A wise woman once said to me, “Don’t ask yourself, ‘What do I want in life?’ Instead, ask, ‘What am I willing to suffer for?’” Achieving your goals almost always requires enduring some type of short-term pain — suffering, if you will. To achieve greatness in sports, we endure tough workouts, forgo late nights out so we can get up early to work out or take additional practice. To get ahead in our studies, we give up partying with friends in favor of the library. To get ahead in the corporate world, we work longer hours, take on extra projects, or uproot ourselves and our families in pursuit of new opportunities. To achieve our desired weight, we have to forgo foods full of sugar, processed carbs, salt and fat. The list is endless. Short term “suffering” is a critical part of any journey towards a better tomorrow. Everything else is just a fantasy.
That lesson came into stark reality this week, as Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (which supports Putin and served as a staging base for one prong of Russia’s attack) are major players in the global agricultural markets, so many of us spent a lot of time dealing with questions around fertilizer pricing and product availability.
Right now, the West wants to stop Russia but doesn’t want to endure any real economic or military pain to do it. Putin knows this and thus continues his reassembly of the Soviet empire. It began in 2008 with Russia’s war against Georgia. Crimea followed in 2014, and Eastern Ukraine quickly followed. Putin has also assassinated dissidents on western soil. Like France and England’s appeasement of Hitler in the Sudetenland in 1938 led to an invasion of Poland, Denmark, and the rest of Europe, our unwillingness to endure pain over the past several years has brought us to this point. Now he has invaded all of Ukraine.
So what do we do?
First, we need to unite. We need to stop fighting with each other. The left needs to stop blaming Trump for his coddling of Putin and the right needs to stop blaming Biden for being timid and his dislike for oil and gas. We need to put our bitter politics aside and focus our rage on the person who actually caused it — Vladimir Putin.
Second, we need to sever ties with Russia. As Winston Churchill famously said, “You can’t reason with a tiger when your head is in it’s mouth.” We need to get our head out of Russia’s economic mouth. Cutting Russia off from banking is not enough. Putin has seen this playbook and is ready for it. Russia now trades directly with China in Yuan, bypassing the international SWIFT system and the default international currency of US dollars. They also have over $600 Billion in foreign reserves.
Getting our collective head out of Russia’s mouth is simple but incredibly difficult. Russia is a huge source of natural resources, and the trade of those resources provides badly needed hard cash to support Putin. For Europe, the public piece of this is natural gas and oil. Russia has 16% of the world’s natural gas production and 11% of the world’s crude oil exports. About 40% of Europe’s natural gas comes from Russia right now. All of us drive cars and heat our homes, so we will feel the price increases the fastest and the most.
As the chart from CoBank shows, this will have a direct impact on those of us in the farming industry. Russia and Ukraine are large wheat and corn producers which many countries rely on for food. Russia and Belarus are also large sources of fertilizer. Russia produces 19% of the world’s potash exports, 16% of its Urea exports, 21% of the world’s anhydrous ammonia exports. The US also imports about 750,000 metric tons of phosphate from Russia. And Belarus, led by Putin’s henchman, Lukashenko, produces 21% of the world’s potash exports. For those unfamiliar with farming, without nitrogen (urea/ammonia), phosphate and potassium (potash), you don’t grow enough food, fuel or fiber to feed, move or clothe the world. There are ways to replace a lot of these tons but none of them are quick or cheap.
So the question is, Are we willing to pay more for our food, fuel and fiber in order to stop Putin?
If it helps lessen the pain of choosing, history tells us the question is not whether we want pain today or not, but whether we want some pain now or more pain later. As President Kennedy proclaimed in 1961, we need to,
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
Putin won’t stop until confronted by people and countries united in their willingness to bear that burden — to suffer — to stop him. And China, with its eye on Taiwan, is watching.
Onward!
Jeff
