Cuurent information on Ukrainian Agriculture

 Russia's genocidal war against Ukraine continues with terror bombings of residential areas in Ternopil and Zaporizhzhia. Gas and electic infastructure is also attacked to ensure Ukrainians suffer from cold this winter. Ukrainians are fighting back, sending rockets and drones deep into russia, destroying oli refineries and now power generation and distribution in line with Russian attacks. Gasoline and diesel are in short supply in Russia. Areas around Moscow are cold and dark. Yet no matter how much destruction Ukraine inflicts on Russian drone and rocket factories they still keep coming night and day. The Russian economy is staggering but propped up by Iran and China, though the latter claims not to be involved. 

Ukraine was once the breadbasket of Europe (some claim it is the bridebasket of Europe but I digress). Now it provides grain to nations in the Middle East and in Northern Africa. Russia has attempted to cut off Ukraine's grain trade and replace it with their own wheat or wheat stolen from Ukraine. Ukrainian export of wheat and corn has been able to resume by hugging the Black Sea coastal waters of neighbouring countries. 

And Ukrainian farmers are fighting back. One farmer carries a shotgun to use against incoming drones. Ukraine is adapting to Russia’s genocidal war by going digital.  The scale of adoption is striking. This is not limited to the huge Oligarch-controlled farms over which Brussels is obsessed. They only make up 10% to 20% of farmed area in Ukraine.

Use of digital technology on Ukrainian farms

Some of these farms are adjacent to active combat in Sumy and Kherson oblasts. They use the same satellite imagery systems to spot crop stress and avoid freshly mined areas.

Digital technology chains together. Sixty-eight percent use yield mapping in combines, feeding data into next year’s variable-rate seeding plans. Fifty-three percent automate grain truck routes from field to elevator. Forty-two percent eliminated paper waybills, and 38% use electronic queues at delivery points—no drivers idling for hours while Russia launches missiles at grain infrastructure.

Russia wants to wreck Ukraine’s economy through bombardment. Ukrainian producers are building the infrastructure to do the opposite—feed more people with fewer inputs, using farmers’ phones and satellites instead of more land and diesel.

Russia’s energy warfare strategy has proven more effective at inflating food costs than destroying Ukraine’s agricultural capacity, revealing a sophisticated shift in economic warfare tactics.

Inflation in the food group is 22%. Electricity, logistics, and fuel costs for businesses are constantly rising, as is the need to raise wages. All these factors shape wholesale prices at bakeries much more than grain costs.

Current retail prices reflect this inflation: rye bread averaging 45.83 hryvnias ($1.11 USD) for a 300-gram loaf in major Ukrainian supermarkets as of August 2025, while standard loaves (450 grams) now cost an average of 36.7 hryvnias ($0.89 USD)—nearly 9 hryvnias ($0.22) higher than the previous year.

Ukraine’s National Bank raised interest rates to 14.5% in January to combat overall inflation, which reached 15.9% in May before moderating to 14.1% in July 2025.

Ukrainian exports dropped 33% in the first two months of the 2025/26 marketing year compared to the previous season. Yet grain prices are rising, with wheat climbing from 7,350 UAH/t ($178 USD) in mid-September to 8,750 UAH/t ($212 USD), driven by Russian attacks on energy infrastructure rather than supply shortages.

Medium-sized and family businesses account for about 80% of agricultural enterprises, while only 20% operate companies with more than 10,000 hectares. The 8,600 medium-sized farms of 200-2,000 hectares—not the massive holdings that dominate headlines—produced over 50% of cereal output before the war.  Farms under 1,000 hectares account for 58% of production.

While Russian forces steal grain from occupied territories and systematically target food infrastructure, Ukrainian farmers continue producing crops that feed both domestic and global markets.

This agricultural persistence represents more than economic necessity—it demonstrates the resilience and institutional capacity that make Ukraine’s European integration both possible and strategically vital—if Brussels can move beyond its misconceptions to recognize the complex reality of Ukrainian agriculture fighting for survival and a European future.

Sources:

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/10/03/ukraine-agriculture-digitization-war/

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/09/18/ukrainian-grain-exports-plunge-33-as-eu-integration-advances/

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/09/08/ukraine-bread-prices-surge-russian-energy-attacks/

Dinosaurs

 After a week with my 3 year old grandson, I now know more about dinosaurs than I did before. I learned about Brontosaurus, Pterydactyls, Tryceratops and T. Rex. The latter two are his favourites. He even knew they lived at the same time and fought each other. His two stuffies of them fought incessantly, mostly on my lap. I had to Google them to learn they lived at the same time and according to archaelology actually did fight each other. 

