Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog 8/1/2022
Peter Zeihan (him again) spoke at Iowa’s Swine Day on the topic of Agriculture at the End of the World:
At lot of this is Zeihan’s polished Greatest Hits presentation (Deglobalization, the need to stop Russia in Ukriane to prevent a future conflict with NATO that would go nuclear, China’s demographic crash, the cult of personality/isolation of Xi Jinping, China’s absurd never-ending Flu Manchu lockdowns, etc.), but here are some highlights of specific agriculture topics:
• Russia isn’t just destroying population centers in Ukraine, it’s deliberately targeting Ukraine’s agricultural infrastructure, including grain silos.
• Odessa is not a normal city. It is at the mouth of the Nipur river, which is kind of their equivalent of the Mississippi, and it is also their manufacturing center. It’s a cultural hub. It’s a financial center. It is New York and Houston and St. Louis and Chicago and New Orleans all in one. And if the Russians succeed in capturing it, that is the end of Ukraine as a modern economic entity. Right now Odessa is under blockade. They can’t export anything. This has been the source of 95 of their exports to this point.
Note: I think this speech was actually given June 30, which predates the grain export corridor agreement.
• China’s pork industry got hit hard by swine flu three years ago, and they’re probably getting hit by it now.
• They’re trying to regrow the swine industry with subsidies, but that’s just resulted in “Two million people who have no idea what they’re doing” buying the wrong kinds of feed.”
• “If they don’t have pork, all they’ve got left is rice. Rice is the most phosphate input intensive crop.”
• “The Chinese have traditionally been the world’s largest producer and exporter of phosphate, ’cause it’s a food security issue. Well they’ve stopped all exports until further notice. So we’ve lost potash because of the Ukraine War. We’ve lost phosphate because of Chinese mismanagement.”
More:
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=52147
