Conflict

There was a time, not so long ago, when politicians at least made an effort to pretend they were telling the truth. Sure, they stretched it, massaged it, and occasionally trampled all over it, but there was still some vague expectation that outright, blatant lying was a career-ending mistake. But today? Forget it. Lying is no longer a political liability—it’s a winning strategy.

The advent of the latest elected monarch of the United States of America, one Donald J. Trump, whose main expertise, apart from top rating television shows, is property development perhaps provides Australia with the opportunity to finally make a decent deal with its great friend and ally, Uncle Sam.

In 2024, Ukrainian agricultural exporters achieved impressive results. They sold goods worth US$24.5b. This is the second best result in the entire history of Ukrainian agriculture. The victory was achieved despite many problems and thanks to intensive improvement of agriculture. The war became the main driver of competitiveness for Ukrainian farmers.

In Ukraine food prices continue to rise and the state is unable to help citizens. A natural solution to the problem could be for the starving to move to rural areas to farm on their own land. This is how 4 million Ukrainian families live.

The state will lose taxpayers, and entrepreneurs will face additional difficulties in doing business. The state budget and entrepreneurs will lose in order to curb terrorism and international crime. In the case of bank accounts for foreigners, a long-standing rule of humanity applies. Namely, they choose the lesser of two evils. This is an unspoken rule of the global financial system.

Labour shortage is becoming a big problem in Ukrainian agriculture. By the end of 2023, 10 per cent of agricultural enterprises indicated a lack of labour as the main factor hindering business development. This was the highest value since 2013 ... The war created a problem. But war can solve this problem.

In one city, the cost of milk is double! Buyers are outraged. And sellers set the prices they want. Yet the law prohibits making a trade markup on milk of more than 10 per cent. All this happens not only because of violation of the law. Another reason is the lack of a food consumption culture.

As an Australian military history nut, I like to think I know at least something about most of our major military actions since the late 1800s ... So what better opportunity to fill in that missing piece of my history puzzle for myself than to try and explain to you what it was all about? So here we go, the Malayan Emergency.

Gardening in extreme conditions is not an educational program anywhere. Ukrainians in the combat zone are learning this from their own personal experience. Many people in other countries believe that this is a useful experience that should be taught to the population in peacetime ... Read Pavel's life hack for gardening in a war zone.

So in the last two articles we’ve covered the role the Royal Australian Navy had played around the periphery of the war, the action in Rabaul right at the start of things, escorting the first convoy, involvement in the Gallipoli campaign and the patrolling undertaken by the HMAS Psyche. But, just as it was on the land, the only real chance of bringing the war to a successful conclusion was to directly target the German forces in Europe.

Due to import restrictions, Ukrainian farmers lost about 10 per cent of their income. Although imports have increased, the domestic market of Ukraine is still characterised by an oversupply. The selling price of wheat on EXW terms is less than the cost price. This means that imports using gray schemes and dumping prices will continue.

Why do both sides of federal politics continue to think we need to have a shipbuilding industry as part of our naval defence sector? Every year we spend billions of dollars trying to build ships in Australia when the most cost effective thing to do is import them off the shelf from our allies.

Insufficient globalisation of the world economy is holding back the development of amateur gardening around the world. Ukraine is a clear example of this. Gardeners cannot purchase the plants they like or are forced to do so at inflated prices. But everything can change if globalisation wins.

Trade logistics are set to become increasingly challenging for Australia’s agricultural sector with the escalating tensions in the Red Sea disrupting global trade, according to agribusiness banking specialist Rabobank. However, there are also potential upsides for the nation’s wheat and barley exports, the bank said.

In 1938, during the Munich Crisis, British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain expressed his distaste for making war preparations over "a quarrel in a faraway land between people of which we know nothing" ... Like Neville Chamberlain, our Prime Minister shows no interest in getting involved in a quarrel between people of whom he has no interest; yet anyone with the slightest awareness of international relations would know that there is no longer such a thing as a faraway land of which we can afford to have no interest ... Yemen is en route for the ships that take our grain and livestock to key markets such as Egypt and Israel.

Peace and the end of the war are the most important things that Ukrainian farmers need. This is understood not only by Ukrainians, but also by all friends of Ukraine. Politicians from the United States, a country that is Ukraine’s main ally, said New Year’s wishes to the Ukrainian people on the pages of Australian Rural & Regional News.

Ukrainian agriculture has suffered catastrophic losses due to the war with Russia. However, compensation for these losses does not have clear prospects. This means that the prospects for the recovery of this sector of the economy are in doubt ... ARR.News asked US experts one question: What political decisions can be made by the USA governments to compensate for Ukraine's losses from the Russian invasion?

The population of planet Earth is increasing. But the area of the planet is not growing. Sooner or later, this will make famine a mortal threat to the population of many countries. Scientific and technological progress will not save everyone. After all, increasing the efficiency of agricultural labour can solve the problem only when the area of agricultural land is sufficient for this. Therefore, food wars will become part of the future of humanity. The first such war is already underway. This is the war in Ukraine!

The large volume of production and broken logistics have made Ukrainian grain an attractive target for politicians and businessmen ... ARR.News asks Ukrainian market specialists: how much will the cost of Ukrainian grain decrease if problems with exports persist?

Alison McEwen. Victor Boltak writes from Ukraine: "… And your help (Ukraine Appeal) is valued very highly here. "Recently I donated $275 USD for medicine which was taken yesterday to a so called ‘stabilization point’ – this is the first medical help point close to the battlefield where the wounded are delivered from the front lines and where military doctors try to give the first aid and stabilize the condition of the wounded so they could be further moved to the field hospital.