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We know Russia has banned Nitrogen exports, one of the main ingredients of fertilizer. This means we are also having a food war. Fertilizer is usually made up of varying amounts of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, commonly know as NPK. (Disclaimer: In a previous life, I worked in phosphate mines in Morroco and Jordan.)
In the US the 4 major crops are corn (maize), soybeans, wheat, and cotton, using about 60% of all commercial fertilizer. Corn (about 80 million acres) and soybeans (about 90 million acres) are by far the largest crops by acreage. Corn uses about 40% of all commercial fertilizer while soybeans use only 10%.
Soybeans being legumes can fix their own nitrogen. Corn however cannot sequester it’s own nitrogen. Also during harvesting most of the corn plant is removed. For soybeans much of the plant is returned to the soil. So corn needs about 4 times the fertilizer that soybeans require. For corn, the ratio of nitrogen in it’s fertilizer is much higher.
So what did Russia just ban? Why yes, only 2/3rds of the world’s “exported” supply of nitrogen!
O.K. You are a farmer, US, European, 3rd world. You are loqoking at rapidly rising fertilizer costs that are a moving target. Your suppliers can’t tell you how much you might be able to buy nor at what price, before planting your spring crops. Fertilizer prices have increased so much that you may not have enough cash on hand to buy all the fertilizer you need. Since crop prices are so volatile you don’t know if you could even breakeven between fertilizer costs now and crop receipts 6 months from now.
So what crop, if any, are you going to plant? Corn gives you the worst high fertilizer cost exposure. Not only that but half of corn crops are sold in the US to make ethanol to put in gas, probably at pre-fixed prices. So does the US ethanol industry go boom or bust? Who knows what Biden and Congress will do in an election year? So would you plant soybeans instead, even knowing that your fellow farmers are likely to do so too resulting in a surplus of soybeans thus driving soybean prices much lower?
World governments are already banning exports of all grains simply because they don’t know what will happen any more than their own farmers do!
Maybe Biden will emphasize food production instead. Naw, I forgot they want higher energy and food prices for their build back green narrative. That isexactly why they started that not so little war over in far away Ukraine! Elections however can be easily fixed at the ballot box!
Last night, while listening to music, I was busy sorting out the filler material by hand from the rabbit food for my daughter’s Dutch dawrf pet rabbit, Moki. She won’t eat the filler. Neither will her friends, the mice and chipmunks. There are lots of sunflower seeds in the rabbit food mix.
Earlier I had read that 50% of the world’s supply of sunflower seeds come from the Ukraine and another 20% from Russia. Good thing I bought a big bag of sunflower seeds early in 2022.
The sunflower seeds reminded me of a story my Father, who grew up during the 1930s depression in Saskatchewan, told me. When he was at school, many of the students were Ukrainians who lived on the local farms.
They ate sunflower seeds all day long in class and spit the empty sunflower shells on the classroom floor. The teachers did not like this but there was little they could do to stop this. First the kids were hungry and sunflower seeds were all they had to eat. Second, the Ukrainian boys were bigger and tougher than the tiny women teachers. After school was over the teachers would sweep up the empty sunflower shells on the classroom floor.
Yeah, the not so good, good olde days!
On the Ukraine front, the smart civilians left early.
Now it is too late to leave any of the cities with conflicts going on.Why would the smart Ukrainians have already left for Romainia, Hungry, or Poland?
For several very good common sense reasons.
First to avoid being forcibly conscripted by the neo-nazis.
Second, to avoid your family getting killed.
Third, to get your car out of the Ukraine so it doesn’t end up being stolen by the neo-nazis or the criminal looters.The British say Russia is using cluster bombs. That very likely means the encircled neo-nazi battalions are being anilalated along the border of the Donbas.
I have read of regular Ukrainian army soldiers killing their neo-nazi political officers. They have too before they can surrender or they will be killed. (No different than what happened in both the USSR and Nazi Germany. If you retreated your own side killed you. If you stayed and fought the enemy killed you.)
Supposedly the Ukrainian prez is safely in Poland urging his fellow Ukrainians to die.
Our deep state troll Deflate, is busy loosing the narrative war just as badly as the Ukrainians are loosing the real war.
My observation of what is happening in the Ukraine today.
It is simple.
The Ukraine is loosing very very badly.
All the buildings that took several generations to build are being quickly destroyed because there was not enough effort or time made to talk.And Deflate is also losing his irtual info war very very badly too!
Another tidbit on the fall out from the Ukrainian invasion. The Ukraine makes a number of small auto parts for Germany’s auto industry. This is forcing all of Germany’s auto assembly plants to shut down!
