Part 2: The Ecological Background of the War in Ukraine
If we look at the key points of the current events in Ukraine, we notice that they are taking place on what is probably the most fertile soil on the planet. The so-called black earth extends over large parts of the country’s territory. And its fertility is so high and so stable that many millions of tonnes of grain as well as other foodstuffs could probably be generated here annually for several centuries to come.
Most other agriculturally used land on earth had far less long-term use potential from the outset. And in China, India and other regions of Asia, in southern Europe and also North America, for example, a considerable part of them has now been so severely eroded, salinised and dried out within just one century by increasingly intensified agriculture that they will soon have almost no potential at all in this respect. This is happening at a time when even experts cannot find an answer to the question of how the demand for food raw materials, which is expected to increase by another 50-80 per cent until 2050, could be met. The following is an excerpt from a public communication of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture under the title “Understanding world nutrition – facts and background”:
“In order to be able to satisfy these demands, agricultural production would have to be increased by about two thirds by 2050. To achieve this, water, fertile soils and biodiversity in particular must be used and preserved more intelligently – and above all more effectively. So far, around twelve million hectares of agricultural land are lost worldwide every year – due to overgrazing, unsuitable cultivation methods, erosion or road and urban construction. If this trend continues unabated, harvests would fall by up to twelve percent over the next 25 years.” [4]
Incidentally, the above statement “decline by up to twelve per cent in the next 25 years” may even be considered very optimistic according to other opinions. Many developments are possible in which the trend would not only “continue unabated”, but in which the fragile network of intensive agriculture could shrink much more or even collapse within just a few years.
This is an emerging global escalation that will first lead to dramatic situations of unprecedented famine in the economically poorer regions. Already since 2016, the number of undernourished people has been rising again, after previously falling steadily on the back of the straw fire of intensive agriculture. For several years, global wheat yields, among others, have stagnated – despite increasing use of pesticides and fertilisers. Since the alleged “high-performance crops” are in fact genetically impoverished cripples whose only “high performance” consists of over-rapid growth and excessively heavy grains, they have to be kept alive until harvest with ever more support.
The planet is poisoned with pesticides as the “crops” become weaker and weaker
For a few decades now, the parasitic enemies and competitors of the plants have been countered with poisons whose toxicity often exceeds that of earlier pesticides many times over. This is frequently used to claim that global pesticide consumption has been reduced by intensive agriculture. It is thus concealed that, for example, with highly efficient neonicotinoids, only one thousandth of the amount of active ingredient is needed to kill an insect than was the case with many of the products used in the past. And this public bamboozling is happening while more and more experts are warning of an apocalyptic decline in the global biomass of insects. Insects are by far the largest faction and, at the same time, the largest food source of the animal kingdom. Their collapse would first cause the populations of birds, reptiles and amphibians to collapse, and eventually those of all terrestrial vertebrates.
Agriculture, at least without radical changes, will soon lead to the collapse of itself, of large parts of the ecological fabric and also of the entire civilisational system. Because there has never been any enlightenment in this system about the core ecological cause of all this, there are currently many naïve evasions. For example, the idea that new methods of genetic engineering could eliminate the problems of “useful plants” and massively increase productivity.
That these opportunities of agricultural genetic engineering cannot exist apart from wishful thinking and fantasy was well seen when the owners of Monsanto, the most experienced company and the global market leader in this field, suddenly sold the company to the German Bayer Group a few years ago. In view of the contradiction between coming needs and decreasing availabilities outlined above, this sale would probably have been not only one of the biggest, but also the most stupid deal in the history of civilisation. So it must have been the case that at the management level, on the basis of a wealth of experience, it was recognised that agricultural genetic engineering cannot function sustainably.
Ukraine as the ” breadbasket of Europe” is a geostrategic target of the highest significance
On a larger scale, fertile soil for the production of staple foods will thus be, in the near future, practically the most valuable commodity of all, next to fresh water. Ukraine has been a geostrategic target of utmost interest since the collapse of the political Eastern bloc in 1990, not only because of its location between the newly formed political Eastern and Western blocs. Rather, its enormous fertility played an important role even then. Already in the times of the Soviet Union, the region was considered a “granary” and today the country is often referred to as the ” breadbasket of Europe”.
The haggling over the valuable soil has so far been largely under the radar of public perception. In the background, however, it may have long been the main motive when diplomats and secret services from East and West tried to bring about the development of a government that was dignified or most obedient to them. For the geostragic experts of the states must have foreseen long ago what was in store for humanity in terms of food.
An important part of the aforementioned haggling went through leading agricultural corporations from the USA as well as Chinese state corporations. Politically and financially supported, they pushed with high pressure to secure the valuable arable land through business contracts for the purpose of establishing intensive agriculture. Since land cannot be sold to foreigners in Ukraine, the investments involved some form of long-term lease.
The foreign investors included Western market leaders such as DuPont and Monsanto, who were massively supported by major financial institutions up to and including the World Bank. Experts spoke of a veritable “takeover of Ukrainian agriculture by Western corporations.” [5] But the Chinese were also very eager. For example, there are reports that the state-owned Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) secured the long-term use of three million hectares of black earth soil through contracts, which is equivalent to more than 25 per cent of the arable land used in Germany. [6]
The ecological background of the war offers potential for a nuclear world war
Against this entire background, it can be concluded that the current events in Ukraine have a deep ecological background, the potential of which reaches as far as the emergence of a Third World War, including the use of nuclear weapons. For the geopolitical West, with the knowledge of the approaching food catastrophe, will do almost anything not to lose the use of the black earth and not to leave it to Russia. This is unlikely to include the initial use of nuclear weapons from this side. But otherwise, the support with weapons and the supply of information gained through state-of-the-art intelligence systems will proceed without quantitative and temporal ceilings.
The Russian dictator has thus committed a naïve strategic error. This can probably best be explained by incompetent advisors who had not understood the ecological framework. For against the aforementioned background, the idea of a complete occupation of the huge and extremely valuable granary was unrealistic. And so Putin, who not long ago presented himself as a self-confident, strong man sitting bare-chested on a horse, is now seen by much of the global public as a coward and loser who has never fought himself, hiding in luxury bunkers and murdering thousands of women and children from there. Meanwhile, his army is chafing against an enemy that the Western industrialised countries will continue to prop up.
Perhaps there will be some interim solution, for instance if the dictator is eliminated by an internal intrigue. Otherwise, however, a psychologically exceptional situation could arise in him as the ruler, which could end in any form of rampage. That would be another possibility for the beginning of a final collapse of civilisation. And like all other escalations, it too will be traceable through many causal chains to the same core cause.
Continue to Part 3: The most probable origin of the Corona pandemic.
[4] https://www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Broschueren/Welternaehrung-verstehen.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5
[5] https://www.zeit.de/wirtschaft/2015-03/ukraine-landwirtschaft-schwarzerde-monsanto?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
[6] https://www.handelsblatt.com/politik/international/riesige-flaechen-china-kauft-ackerland-in-der-ukraine-auf/8826952.html