Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar

[Sankari]

*Russian Foreign Ministry Says: United States Must Explain the Biological Programmes in Ukraine

Conspiracy theorists are eating this up like free bacon. They're convinced that Ukraine and Taiwan are housing nefarious 'biolabs' for the manufacture of WMD, and that Putin and Xi are working together to destroy them.

 

[Freakbro]

Interesting nugget on the Guardian's live feed:

Ireland’s agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue told RTE that farmers, many dairy and beef producers, should consider growing grain this year. He said the country imports 60% of its grain.​

The wider impact of this war on food production is going to be a bigger deal that oil and gas I think. But I also wonder whether that suggestion is remotely practical, firstly because - to my limited agricultural understanding - the fields that you tend to raise livestock on aren't necessarily suitable for crops and second because farmers presumably only have the equipment they need to do the kind of farming they do. Surely you need a mass of specialist equipment to plant, raise, and harvest grain that a cattle farmer won't have? And this stuff is really expensive, I believe. Perhaps we have someone here with more knowledge who could comment?

We already sowed the hay crop for this year at the tail end of last year, but some do wait for spring. But yes your points are valid about equipment etc plus what do you do with the cattle you already have if you are repurposing the fields.

Plus the lack and cost of fertiliser is going to hit the yields of everything. Last year we spent just over £2k on fert for our hay crop, even just due to Covid the price last Nov for the same amount was now over £9k, so we couldn't afford to get it. Looking now, we couldn't even get fertiliser even if we could afford it.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the world could be looking at some serious food shortages, which will hit the 3rd world terribly.

 

[mid_gen]

Yes they are and yes russia know that it is happening.

Yes I've seen the posts. Companies with satellites are posting imagery of Russian positions with co-ordinates and just putting it in the public domain. What anyone decides to do with that information isn't their problem

 

[StriderX]

Conspiracy theorists are eating this up like free bacon. They're convinced that Ukraine and Taiwan are housing nefarious 'biolabs' for the manufacture of WMD, and that Putin and Xi are working together to destroy them.

A silver lining to that is that they make themselves visible to security services, they're also doing us a favour personally since anyone spouting this putrid propaganda can now be identified as dullards and thoroughly isolated from any further conversation.

 

[Turn]

*Russian Foreign Ministry Says: Operation’s Aims Do Not Include Overthrowing Ukraine’s Govt
*Russian Foreign Ministry Says: United States Must Explain the Biological Programmes in Ukraine
*Russian Foreign Ministry Says: It Would Be Better If Our Goals in Ukraine Are Achieved Through Talks

*Russian Foreign Ministry Says Biological Weapons Were Being Developed in Ukraine
*Russian Foreign Ministry: Ukraine Had Ordered the Destruction of Plague, Cholera, and Anthrax Samples in Labs After February 24th.
Speaking live on Sky News - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Auq9mYxFEE

 

[mburn_83]

We already sowed the hay crop for this year at the tail end of last year, but some do wait for spring. But yes your points are valid about equipment etc plus what do you do with the cattle you already have if you are repurposing the fields.

Plus the lack and cost of fertiliser is going to hit the yields of everything. Last year we spent just over £2k on fert for our hay crop, even just due to Covid the price last Nov for the same amount was now over £9k, so we couldn't afford to get it. Looking now, we couldn't even get fertiliser even if we could afford it.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the world could be looking at some serious food shortages, which will hit the 3rd world terribly.

Was there not an issue where the EU were paying farmers to leave fields unused?

Could this land not be used? It would seem prudent to increase the herds - and encourage people to eat environmentally friendly British produce and reduce intake of bread/pasta to improve the nations diet.

This crisis has shown that all countries should be as self sufficient as possible in relation to energy and food.

 

[Curlyriff]

A side issue created by this now is that if Russia capture any english speaker over there, they could accuse them of being an armed forces member, and possible spy.

Get paraded on tv like the Iraqi's did with downed pilots etc.

Could very easily be manipulated into being touted as excessive interference by the west.

In fairness they could have already started that with mis-information if they so wanted. Messy but not good.

 

[EGuitarStar]

*Russian Foreign Ministry Says Biological Weapons Were Being Developed in Ukraine
Speaking live on Sky News - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Auq9mYxFEE

I can predict the next Conspiracy, Covid was unleashed on the World by Ukraine.

 

[Murphy]

Yes. Five days ago the White House confirmed that the US has been sharing intelligence in real time with Ukraine.

Oh, i missed that. Thanks for the link.

EDIT: And everyone else who brought me up to speed with links and such.

 

[Freakbro]

Was there not an issue where the EU were paying farmers to leave fields unused

It's not a problem, you need to leave fields fallow on a rotation

Could this land not be used? It would seem prudent to increase the herds - and encourage people to eat environmentally friendly British produce and reduce intake of bread/pasta to improve the nations diet.

This crisis has shown that all countries should be as self sufficient as possible in relation to energy and food.

