Green Socialist Notes, Episode 331 with Special Guest Natallia Yaroshenko

You mentioned Barry Commoner, and I just want to tell my audience here that if you don't know who Barry Commoner was, you should know.

He was an environmental scientist.

You should get the book, Making Peace with the Planet, which was his last book.

And it's a great environmental perspective on what we need to do.

And he was also the presidential candidate of the Citizens Party in 1980, which the German Greens regarded as America's Green Party.

And when we did form the Green Party in 1984, a lot of people in that party, the Citizens Party, came in to our organizing effort.

So Natalia mentioned commoners, if everybody knows, but I'm not sure they do.

So I want to underscore that.

I think that's somebody people should read.

So Russia poses as anti-colonial, but they're blocking the grain exports out of the Odessa and other ports that Ukraine has on the Black Sea.

And Ukraine has responded by taking out the Russian ports and ships.

So grain being exported from Russia and Ukraine is not getting to Africa, the Middle East, some of it goes to East Asia.

And so, you know, Russia's posture is a anti-colonial force is hypocritical because, you know, here they're undermining the ability of African people to get food from Ukraine.

So, you know, what are your thoughts about that in terms of, you know, the importance of agriculture, you know, the Black Earth Belt on the Ukrainian steppe, you know, is one of the most productive areas in the world and the world's being denied its fruits.

you know, by Russia.

So I wonder if you had any thoughts on that.

No, I've been thinking about the impact of different types of economies, in particular in EU member states, from the very beginning of full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

I was stuck for a while in Germany when the full-scale invasion happened, and I witnessed lots of changes in...

I might say, in particular behavior patterns of Germans when they try to buy as much flour, as much oil as possible.

Obviously, the generation that is currently living and buying all the things haven't witnessed the Second World War.

However, the pattern of buying things and overconsuming started to happen.

And that mainly showed the importance of Ukrainian agricultural industry, not only internally, right? Because internally, well, we as Ukrainians living in Ukraine, we usually know what is happening and what kind of prices we are to have if the crop season is super unsuccessful, right? However, from the very beginning of full-scale invasion, like almost immediately, in 10 days, that was the significant price change in the aforementioned products like oil, bread, flour, butter.

Especially because of the case that the majority of the stuff is being either produced in Ukraine and then imported.

Or the grain was bought and then further products were like made already in the EU member states, which obviously put me in the condition that I start to feel how important Ukrainian agriculture system is.

And that probably was one of the case when Europeans who have never thought about how, you know, how fragile their agriculture is and how fragile the economy is, started to think that Ukraine actually is not just the biggest country in Europe, but it's also one of the biggest producers for different goods, in particular related to agriculture.