Just to add to German auto troubles, a roll on/off ship carrying over 4,000 German luxury cars, caught fire and after burning for over a week finally sank. It seems like some of the EV car’s lithium batteries caught fire and the ship’s crew didn’t have the proper fire fighting foams required to fight the battery fires. They could not use sea water.
The only unanswered question is; are the lithium batteries still burning away at the bottom of the ocean?
Phoenixvoice:
Your dental concerns rings bells for me. I do not have dental insurance and have noticed a pattern where the dentist try charging me more than if I had an insurance plan. In otherwords the sky is the limit.
Recently I had a large cavity in a back molar. The dentist said he could not fill it until I got a root canal done first even though the cavity had not reached the nerve. I considered the root canal but at $1,600 decided I not could afford it. I also suspected my dentist would get a nice fat referral fee from the dental surgeon doing the root canal.
So a week later I went back to have the cavity filled. The dentist continued to say I really should get a root canal done, hemmed and hawwed, etc. but this time I was ready and firmly said no. He made a special note in my file saying I had declined his advice before he filled the cavity. The molar has been just fine ever since.
The sad part is a year earlier I had another large cavity in another molar and he again said I needed to get a root canal first, which I declined to do. I elected to have the molar pulled instead. In retrospect I should have had the cavity filled instead. So yes it is only all about their money, not my best interests.
The moral is to question everything a dentist or doctor tells you. They are only concerned about their money.
I spent a bit of time trying to get more info on Ukraine but there is very little news getting out of the areas in eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia. I think the Russian have been very successful in creating a blackout with regards to what is happening.
I think it is reasonable to expect the 30,000 plus Ukrainian army in the east along the Donbas region are either surrendering or being annihilated. They can not 3scape. This basically breaks the back of the Ukrainian army.
The Russians appear to be moving west from the Crimiea to seize Ukraine’s coastal areas along the Black Sea, having already seized the eastern coastal areas.
Also it appears that a southe4n force is also heading north toward Kiev while another force frkom Kiev is heading south to cut off the eastern half of the Ukraine from the western half.
My best guess is the southern Russian speaking coastal areas of the Ukraine will be declared independ an independent country just like the Donbas. This means the Ukraine will become a landlocked country.
A small part of eastern Ukraine with Hungarians may be returned to Hungry. Poland might also get a tiny piece of Polish eastern Ukraine too.
What I am not sure about is whether the Ukraine gets divided in half. The eastern half of the Ukraine is a mix of Ukrainians and Russians. However the western part of the Ukraine is purely Ukrainian with small pockets of Hungarians and Poles. My guess whether the Ukraine gets partitioned depends upon what happens in the future. If the Ukrainian gov negotiates in bad faith, as the US wants, then the Ukraine will likely be divided in two.
Note: The western half of the Ukraine is the poorest part and the basket case, Russia will likely happily hand over to the EU to enjoy and subsidized forever.
Western Ukraine is where the majority of the Ukranian neo-nazis are from. The Russians have no love for these neo-nazis and are planning to set up war crimes courts to try any neo-nazis they capture for shelling and murdering over 14,000 Russians in Donbas over the last 8 years.
And no the Russians are not losing the war. Only 10% of Russian forces have been committed. Russia’s very best units have not been involved. They are going slowly, but 4X faster than Germany. And Russia is not interested in destroying Ukrainian infrastructure.
I suspect we at TAE will look back on early 2022, as the time the west decided to openly exercise it’s digital money powers to sanction it’s enemies both domestic and foreign.
That also means the west now knows it is losing the US dollar as the world’s major reserve currency and the power that comes with it.
Well Deflate has been busy fighting the dis-inforation war in the Ukraine, so there is that!
I don’t think Russia is too concern about trying to win the lying war that is keeping Deflate busy.
Another funny thing about growing up in a small mining town, that we would never let our kids do today, was as soon as I could walk, I was free to roam wherever I wanted outside, weather permitting of course.
Naturally this suited me just fine! I roamed around town pretty much where ever I wanted. If I ended up playing with some other kids in their home, or stayed for lunch, I was supposed to phone home to let Mom know. That was just about the only rule.
Them was some glorious times for me! (Except for the chocolate!)
Oroboros:
Your cartoon of Biden with his “mother’s” hand stitched note on his back reminds me of a funny thing my Mother did for me when I was a wee lad! See I was allergic to chocolate and would break into a red rash if I ate chocolate.
We lived in a small remote mining town in northern Quebec/Labrador and the only store in town was the Hudson Bay. There were a lot of men working in the mines who were staying in company bunk houses, away from their families for about 6 months, so they sorely missed their children.