We need to reduce the amount of meat we produce/eat not increase it, as it consumes way more resources and energy than crops

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Land thats been used for cattle grazing will be fairly good from crops, the issue would be more the return in the other direction, not impossible but more tricky in a timely manner

Problem as ever with these things is you cant just flip a switch. There is a lot of work required to flip production, do they already have the cows etc. There are times to do certain activities and not being able to do them at the right time has large knock on effects

There has been a push for soil management to better practices, farmers who are doing it well are seeing only marginal impacts in crops but significant benefits in costs. Eg grazing cattle by moving them frequently. The grass if not virtually stripped recovers far faster if its only been grazed for a few days, so it grows faster and hence less additional feed is needed. What this requires is more management, which of course is time. The massive price rises in fertiliser etc is likely to push more to try it. Different field patterns with mixed crops (such as a belt of fruit trees down the middle) boost bio diversity which boosts yields etc. Science is moving a lot of this forwards and actually its partly behind the sorts of thing Gove talks about with changing the way the subsidies are paid to the farmers.

 

[StriderX]

Was there not an issue where the EU were paying farmers to leave fields unused?

Could this land not be used? It would seem prudent to increase the herds - and encourage people to eat environmentally friendly British produce and reduce intake of bread/pasta to improve the nations diet.

This crisis has shown that all countries should be as self sufficient as possible in relation to energy and food.

Leaving fields fallow is about ensuring the soil doesn't empty it's nutrients from constantly being disturbed.

 

[Ahleckz]

So either:
1) They'll lying
2) Scotland consumes such an insane amount of Irn Bru that Russia only accounts for 0.1%; despite it seeming like they were big consumers

I wouldn't pass the Scots on option 2 lol

I suspect option 2 is the reason!

 

[Turn]

*EU’s Foreign Min. Borrell Will Propose a Mechanism to Sanction Misinformation.
*Ukraine Energy Minister Says We Don’t Know What’s Happening at Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
-
https://twitter.com/PriapusIQ/status/1501498156097363972

*The French Presidency of the EU: Member States Have Agreed on Further Sanctions Towards Russian Leaders and Oligarchs Regarding the Invasion of Ukraine.
*France: The New Sanctions Target 3 Belarusian Banks to Be Banned from Swift; New Sanctions Also Clarify Any Questions over Cryptocurrencies.
https://twitter.com/FXstreetNews/status/1501499031645827075
https://twitter.com/maytham956/status/1501498143476793345

 

[Mr Jack]

We already sowed the hay crop for this year at the tail end of last year, but some do wait for spring.

Thanks for your insight. I also wondered about planting times, the fields around me seems to have crop in them already.

Plus the lack and cost of fertiliser is going to hit the yields of everything. Last year we spent just over £2k on fert for our hay crop, even just due to Covid the price last Nov for the same amount was now over £9k, so we couldn't afford to get it. Looking now, we couldn't even get fertiliser even if we could afford it.

Oof, there's something I hadn't thought of.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that the world could be looking at some serious food shortages, which will hit the 3rd world terribly.

Yeah, I understand the North African countries (which aren't really 3rd world anymore for the most part) are particularly worried. I wonder whether we'll see some countries shift from cash crops to food production?

 

[bingham67]

Yanks moaning that the price of fuel going up welcome to our world.

 

[Turn]

*Dutch Prime Minister Rutte, On Possibility Of Joint EU Funds In Response To Ukrainian Crisis: Let's First Use Existing Instruments To The Max - RTRS
https://twitter.com/MJSchiffers/status/1501500345540878345

 

[Ahleckz]

It is the same thing.

It is irrelevant what the Pow are doing on camera, the very fact of putting them on camera, be it tv, or still photos, is against the Geneva convention..

No it isn’t. This is false information. The Geneva convention makes no provision for photographing/videography of POW. The section that touches on it states:
"... prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity."
This has been interpreted to mean that they shouldn’t be shown in humiliating or insulting circumstances. It certainly doesn’t ban all pictures of prisoners, it is completely dependent on the context.

Finally, what do you think should be done when someone breaks the Geneva convention?

 

[Rroff]

Interesting nugget on the Guardian's live feed:

Ireland’s agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue told RTE that farmers, many dairy and beef producers, should consider growing grain this year. He said the country imports 60% of its grain.​

The wider impact of this war on food production is going to be a bigger deal than oil and gas I think. But I also wonder whether that suggestion is remotely practical, firstly because - to my limited agricultural understanding - the fields that you tend to raise livestock on aren't necessarily suitable for crops and second because farmers presumably only have the equipment they need to do the kind of farming they do. Surely you need a mass of specialist equipment to plant, raise, and harvest grain that a cattle farmer won't have? And this stuff is really expensive, I believe. Perhaps we have someone here with more knowledge who could comment?

Can't speak from first hand experience especially not Ireland but around here there are places which hire out the hardware and some of the bigger farms will rent it out and/or both the hardware and manpower. But there would obviously be issues scaling that up. At least around here there is a good mix of farm types.

 

[Turn]

*Canada’s PM Trudeau: We Will Deliver Another Supply of Highly Specialised Military Equipment to Ukraine – Tweet


https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1501501150666924035