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2023 m. gegužės 4 d., ketvirtadienis

All our works have lost their meaning

"The money will leave our country, and we will only have problems. Nothing new. Especially since a recession has already been officially announced and the beginning of a crisis is possible. About what our future is and what plan we will follow when we get out of the hole, only the lazy and the Minister of Economy and Innovation did not say. When we're already on our way to space, it's probably not a good idea to talk about trivial matters.

 

     As ELTA reports, in the dispute over cheap grain from Ukraine, the European Commission, under pressure from several EU countries, restricted the import of some Ukrainian products. Until June 5, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia will not be able to freely trade in Ukrainian wheat, corn, rapeseed and sunflower, the European Commission announced on Tuesday evening. However, this production will continue to be able to be transported through the mentioned countries, for example, to other EU countries.

 

     The EU has already allocated 100 million EUR support for the farmers of the border countries suffering due to cheap Ukrainian grain.

 

     For a long time, European farmers had difficulties because they could not compete with Ukrainian eggs and poultry.

 

     We will not be able to compete with the Ukrainians in terms of cheap energy resources - even during the conflict they export electricity, because they have enough nuclear power plants, which, it seems, they will not replace with solar and wind power plants.

 

     What we will face is briefly described by the president of the Lithuanian Grain Growers Association, Aušrys Macijauskas, who himself has been to Ukraine several times and communicated with local farmers:

 

     "There are large farms from 5 to 10 thousand hectares. I talked to ordinary farmers, they name them as the most optimal farms. Larger ones are already difficult to maintain. The land has not been sold so far. It was distributed to former kolkhoz workers, but not split. The man only knew that there was his plot in the area of several thousand hectares, but he did not know where.

 

     When we told them that our land ownership is limited to 500 ha, they were surprised. There, a farm the size of our three-hectare farm is not considered a farmer. Usually a person has a job and then takes care of his several hundred hectares. A real farmer, who lives from this, manages from 3 thousand hectares.

 

     In terms of productivity, they practically do not use fertilizers and thresh depending on the amount of rainfall. This is how 5 tons of wheat grows. Using new technologies, it is easy to increase this amount to 10-12 tons."

 

     Our next steps are very clear. At the beginning - an active invasion of Warsaw by our diplomatic corps. Yes, not to the capital of Taiwan or Brussels, but precisely to the capital of Poland, so that we would lay the railway tracks and through this country the trains from Ukraine would move towards the suffocating port of Klaipėda. Not only with grains. The goods are many and varied, and even a solution that is not very convenient for logistics, if we are talking about cheap products (grains that are transported from Ukraine to be sold in Africa), can be perfectly suitable for other goods. The Black Sea is likely to be a rather complicated body of water for a long time to come.

 

     The goal is to get out of the logistical vacuum ourselves.

 

     Another simple question with a very simple answer, which has been known for decades: where to put raw products - milk semi-finished products and cereals, because we have nothing more to offer to the world markets. We have not yet developed "real" products with high added value.

 

     It is likely that we will not create factories of the level of "Danone", which would sell yogurts at a particularly high price, but with state subsidies (let's not be naive that international concerns will jump out of love for Lithuania's perennial meadows, where cows graze) we can attract one other large processor - an international concern with clear markets.

 

     Same with grain processing companies. Their construction projects are several, and it is encouraging. If the crisis does not wipe out these startups, there will be prospects to export not only grain, but to load much more interesting products on ships.

 

     If you noticed - not a word about cooperation. Farmer cooperatives are good and to be welcomed, but this is our internal problem. The structure of our primary agricultural production is such that cooperatives will not save without factories working in international markets. 

 

We are not Germans or Poles, most of whom work for the local market and can rely on loyal local consumers and try to keep out foreign manufacturers by legal and illegal means. We are those foreign manufacturers that everyone shakes off like the devil at the cross, and that must be understood.

 

     In addition, we will never produce at the same price as Ukrainians or Brazilians, where energy is cheap, the climate is favorable, and farmers have only read about super-mega-strict environmental requirements and animal welfare on news portals, in the "foreign news" section. This is neither good nor bad. It's just that their cost is much lower, and no robots will allow us to make up this difference.

 

     As I mentioned, the only way out for now is to turn on your own brain. Namely own, instead of relying on foreign consultants and waiting for the conclusions of newly baked artificial intelligence. Otherwise, the changes will be fast and very unpleasant.

 

     If you don't believe it, compare grain prices today and a year ago."

 

Transportation via the Black Sea will always be much cheaper than by rail. That transportation from Ukraine by sea is happening even now, it will continue no matter what. We will put money into the railway, which will stand idle.

 

The quality of our grain is poor because the soils are poor. Therefore, we will not make anything very tasty, we are trying unnecessarily.

 

If you are the last to leave Lithuania, don't forget to turn off the electricity.

 



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