What is with toddlers, both boys and girls, that they are fascinated with dinosaurs as soon as they are old enough to go "ROAAAR"? I cannot remember what my kids were obsessd with at that age. My Little Pony? Cabbage Patch dolls? Someone help me. Late 70s, early 80s. What were toddlers into? 

Anyway, I found the perfect Christmas gift for him. Send a picture of the child and they stick it riding on either a T. rex or a Triceratops. I will ask him what his favourite is. 

https://www.amazon.ca/Duckbe-Custom-Photo-Blanket-Giganotosaurus/dp/B0CG932295/ref=sr_1_14_sspa?th=1

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald

November 10th marked the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior. I was reminded of this when my social media was flooded by people who did remember and were quoting Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The following has been adapted from Wikipedia to provide background.

SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. 

When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the first laker built to the maximum St. Lawrence Seaway size, which was 730 feet (222.5 m) long, 75 feet (22.9 m) wide, and with a 25-foot (7.6 m) draft. The vertical height of the hull) was 39 ft (12 m). The hold depth (the inside height of the cargo hold) was 33 ft 4 in (10.16 m).

Edmund Fitzgerald's three central cargo holds were loaded through 21 watertight cargo hatches, each 11 by 48 feet (3.4 by 14.6 m) of ⁵⁄₁₆-inch-thick (7.9 mm) steel. Loading Edmund Fitzgerald with 26,535 t of taconite pellets (a variety of iron ore) took about four and a half hours, while unloading took around 14 hours.

For 17 years, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines along the Minnesota Iron Range near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; and other Great Lakes ports, passing through the Soo Locks (between Lakes Superior and Huron) and St. Clair and Detroit rivers (between Lake Huron and Lake Erie),

A round trip between Superior, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan, usually took her five days and she averaged 47 similar trips per season. The vessel's usual route was between Superior, Wisconsin, and Toledo, Ohio. By November 1975, Edmund Fitzgerald had logged an estimated 748 round trips on the Great Lakes and covered more than a million miles, "a distance roughly equivalent to 44 trips around the world."

Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, at 2:15 p.m. on the afternoon of November 9, 1975, under the command of Master Captain McSorley. She was en route to the steel mill near Detroit, Michigan, with a full cargo of taconite ore pellets and soon reached her full speed of 16.3 miles per hour (26.2 km/h). Around 5 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald joined a second freighter under the command of Captain Jesse B. "Bernie" Cooper, Arthur M. Anderson, destined for Gary, Indiana.

The weather forecast was not unusual for November, and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior by 7 a.m. on November 10. At 2:00 a.m. on November 10, the NWS upgraded its warnings from gale to storm, forecasting winds of 65–93 km/h. The NWS later altered its forecast, issuing gale warnings for the whole of Lake Superior. Arthur M. Anderson and Edmund Fitzgerald altered course northward, seeking shelter along the Ontario shore, but sailed directly into the storm at when the wind shifted. Edmund Fitzgerald reported winds of 52 knots (96 km/h; 60 mph) and waves 10 feet (3.0 m) high.

Routes usually taken vs actual trackline

After 1:50 p.m., Arthur M. Anderson logged winds of 93 km/h, wind speeds again picked up rapidly, and it began to snow at 2:45 p.m., reducing visibility; Arthur M. Anderson lost sight of Edmund Fitzgerald, which was about 16 miles (26 km) ahead at the time.

Shortly after 3:30 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald began taking on water and had lost two vent covers, both radars, and developed a list. Shortly after 4:10 p.m., Captain McSorley said that he would slow his ship down so that Arthur M. Anderson could close the gap between them to within a 10-mile (16 km) range so she could receive radar guidance from the other ship.

For a time, Arthur M. Anderson directed Edmund Fitzgerald toward the relative safety of Whitefish Bay; then, at 4:39 p.m., McSorley contacted the USCG station in Grand Marais, Michigan, to inquire whether the Whitefish Point light and navigation beacon were operational and was informed later that the light was active, but the navigation beacon was not.

