Farmer Diaries

A drone built in Kyiv costs between $300 and $5,000 for the larger longer-range models.    The cheap battlefield drones are already changing the nature of warfare because drones are more polyvalent and extremely cheap in their simplest format.    The reality is that Ukraine was able to shut down airports around Moscow last weekend with its drone, which is 1,700 miles from the Ukrainian border.     The question is therefore is America's war machine geared to the war of 30 years ago or to the war of today.   A swarm of small drones could lay waste to the flight operation of an aircraft carrier, and while the F35 is a fantastic platform it's hard to justify the capital, and manpower when a drone costs 1.000th the cost can do about 95% of its mission.  How many American war vessels are built specifically for drone operations?   How about none!   Of course, the firepower of an aircraft carrier can be unbelievable but it may be taken to a standstill rather than victory because of dro

 The four biggest ticket items in the US Federal government Report are Social Security, defence, healthcare, and interest expenses Social Security is an expense, but it is also something for which people pay directly form of insurance. A certain amount is deducted from your monthly check, which will become your payment once you retire. The reality is that most Social Security in the United States are "pay as you go" as the money has been used by governments in the past.. The reality is that cutting Social Security would be a very easy thing to do most retirees are already Republican and they’re not about to vote Democrats anyway worse, they won’t vote at all so who cares? The second is more complicated defence spending has two aspects. The first is the cost of running the world's single-largest army, but there’s also the VA and other retirement benefits for past soldiers. There’s not a lot to cut here if you’re gonna be strong on defence, it’s hard to see how you can cut

 The last time I look, the stock was down 20%. There’s an old saying in the business by the rumour sell the news. The truth is that Donald Trump right now couldn’t care less about true social. He’s the president he has to support of the Senate and the representative and the judges he doesn’t need anything from anybody. It is almost certain that all his court cases will go into Supreme Court review and he will be found not guilty of anything that’s America today. as for truth, social the fact that they announced their third quarter numbers the day of the election tells you everything you need to know about their results. They were horrible just simply horrible. How this business is worth $5 billion working with almost no revenues and no plausible source of revenues is mind blowing.  But it doesn’t matter those who bought true social by political conviction Will get hosed those who bought it based on trend probably made a lot of money assuming they bought it right

 The only question is how lazy Trump will be in a second term. He has strong majorities in both the house and the Senate and he can recast the United States more or less the way he wants. Obviously, the first step will be to continue his reform of the judiciary system with appointments of strongly pro-Republican judges in terms of healthcare American expects the removal of the Obama care and replace it with nothing, which is what the Republicans want anyway. I suspect that Europe can put even money that NATO will be shut down within the next 18 to 24 months. Donald Trump has never liked European countries and would prefer a line with With President Putin, then with the European nations, he has greater affinity with that man than he does with a German, the French or the Brits. I think it’s fair to expect massive increase in tariffs and massive reduction in taxes. America should be ready to see a removal of the Department of education and social services and removal of about four or five

 The Americans have chosen Donald Trump. He won decisively he even won the popular vote why Donald Trump won is an interesting question. A few weeks ago, a man found an old shopping list of 2018. The price of fulfilling that same order today was nearly 4 times as high in the last 12 months general mill has increased the price Cereals by 20% because of higher expenses or they failed to say, of course, was a massive soldering increases that the senior management of general Mills gave each other in In the order of 300% the reality today is that the US stock market has never been higher because profitability by US corporations have never been higher I have not eaten at McDonald’s restaurant for more than 20 years but when I heard last week that a big Mac french fries and a Coke was $17 it was evident that something was very wrong. Price gouging has become the norm in North America. The true lack of competition makes it possible for delivery points to jack up their price dramatically with n

