the way out and summer just around the corner, the Russians are revaluating their strategy. Targeting power infrastructure may have worked during the winter, but it doesn’t make much sense for the warmer months…it appears the new target will likely be Ukrainian agriculture.

We’ve already seen the Russians change the renegotiation period of the grain deal from 120 days to 60 days, and I wouldn’t be surprised if March is the last time the Russians resign. So Ukrainian exports might fall off very soon, but can the rest of the world’s (already struggling) agriculture industry pick up the slack?

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from Ruby Baby in Fjordland in New Zealand. The big news that I’ve noticed is that the Russians are throwing a bit of a fit about the grain deal they have with the Ukrainians. Now Ukraine until very recently was one of the world’s five biggest agricultural exporters for wheat, number four in corn, number one in sunflower you know all important things that help prevent a lot of countries from starving to death. Well, the problem is that most of the stuff that comes out of Ukraine is shipped by water. It’s far easier to ship things by water than it is by land. In terms of rail versus water, about a 3 to 1 cost difference. And Ukraine is perfectly set up for that because they’ve got the Dnieper River that cuts right south to north through the middle of the country. And so everything just gets on a barge, goes out, eventually hits the sea cities Kherson and Odessa, then are put on the big altars and then taken out through the Black Sea, the Turkish Straits and the rest of the world. What has happened, however, is with the Russians first capturing Kherson and then putting Odessa under assault, this is all been disrupted. So the only way to move things out of Ukraine at present is by rail. And not only does Ukraine not have a well-developed rail system. It doesn’t use the same gauge as the European ports. So it’s been very, very difficult, to get much out. Really less than about one out of six vehicles that they used to ship, they can ship now.

Now, the Turks in league with the United Nations have convinced the Russians to sign on to a grain deal. And this grain deal allows ships to come into Odessa, get searched by the Russians on the way in to make sure they’re not carrying weapons and then load up with grain and they get searched on the way out to make sure that they’re not carrying anything that the Russians don’t want to get out. This has increased the volume to about 20 to 25% of the volume that the Ukrainians could do before the war. So still not great.

Now, if you’ve been following the war, you know that throughout the winter the Russians have been bombing the power grid with drones and missiles to try to kill as many Ukrainians as possible. They’ve been doing this in the winter, thinking that if you can freeze the country to death, many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people will be injured or killed. And that might weaken the war effort. Once we get to summer that’s going to change. So what the Russians are facing here is the grain deal is normally renegotiated every 120 days they are  now insisting they only want a 60 day renewal. Well, if you fast forward from late March, 60 days, we’re getting into the beginning of summer. In the beginning of summer, the Russians won’t have a vested interest in destroying the power grid because no one’s going to freeze to death. So they’re going to go after the agricultural system, everything from fertilizer on the front end to the silos and the rail stations on the back end to try to kill as many people as possible that way.

So last year was probably the last year that Ukraine will be a significant agricultural exporter at all, and we should not expect to see the Green Deal renewed come late May. That’s just the situation we’re at. And if you throw in the problems with natural gas and nitrogen processing in Europe hitting the fertilizer market, the problems getting potash out of Belarus hitting the fertilizer market, the problems getting phosphate out of China, hitting the fertilizer market later this year is going to be really raw for a lot of places. Aright. That’s it for me. I’ll see you guys at the next spot. Take care.

Agricultural Disruptions in Argentina and Ukraine

Despite some food scares coming out of the former Soviet space, Mother Nature helped 2022 crop production look pretty solid in most of the great agriculture basins of the world. However, this could be the world’s last food-secure year for quite a while.

As Argentina transitions from summer to the harvest season, we’re getting our first glimpse at the yields…and it’s not looking promising. Between floods, droughts, pestilence, and a dash of government incompetence, it’s shaping up to be the worst year on record for Argentinian corn, soy, and wheat.

We’re not off to an auspicious start, but Argentina’s shortages were weather-induced…we haven’t even seen the impacts of fertilizer shortages yet. Additionally, the Ukrainians face a completely different set of disruptions to their agricultural industry.

As Ukraine transitions out of winter, the Russians will likely shift their strategy from targeting power infrastructure to the agricultural system. I expect Ukrainian corn, soy, wheat, and seed oil exports to drop significantly in the coming year. With the agriculture disruptions in Argentina and Ukraine, this is only the beginning of worldwide food insecurity.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Still Peter, still Colorado, still snowy, still foggy. Yesterday we talked about the African swine fever problem in China and how it’s turning into an issue for fertilizer. I want to talk now about the weather. We’ve got a number of major agricultural basins in the world. And last year, for most of them, greater Midwest, the Brazil and Argentina systems. South Africa. Australia. New Zealand. The Eurasian Wheat Belt and Northern Europe. We had a pretty good year, pretty much everywhere and even in secondary markets that aren’t export oriented, like India and China, things were pretty good. That helped us a great deal, despite the fact that we were having a lot of scares and supplies coming out of the former Soviet space. But there’s two issues that we have already seen are going to be boiling up. The first one involves Argentina. 