By late in the afternoon of November 10, sustained winds of over 93 km/h were recorded by ships and observation points across eastern Lake Superior. Arthur M. Anderson logged sustained winds as high as 107 km/h while waves increased to as high as 25 feet (7.6 m) by 6:00 p.m. Arthur M. Anderson was also struck by 130 to 139 km/h gusts and rogue waves as high as 35 feet (11 m).

 In a broadcast shortly afterward, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) warned all shipping that the Soo Locks had been closed, and they should seek safe anchorage.

Sometime after 5:30 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald reported being in difficulty; at 7:10 p.m., Captain McSorley sent his last message, "We are holding our own". Shortly after 7:10 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian (Ontario) waters 530 feet (88 fathoms; 160 m) deep, about 17 miles (27.36 km) from Whitefish Bay near the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario—a distance Edmund Fitzgerald could have covered in just over an hour at top speed. Her crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered.

She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces.

Position of the wreck in a relatively small area

In 1976, the U.S. Navy dived on the wreck and found Edmund Fitzgerald lying in two large pieces in 530 feet (160 m) of water. Navy estimates put the length of the bow section at 276 feet (84 m) and that of the stern section at 253 feet (77 m). The bow section stood upright in the mud, some 170 feet (52 m) from the stern section that lay capsized at a 50-degree angle from the bow. In between the two broken sections lay a large mass of taconite pellets and scattered wreckage lying about, including hatch covers and hull plating.

The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown. Several hypotheses have been put forward (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald from where this post was extracted and adapted. None explain satisfactorily how the Edmund Fitzgerald  split almost exactly in two and came to rest with half upside down and half right side up, with iron ore pellets scattered over only 2 acres.

Edmund Fitzgerald is among the largest and best-known vessels lost on the Great Lakes, but she is not alone on the Lake Superior seabed in that area. In the years between 1816, when Invincible was lost, and 1975, when Edmund Fitzgerald sank, the Whitefish Point area had claimed at least 240 ships.

Theirs was not to reason why

The guns fell silent on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Turn up the sound

On November 11th, Remembrance Day, we remember the Canadian military killed and injured. We need to remember those animals who also fought and died. 

Horses have been used in battle for millenia. Wikipedia has an excellent article on the use of horses in war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_warfare

We allow the soldiers who fought a certain agency, though most would have felt the had no choice. But the horse who fought and died, along side their riders certainly had no agency. And they deserve not to be forgotten.

Theirs not to make reply,

   Theirs not to reason why,

   Theirs but to do and die.

Medieval Cavalry facing the pikes of the opposing army

In Brave Heart, the Scottish army used long pointed stakes to stop the English cavalry charge and  destroy them in hand to hand combat. At Agincourt the English forced the French to attack across muddy ground. Their longbowmen aimed at the lead horses, creating chaos, and resulted in the destruction of the "Flower of French Knightood". The horses took the punishment. They had no choice.

British Heavy Cavalry Charge at Balaclava

Charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo

Though we think of the Second World War as highly mechanized, horses played a large role expecially in the Eastern Front. The German Army, strapped for motorised transport because its factories were needed to produce tanks and aircraft, used around 2.75 million horses – more than it had used in World War I. The Soviets used 3.5 million horses.

Germans having supply problems on the Russian Steppe

“I’m only a cavalry charger,

And I’m dying as fast as I can,

(For my body is riddled with bullets –

They’ve potted both me and my man)."

- Excerpt from “The Cavalry Charger’s Appeal” by Scots Grey, A Book of Poems for The Blue Cross Fund

The Traitor's Daughter

When our family lived in Kindersey in the late 70's, early 80's there was a restaurant a couple blocks from us, owned and operated by a woman from Netherhill, a hamlet a few kilometers east of town. She had a reputation as a good cook but put up with no insults to her food. She threw some Americans out for asking for ketchup for their steak.

Her name was Agnes Spicer. She had run a restaurant in Netherhill for several years prior. She was extremely closed mouthed about her background. When she died, her daughter, Roxana, set out to learn of her mother's history. My youngest cousin went to high school with her in Kindersley. 

I recommend this book to any one interested in Soviet and Nazi history and a detective story that keeps the reader spellbound from beginning to end .

 https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/the-traitor-s-daughter-7

The following is taken directly from the description of the book on Kobo. 