Naturally us kids quickly learned that if we hung out at the Bay, these men would buy us free sweets!
So my Mother sowed a cloth note on the back of my winter jacket, saying “Billy is allergic to chocolate. Please only give him candy!”
So now you know how deprived I was as a kid!
Oroboros:
Thanks for posting the link to Coach Red Pill. He is telling it like it is. Germany took 35 days to capture their half of Poland. Putin is only on day 6 and he has already won the war on the ground. So makes Germans look rather slow! OK Putin not winning virtual propaganda war but doesn’t need to! Virtual war will hit brick wall when it is ready to!
Deflate:
How come you are not busy fighting all the dis-information coming out of the Ukraine?
It is too early to cover the US truckers, as they have not arrived in DC yet!
Michael Reid:
That is some serious wood cutting/debranching/splitting hardware you have acquired! Some of those heads must weight 5 to 10 pounds!
Sadly, I wouldn’t be able to use them for very long these days. I have found my arm joints just can’t take the pounding they used to be able to do, therefore screws vs nails. I also hurt my right should last fall and it still hasn’t recovered any over the winter. I pulled something for sure. Sadly I would be forced to get or make a wood splitter.
I have often thought of making one using a hand driven hydraulic pump with a cylinder. When I was building blast hole drills, in a former life, the drill came with a hydraulic hand pump and cylinder to tighten the tension on the crawler pads as they wore. But usually by the time the drill was built it had disappeared. I always figured that others had the very same idea too.
I see you have put up auxiliary solar panels. If your lack of sunny days matches mine (solar cooker) then your batteries are not being fully re-charged due to the endless days of cloudy weather.
It looks like you have less snow than we do here in Toronto!
This afternoon we took my daughter to the airport for her 3 week remote working from Orlando trip.
Right now I am just cooling my heels until the sap starts up again on March 6th. I made blueberry pancakes for my daughter this morning, and got my first taste of homemade maple syrup! Very clear and sweet (Grade No. 1) but does not yet have the strong dark maple flavor (Grade No. 3 or 4 – the bottom of the barrel!) that I prefer which only comes at the very end of the sap season.
From what I can observe, our access to information from the Ukraine is being actively sensored, because this information doesn’t support the narrative being spun by the west.
We have seen very little “new” news since this story’s beginning.
One video, my brother saw, showed an Ukrainian driving on a highway, stopping beside a Russian tank, sitting alone on the side of the road, and saying in Russian to the tank crew, “Did they needed a tow back to Russia?” The Russian tank crew just laughed and said they had run out of gas!
Not your CNN’s war.
Hi Michael Reid:
How has winter been treating you on the island so far? Has the river frozen?
Your lumberjack outfit was awesome! I would be surprised if there are any trees left, that didn’t run away, after they saw you coming!
My big winter distraction has been my solar cooker (few sunny days) and my budding 3 tap maple syrup operation. So far I have collected 7 liters of sap and boiled it down by 1/32 which is like a few table spoons! I am rich! Don’t expect serious sap to flow until March 6th.
My daughter is leaving tomorrow to Orland to work remotely, staying with my brother who is also working remotely from Detroit.
V. P.
I remember reading a story about a German Jew leaving Germany. He could only leave with one metal travel chest with a few of his clothes and some small personal belongings, like family pictures. Nothing else.
He had a jewelry friend melt his gold into 2 hinges, 8 corner protectors, and 2 latches for each of his family’s metal travel chests.
German customs searched his travel chests, confiscating some items out of spite that he had purposely included, but missed the gold!
O.K. So we in the west, are fighting a cell phone best virtual selfie sanctions narrative war.
I am 100% sure, this narrative war will end badly, since neither side’s narrative is correct.So now we are sanctioning Russia, right, left, and center. Not to be outdone, Canada is pulling vodka from it’s liquor stores! We won’t play hockey with them here Russians either. To enforce that we have cancelled flights from Russia.
Little notice is being given to the warning from Putin about mesures he will take for countries aiding the Ukraine. Naturally Trudeau and Freeland are paying no heed to these warnings. In fact they are going out of their way to ensure they are at the top of Putin’s hit list!
Yes it is fine and dandy to override Russian interests and rights because it is the current politically correct leftist fad of the day. Just like it was so politically correct to seize Canadian trucker assets, just a couple of weeks ago. People tend to notice trends.
So yes, seize Russian assets here in Canada. Just don’t be surprised if Canadian assets in Russia are seized too. Markets anticipating this, have already marked down the price of publically traded Canadian mining companies with mines located in Russia, to zero!
