Summary
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Europe that it cannot withstand Russia without Ukraine’s military, calling Ukraine’s victory vital to stopping Kremlin expansion.
Speaking to Polish media, Zelenskyy stressed that Russia’s larger, more brutal army would target other European nations if Ukraine falls.
He criticized Western allies for underestimating Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, urging them to strengthen Ukraine’s defenses.
He’s right.
Ukraine grows a LOT of grain. It’s going to be a big problem when they stop providing Europe and the world.
On a more cynical note: Ukraine grows a lot of Russian obituaries, which the EU doesn’t have to, should they try to invade the Baltics once they are successful in Ukraine.
Not a problem for Europe.
https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-11/efscm-assessment-autumn-2023_en.pdf
Reads differently
So there are concerns about the invasion and it’s driving food inflation.
I never claimed climate change couldn’t cause increased prices. But EU has lots of spare farmland that farmers are paid to NOT use to REDUCE production to avoid huge stockpiles like we had in the 70’s.
EU can increase production a lot if we want.
So as I wrote EU is not and is not likely to become dependent on Ukrainian grain.
That and at least here in Germany we also use tons of land to grow energy plants such as rapeseed (apparently that alone uses 10% of all farming land), which imo is just incredibly inefficient. In case of an emergency at this scale i’d imagine that would be turned back to producing something like weat.
We could also simply produce a bit less meat, which is similarly inefficient in howmuch you need to feed the animals per kg of product.
Based on prices increase for the last two years « because it’s from Ukraine »… either we are being fooled by big corps or Ukraine do produces 80% goods and food for Europe
Well, if you’re from the EU, that would make sense. In America, we grow a lot of grain here in Canada and the US.
Eu is mostly self sufficient on base foods:
https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-11/efscm-assessment-autumn-2023_en.pdf
If you look at fig. 4 on page 5, almost every meat source is above 100%, and fig 5 show most plant foods vary between 60-130%.
In the 70’s the ECC which EU was called back then, turned European agriculture around from huge deficits to huge surpluses. To ensure self sufficiency in case of international destabilization. This resulted in enormous stockpiles, leading to a more balanced policy, which we seem to have achieved.
In short EU is NOT dependent on food from Ukraine, but others are.
We do import soy and maize, but have a surplus on grains.
The main shortfall in the EU is protein crops, not just soy but most of our lentils are from Canada, we’re more of a pea continent and not really growing that many of them. It’s unlikely that imports from the Americas will be cut off, though, and if they are then we still won’t be anywhere close to famine but meat and milk products will become a lot more expensive.
True, but as it is now, farmers in EU are actually paid for NOT farming as much as they can. EU can increase production significantly within a year. But yes that would mean that prices would increase on some products, but I don’t think it would increase very much on meat, although it would probably make fodder a bit more expensive.
EU has capacity for significant surplus production overall, and we could shift a lot of imported products to products grown in the EU.
Ah ok then!
They’ll just buy it from Russia, just like their oil.