 2024 will probably be our best year ever.   The numbers for the third quarters are now in, and while prices are on track with 2023 figures, the budgeted volume is almost 25% higher than last year.   Undoubtedly, the increased volume of produce and our new-ish high tunnels have had a major impact.   Demand from distributors remains strong and we are entirely satisfied with this segment, but where as in 2022 it represented nearly 80% of our volume, this year it was down to 45%, excluding the business that is channelled via our wholesalers but is destined for our subsidiaries.    One thing I had not counted on was the quick reproduction rate of our pigs, first pigs are very very good at reproducing, and that has increased our labour costs, but our direct-to-consumer business there has proven very successful and the 44 hams we have aging, are looking delicious.   Not the AAA equivalent to what the Spanish produce but a very attractive solution at a fraction of the cost.  Our current 44 ha

 So for some bizarre reason our farm has become a bit Of an outlier, what happened is that our farm is no longer tied to the electric grid. The reason has little to do with the cost of energy electric in particular and everything to do with our slurry and waste treatment plant that has become a bio digester. The new European rules on clean water are such that when we built our farm installing a bio digester was a very reasonable solution to a ongoing environmental problem It was not so much out of conviction that green energy was better, but we needed to transform the slurry into something that was useable and non-toxic, especially we need to make sure that the water was clean before it went back into the water system That is a big advantage of a Bio digester The reality is that all our cattle produce enough waste at our farm, produce enough waste that it made sense for us to have some redundancy and two bio digesters with the waste gas we heat our high tunnels, the houses, and all the

 we were in London last night, enjoying dinner with friends acquaintances, and it turns out friends of friends who are not our friends. We were having dinner in a relatively well-known eatery in Soho when the friend of a friend starting talking about the greatness of the American healthcare system, needless to say this front of a friend is loaded. He thought that the NHS Was a tyranny and that the public sector was no good to provide healthcare The interesting commentary was that his only experience with healthcare was a boob job and a nose job for his daughter He had always been healthy, and therefore no experience of the healthcare system that didn’t stop them from having an opinion on everything The questions becomes Do you answer to such ad hominem attacks or do you let it go and leave early? That’s the question in the end we chose the Latter and went home early. My wife asked me why I didn’t Confront this hard I told her that I didn’t feel like getting to an argument with someone

 for nearly 200 Years the reinsurance market has been the place where regular insurance company have come to protect themselves again catastrophic events. In the last decade or two that market has proven to be harder and harder to be profitable Some very good friends. I’ve been involved in the market for over half a century. They have said they have not seen things as bad as they are today ever. Names are quitting the business right left and center. There is a seven year Exit window in the Lloyds insurance market. Names are quitting as they see that the last decade or so have generated no profits. The catastrophic weather destruction of the past few weeks in the United States are largely absorbed by The reinsurance market, And when the Payout exceeds premium by nearly 200% this is not a good business. Watching the destruction in North Carolina and today in Florida, just confirm what has been known for a long time that this is an insane market that is in and not an acceptable Risk.  The

 Twitter was never great. It was a place full of rumours innuendos and stupid stuff. However, it was still a place where experts were local people could exchange information that could be valuable was not always valuable but could be valuable. Twitter is no longer that first it’s called X and not Twitter anymore, but it seems to be only there to amplify the crazy thoughts The crazy talk and devoid of any useful purpose. When they only voice you hear in the public Square is fire fire fire you stop paying attention. The evidence is overwhelming that X Is something new but is it something anyone has any use for? The funny thing is how much of the Internet is now useless. Most news aggregators are full of nothing. The news is the headline and the headline is the news. There is no analysis. Nobody no thought clearly all produced by robots. All this is is to show that the Internet is finally growing up. Paywalls are back at full strength.  After years of not paying for the news, the news is

I dare anyone to listen to any random speech given by Trump in the past two months to afterward things that this is a sane and coherent man. Never mind the fixation on Hannibal Lecter, or more recently the reenactment of the movie the purge the man makes no sense. It’s not one speech. It’s all of them which speaks the question or what basis are people supporting him? He has no policy on inflation, healthcare defense, except that he’ll make things better in terrible terrible world that’s his policy. He’s got a great idea and he’ll tell us as soon as he elected. It begs the question how can he be still so popular after being so insane? The only answer I can come up with is that there is a large fraction of the population that Is so angry with the establishment that they would like to elect someone who is completely crazy who would destroy everything and give them blank slate not really understanding of caring the implication of this.