Maybe Trudeau and Freeland should take a good long hard look at what is happening to Canada’s reputation around the world, not to mention that by Canadians living in Canada.
Hey Canada!
Nice money laundering operations you are running!
Nice currency operation you have!
Nice banking operations you have!
Nice real estate operations you are enjoying!
It would be a shame to ruin these cash cows just because you have a political craving for a beef burger!You want to know what happens to countries where their citizens do not invest in their own country? I have visited dozens of these countries! Whenever I wrote a check on my US dollar account, the checks all ended up in Switzerland! Yeah that merchant in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or water! His only concern was getting his money out of his own country! That is what happens in every one of these countries!
Nobody will invest in their own country because folks like Trudeau and Freeland will just confiscate it!
Here is my recommendation:
Take some blueberries and eat them! Then go to bed! You will feel much better!
Rototillerman:
So deep down you are a blueberry lover!
I am originally from Northern Quebec/Labrador so naturally I love blueberries too! Northern blueberries are very tiny and when we went blueberry picking in early September, it would take all 5 of us to pick enought blueberries to make just one pie. Some years we only got enough to make tarts. In those lean blueberry years, the local black bears starved to death.
I once tried real hard to grow domestic blueberries here in Toronto, setting up a special bed with more suitable soil, verses local clay based soil, but the blueberry bushes never thrived and slowly died off. Since I was producing so few blueberries, the birds got them first. I even put netting over the blueberry bushes to stop the competition, winning that battle, but still losing the war!
You must be in a better blueberry growing area with the right type of acidic soils, like in BC or Nnorthern Nova Scotia/southern New Brunswick, or maybe the Sudbury area.
Hoping your blueberries thrive!
I loved the part in the dog attack report where the ducks refused medical attention by flying away!
It reminds me of when India calls asking if my ducts need cleaning?
Playing on being hard of hearing, I always say, “No, my ducks had a bath this morning and are nice and clean!”One poor telmarketing guy in India must have reached his breaking point because, after I said my piece, he called right back! My wife answered the second time. Enraged he called back a third time. This time my daughter answered! The fourth time he called back my son answered! The poor guy was going nuts because each time he called he kept getting a different voice! He didn’t call back a fifth time! Our family were all killing ourselves laughting because we knew we had driven him off the deep end!
Bill7:
Yes, from Trudeau’s and Freeland’s point of view, they had really big plans to go after all their political enemies using the War Measures Act. They and cabinet had all gleefully exchanged e-mails between themselves about what they were going to do.
Early on they said they were going to track down every trucker protest supporters on social media and even went so far as to say all Canadian Trump Supporters should be worried too. They started freezing the bank accounts of any Canadian who donated via GoFundMe and GiveSentGo. They also froze all cryptos too. They also started to cancel insurance policies, mortgages, driver’s licenses, work permits, passports, credit and debit cards too. They were going “the whole nine yards” on their political enemies!
Then the WEF called Freeland.
Then the rubber stamp very liberal Canadian Senate got wind of the cabinets e-mails and were so upset that they were going to vote “no” to approving the war Measures Act.
Then Trudeau said “Oh, we no longer need the War Measures Act afterall!”
Meanwhile all frozen bank accounts and cancelled credit cards, crypto, etc remain frozen or cancelled.
Trucker protests leaders remained jailed without bail and gagged.
The pandemic emergency remains suspending parliament indefinitely.
So nothing much has really changed here in Canada.One peaceful day Truth was walking down the street minding it’s own business.
War broke out suddenly from a dark alley, as planned, and murdered Truth.
Truth is no more.TDK:
I read to the end. You have just found the only judge in all of Canada, who has not ordered the children to be vaccinated!
So far all Canadian judges have ordered the children to be immediately vaccinated.
Dr. D
Sean Penn conveniently visited the Ukraine in Oct/Nov of 2021 in preparation for his visit in 2022!
I am sure he had no advanced warning from Hollywood’s Master.V. P.
Actually I think the sock puppet is more likely Sparkle Socks! He is using the Russian visit to the Ukraine to put Covid, the trucker’s protest, and the War Measures Act in the rear view mirror.
TDK:
Very nice western mountain scene that I can personally relate to!
Jackson Hole, Wyoming!
And many other western locations too!Kultsommer:
I don’t know if I am just a “vibrating particle” or not!
But I am definately a “shivering particle” up here in Canada!
Does that count?V. Arnold:
Being an engineer, I am just too logical and practical to readily grasp the true meanings of most art. I either like it or I don’t. I rarely get it! I have none-the-less visited every major art museum in western Europe. Now Greece and Rome I got it!