The masterful narration of a daughter's decades-long quest to understand her extraordinary mother, who was born in Lenin's Soviet Union, served as a combat soldier in the Red Army, and endured three years of Nazi captivity—but never revealed her darkest secrets.**

As a child, Roxana Spicer would sometimes wake to the sound of the Red Army choir. She would tip-toe downstairs to find her mother, cigarette in one hand and Black Russian in the other, singing along. Roxana would keep her company, and wonder....

Everyone in their village knew Agnes Spicer was Russian, that she had been a captive of the Nazis. And that was all they knew, because Agnes kept her secrets close: how she managed to escape Germany, what the tattoo on her arm meant, even her real name.

Discovering the truth about her beloved, charismatic, volatile mother became Roxana's obsession. Throughout her career as a journalist and documentarian, between investigations across Canada and around the world, she always went home to ask her mother more questions, often while filming.

Roxana also took every chance to visit the few places that she did know played a role in her mother's story: Bad Salzuflen, Germany, home to POW slave labourers during the war; notorious concentration camps; and Russia. Under Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the early years of Putin, she was able to find people, places, and documents that are now—perhaps forever—lost again.

The Traitor's Daughter is intimate and exhaustively researched, vividly conversational, and shot through with Agnes Spicer's irrepressible, fiery personality. It is a true labour of love as well as a triumph of blending personal biography with sweeping history.

 

The way to a man’s heart

Grandmotherly advice to young women is “Kissin’ don’t last. Cookin’ do”, or “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”. In the PI business, the way to a man’s heart is sometimes between the 4^th and 5^th rib.

Bill, the beat cop, came into my office the other day. “We might have a live one for you. A call came into the precinct office yesterday. Woman’s voice, not crazy or hysterical, but cold and flat, almost mechanical. ‘You’ll find the body alright. You won’t stop finding it. There will be pieces all over the city and for the first two months, he’ll still be alive’.

“Someone turned in an ear that they found in their doorway. DNA didn’t turn up an owner and there was no extra DNA from the perp.”

I didn’t see any money in it for me, but it did interest me. My macabre sense of humour, I guess. I asked for the details. “None. No divorce proceedings gone bad, no bitterly contested wills, no overdue loan shark accounts, no missing persons reported. All dead ends, so to speak. But someone made a bitter enemy”.

All my cases either began or ended with a woman. Or both. Remind me not to make enemies of psychopathic females. Or friends, for that matter.

“OK, what can I do to help?”

“Go fishing in the dark places only people like you or her know. Tell lies, say anything as an excuse to ask questions. Anybody sell a sharp knife lately; butcher suppliers get an unusual request, fishing stores sell a filleting knife, sharpening service get a new customer? If the cops go snooping around, people clam up. And watch your back. I don’t want to find pieces of Rick O’Shea turning up.”

No moon, heavy overcast, dark as a prosecutor’s heart and colder than a penguin’s hooha. In the wee hours of the morning, a voice called out from a dark alley, “From your questions, it appears you are looking for me? Who did you think you could fool?”

I reached under my left shoulder and pulled out a mickey of Scotch, then reached behind me and grabbed my snub-nosed .38. I had a feeling any shooting would be close range. I flung the bottle in the direction of the voice and heard it shatter on the pavement.

The shadow jumped towards me with a knife flashing. I fired twice with no effect. “Fool, you can’t kill me. I am already dead”. That left a puddle on the pavement, trust me. But I could run and I did, with the apparition close behind.

My Cub Scout Manual never prepared me for this. Vampire: garlic, cross, and stake. Werewolf: silver bullets. Guess I should have watched Ghost Busters. Then it hit me. Witches: water. Worked for Dorothy. Rain had left water in the streets, so I headed into a deep puddle.

That stopped her. Safe for the moment, I shouted, “If you are already dead, who are you chopping up?” “The man who killed me. Slowly and as a warning to other domestic abusers”.

“You won’t get any argument from me, but you better make your warnings more specific as you are just scaring hell out of people. (The ones who die go straight to heaven, but I digress). Put up a sign, buy a radio ad or a billboard.”

“Sounds like a plan. I will do that. Now go home and quit bothering me”. You have no idea how happy I was to obey.

Next day a huge billboard appeared in the middle of the city. Wording was much the same as the phone call that started all this. ‘Domestic abusers, take warning. You’ll find the body of my murderer alright. You won’t stop finding it. There will be pieces all over the city and for the first two months, he’ll still be alive’ and your turn will be next.”

 

Top Ten Country Duets My Picks

 I will put them in the order they showed up but may not necessarily agree.

I likely missed some so please add your favourites