Now, as a southern hemispheric country,they’re exiting summer and going into harvest right now. And between floods and droughts and pestilence and basically all the horsemen playing a role here and a general dollop of government incompetence. It’s shaping up to be one of the worst records for corn, soy and wheat that we have seen in years with on average, about a 30% reduction in the foodstuffs. Now 30%, that is a weather induced reduction, not a fertilizer induced reduction. So it could have been a lot worse. But we’re already seen at the beginning of the 2023 harvest season that we’re getting off to a really bad start. Australia so far looks (mehhhh) and then of course India is harvesting things all the time. Now in the northern hemisphere we don’t get our first crops in for a couple more months and harvest will continue throughout the late spring for things like winter wheat and going into the summer and into the fall. So we have a lot of potential crops ahead of us, but to kind of kick off with Argentina, which is traditionally in the big six for wheat exports and typically in the big three for soy exports, this is not a particularly auspicious start.

The next major disruption I expect to see will be in Ukraine. Now, we’ve all been seen through the winter that the Ukrainians have been suffering missile and drone attacks from the Russians who are trying to take out the power system, working from the theory that if you can knock out the electricity across Ukraine in the winter, you’re going to kill as many Ukrainians as possible and damage the morale of the war effort in general. Because if you find out that your wife and kids back in Kyiv don’t have power, it’s really hard to stay on the front. You feel like you should go and do something. Well, as we get into May and especially June, when it becomes apparent that knocking out the power doesn’t make anyone freeze to death anymore, the Russians are going to switch targets to go after the agricultural system, especially fertilizer plants, grain silos, grain transshipment locations and rail centers, ports and the rest. Already we’re seeing the Russians backing away from a United Nations brokered deal that allows grain and corn and wheat and sunflower to get out of the system. Basically, ships can come in, the Russians will search them on the way to make sure that they’re not carrying weapons. The Ukrainians will load them up with whatever foodstuffs they can export and then they’ll be inspected by the Russians again on the way out. It used to be that this deal was being renegotiated every 120, 250 days, and the Russians want to shrink it down to 60 days, meaning that if this is renegotiated in March, it’s probably the last time it’s going to be renegotiated, because the Russian goal here is to wipe out as many of Ukrainians as possible to make sure that they can’t fight. And that means taking the war to the civilian population. Electricity doesn’t work in the summer. So you go after the food supplies, which means that calendar year 2022 was probably the final year that Ukraine will be a significant agricultural exporter. Pre-War, roughly 85 in some cases, 90% of their ag products were shipped out by water, with the rest going by rail. The problem is that the rail system in Ukraine doesn’t interface well with the rail system in Europe because they use different gauges and you can only replace that an upgrade it over the course of years and it’s really hard to do when bombs are raining down. So we’re going to get little trickles that go out of western Ukraine that can take advantage of the rail. And that’s about it. And that’s, of course, assuming that the Russians don’t achieve a breakthrough once they throw an extra 400,000 men into the fight come June.

So we know we’ve already had a bad Argentina harvest and we know that the Ukrainians are probably going to fall off the map in terms of food supply. And honestly, that’s just the beginning. More on this in later issues.

Where In The World: Fernandez Lake and Cotton

Every agricultural, industrial and energy commodity has its own story as regards its geography of production, supply chains and use. I try to get to as many of them as possible in the new book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Change one thing about the global system and the way we source and use each product evolves. Rice is ridiculously vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns. Work from home (or stop working from home) and oil markets lose their minds. 

But the commodity I’ve always personally found the most fascinating is the saga of cotton. There is far more to cotton than “merely” being the “fabric of our lives”.

Cotton was the original industrial commodity, putting it at the heart of everything from urbanization to mercantilism to the women’s rights movement. Everything about cotton sits at the intersection of human rights, trade wars, climate change, technology, and economic development patterns. Cotton’s story is nowhere near over. In fact, its near-term future will be among the most storied…stories of the deglobalization era.

NB: The following video is one I recorded while on my annual backpacking trip in August; please excuse any potential anachronisms. I did not mention India as a cotton producer because they’re bit of a separate case from the rest of the world’s main producers, despite their size. Monsoon rather than river or aquifer irrigation is the norm, and they have a host of production challenges (and low production yields) and processing limitations that set them apart not just from China, but smaller countries like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Turkey as well.

We have never and will never charge for our newsletters or videos, but we do have an ask. If you enjoy our products, we ask you consider supporting MedShare by clicking one of the links below. MedShare is an established non-profit organization that helps respond to medical need globally, including to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

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Global Agriculture at the End of the World

Few industries are going to see as much upheaval in coming years as global agriculture. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, the volatility of global fertilizer and fuel markets, shipping and transport challenges and more are complicating every step of the process from planting crops to the delivery of food to grocery stores and ultimately our plates. To say nothing of inflation. While the outlook for global food supply remains bleak, there are a few bright spots. Namely, the United States.