I had the same problem grasping the true meanings of Shakespeare, despite being waxxed philosophically to great heights by my English Literature teachers! I just figured they must have smoked a joint, before class, as I could never see it for the life of me!
Now a robot I understand!
When it comes to anything in 3D, whether art, drawings, maps, requires use of the brain imho.
2D the heart can handle!
3D the brain is required!
For love, the heart needs the brain to malfunction!Susmarie 108:
While Canadian, I worked quite a few years in the American west. Loved it too! I have always been interested in history and geography.
Your comment about northern California’s dry soil reminded me of what happened to the Myans in Mexico. When I visited their capital city, I was told the Myans had to abandoned it due to drought. The cause was likely a massive volcano to the west in Indonesia.
The same volcano was also likely the cause for Ganghis Kahn being forced to move westward towards Europe and out of Mongolia. His people were horse herders and the climate changed, eliminating a type of grass that horses could eat, to that which only cattle could eat. The cattle herders began pushing them out.
I remember in 1970s visiting a Pueblo ruins in south-west New Mexico, near the Arizona border, being excavated/studied by a professor. He thought the village had been abandoned due to drought as there were no signs of war or flash floods.
I also visited another Pueblo village in south-west Colorado and again was told the cave protected village was likely abandoned due to drought.
I think the entire south-western part of the US and prairies has always been prone to drought off and on throughout the ages. During my time out west, all I ever seem to hear was either no rain or too much rain!
The song “It never rains in Southern California” comes to mind!
Rising energy prices is a central part of Biden’s plan. He is going ahead with more plans to cripple future US domestic energy production under the cover of climate change. When Trump left office the US was an energy exporter. In one year, under Biden, the US is again a major energy importer.
The nice thing about Biden being a puppet, is when he shoots himself (US) in the foot, it doesn’t hurt!
The US deep state has successfully led the Ukraine down the path to destruction and ruin.
During Trump’s time in office the CIA couldn’t shell the Donbass. As soon as Biden came into office, the CIA started shelling the Donbass. Shelling was typically 80 shells away. In the last 3 weeks shelling increased to over 1,200 shells a day.
Now we know why Trump was impeached by the deep state and Col Vitamen.
When Putin is finished with the Ukraine, there will finally be a lasting peace in the region. The Ukraine however will be a much smaller country than it is now. And likely a landlocked country too.
Victoria Nuland and Col Vitamen can now admire their life’s handiwork.
F. S.:
I avoid watching cbc to avoid contaminating my mind with their lies. I prefer to keep an open mind instead.
Another observation I would make.
Today is a very significant day in Canadian history.
There hasn’t been a day, like today, in Canada, in a very long, long, time.
Please go to the conservative tree house and read the 3 articles explaining what is really going on with Trudeau back tracking suddenly.
Trudeau by freezing bank accounts, has accidently exposed the WEF’s plans for a digital ID being spearheaded by Canadian banks for world wide use.
Now everyone can see how easy it is for a government to seize one’s assets at the flick of a switch. Not only seize your money, cancel your human rights, jail you without trial, but cancel insurance policies, mortgages, credit cards, work permits, driver’s license, passport, ownership of your assets like your car, house, pension plans, broker investment accounts, safety boxes, take your children, kill your pets, anybody caught helping you, and go after you for political revenge, etc.
There is no limit to what they can do and you also have no legal rights to appeal these actions.
Trudeau did all of the above things to the truckers. So you can’t say these things didn’t happen now. They just did!
Question: What can we as citizens do to protect ourselves in the future from this when it happens to us?
Dr. D was correct about a bank run in Canada. There are 3 very good articles on “the conservative tree house” that 3xplain why Sparkle Socks’ socks slid down below his ankles today.
Trudeau really fucked up the WEF’s digital ID plans by revealing how easy it is for a government to completely and totally isolate anyone it wants to, by merely flipping a switch. It seems the Canadian banks were leading the way for the WEF’s digital ID project. Trudeau has now exposed this WEF plan for the entire world to see.
I hope Raul posts a few of CTH’s articles tomorrow because what Trudeau exposed isn’t just about is planned for Canada but what is intended by the WEF for the entire world!
Veracious Poet:
The US congress sure seems to have a lot of dirty laundry in need of foreign laundry mats to wash all of it clean, doesn’t it!
I remember Nancy and company making foreign fact finding missions shorty after approving new foreign aid to various countries. Egypt was a first stop. Then there was the touch and go landing in Afghanistan before returning home.
In Egypt Nancy was of course setting her kickback ratio. The Ukraine next. Then the brief stop in a war zone to see the troops, so all her income earned that month became tax free.
Yes, if only the American people knew.