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Sharing Food at the End of the World

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

COVID-19 and the logistical issues that arose from lockdowns illustrated the importance of domestic supply chains. From semiconductors to fertilizer, countries that rely most heavily on imports faced the highest price increases. In a globalized system this means every country suffered at least to some extent. Although unhappily, the US should be able to withstand long backorders of new cars, appliances, and the like. What no country can do without is food; and no country can grow sufficient food without fertilizer. This graphic visualizes food stability around the world and is from my upcoming book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning.
 
From an agricultural point of view, the US is in a comfortable position. Domestic grain and soy production is strong enough that the US is the second largest exporter of wheat and soybeans and the single largest exporter of corn. Where I worry is not the US or Argentina or France, but countries whose agricultural system relies on imports—this includes grain and soy to feed livestock. Many countries in Africa and the Middle East cannot source their grain domestically, but instead rely on imports, largely from Russia. Additionally, American farmers, although unhappily, should be able to adjust to fertilizer price increases, but farmers in poorer, less-industrialized countries will simply have to do with less, and that means smaller yields.
 
Countries that fall into this category will be eager to join strategic trade partnerships with grain-producing countries. A country like Colombia can feel relatively safe relying on US imports, but elsewhere the logistics are not quite as simple. Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, sources 85 percent of its wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine. Sourcing its grain from a more stable region will be a top priority, especially as the Ukraine War drags on.
 
There is nothing more important than a country’s access to food. For this reason, I consider the agriculture chapter of The End of the World to be of particular importance. The globalized economic system has been largely responsible for lower hunger and poverty rates in developing countries. The question is how many of these gains can be preserved as the system disintegrates?

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Ukraine’s Geography and Economy

In many ways, Ukraine’s geography largely mimics that of the American Midwest: a broad swath of highly productive agricultural land with a largely navigable river running through it. In the United States, the Mississippi delivers the bounty of the Midwest to the port of New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico. In Ukraine, the Dnieper flows to the Black Sea where it empties at the port of Kherson. Kherson should be a familiar name to those of you who have been following Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, given the Russian military’s efforts to capture the city. Geography helps give an understanding of its significance. 

Ukraine’s historic ability to grow surplus crops and deliver them via river to the Black Sea should not be overlooked. The Black Sea, and especially the Turkish Straits, affords Ukraine a considerable advantage over much of Russia: the output of its primary productive geographies enjoys relatively easy access to global ports. Ukrainian grain–and oilseeds, and coal, and metals, and so on–can in normal times reach international ports and thus link Ukraine to a globalized economy. 

Not so for Russia. The Russians’ primary river, the Volga, empties into the Caspian Sea which unlike the Black Sea has no access to global maritime trade. The Volga is also prone to spectacular cycles of freezing, and flooding, and ice damming. Russian economic development largely stalled until the 19th century, when Moscow was able to develop rail networks to the Baltic Sea and Black Sea (also why so much of Russian imperial history focused on securing the Caucuses and Crimea; access to the Black Sea and ports beyond was [and still is] critical for Russia’s economic survival). 

Ukraine represents the best-situated, most productive piece of Russia’s former Soviet empire, and the one that could most easily integrate with the West, and beyond. Which is why control over Ukraine has been so central to Russian imperial strategy for centuries, and why I fear future Russian military action will focus on destroying Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and economy.

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Agriculture At the End of the World

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

Is climate change important? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean we’ve cracked the code. Consider this excerpt from my upcoming book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning:
 
Our capacity to forecast climate impacts tends to be embarrassingly off. The best recent example is the United States in mid-2021. A high-pressure system locked some warm air over the Pacific Northwest. Some of that air then descended from the Cascades, triggering compression effects. The result? Normally cloudy, rainy, grungy locales mutated into open ovens for weeks. Portland, Oregon, repeatedly clocked temperatures above 120 degrees. I’ve seen many climate models that suggest the inevitability of hotter deserts or a hotter American South, but none have projected that Portland—freakin’ Portland—would end up being hotter than Las Vegas has ever been. The reason for such a fundamental miss is simple: we do not at present have good enough data to project climate change down to the zip code level.
 
We’ve obsessed somewhat narcissistically upon how climate shifts might impact cities, and our data simply isn’t good enough to generate reliable forecasts. Instead, we should focus on the far easier math of climate shifts upon continent-spanning climate bands. Not so useful for determining house insurance rates, but critical to understanding what we can grow.
 
Check out the below map from the agriculture chapter of The End of the World. We sometimes forget that most of the Earth’s land surface is unsuitable for growing crops, and even much of what is is not particularly great. It doesn’t take much of a climate nudge to push marginal lands into the “unsuitable” category. And nudging is certainly happening. For decades, shifts in wind currents have been tweaking regional weather patterns. Simply continuing such long-established patterns for another 30 years will have outsize impacts upon agriculture. Almost everywhere.

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY