Farmer Diaries

This is not from me, but from a Canadian based, American political scientist called Tim Snyder, who a few months ago, at the Council of Foreign Affairs brought out this new "definition" of a superpower that does almost anything to destroy itself. The story of Trump and his followers, carpetbaggers and wannabe dictators, but of another democracy that "gave up" now the context is different but some of the elements are surprisingly similar in the outcome. The Treaty of Vesaille forced upon Germany and its population massive repayment obligations that were nearly impossible to achieve – which was largely the objective.  It is important to note that Germany in the 1920s was simply the "center" of scientific research – just look at the Oppenheimer movie to understand the importance of the country to fundamental research.   The first world war was not a "global war" in the same way as WWII was, conflicts were very regional, granted all over Europe, but ...

 separatist movements have always existed, as unions between different antiques do not always match people‘s expectation. To us here in Great Britain. It is a link with Europe that has always felt unnatural for some good and not so good reasons. For some reason, the United Kingdom has always felt a closer kinship to the United States, then to Europe. Unfortunately, Great Britain is discovery that there’s no reciprocity. Yesterday, one of the richest provinces in Canada, Alberta, underwent A referendum with regards to whether Alberta should seek to separate itself from the Canadian entity. In addition to that question, there were an additional 12 questions that were there to appease most people from Alberta. Today, the results are out. In a nutshell, a route, the yay only scored 23%. The knees scored over 76%. In addition, and like they refer them and quebec several decades ago, it was essentially asking the population for a mandate to negotiate with the rest of Canada. I suspect, t...

 Paris has many qualities, first it’s a pretty city, and the centre once you get used to it is well organized. The French are relatively civilized people. Slightly less pompous than the BRITs, and somewhat more fun than The Germans. France’s biggest weakness Is the entitlement. This is not a new thing, and has been a feature of the country for a long time. In France, everything gravitates towards Paris. In actuality, until very recently virtually all aircraft that went into the region had to fly by Paris. There’s also a mindset within the population, that they have signed a social contract, which is Entirely one-sided. The state as a portion of GDP, is one of the largest in Europe, and even dwarfs the Germans. In addition, in the 1970s, France, and Germany actually broke a social contract to make things easier and push the problems further into the future. Effectively, French pensions are paid directly out of the state coffers. The problem with this method is that there’s no concep...

 After about a week, the real news out of Washington with regards to the meeting between Xi and Donald Trump Can finally be analyzed. On one side, the Chinese media have been saying that chairman Xi Is in great shape and ready to beat the Americans and the president in particular at every level. Like everything else with Donald Trump, everyone knows that aside from immense bluster, he’s not equipped or even willing to negotiate with anyone unless they 100% abide by his desires. And even then he will change his mind. So what actually happened? The truth is that chairman Xi Looked very diminished and although he’s spending substantial amount of time in the White House, according to people who were involved the majority of his time he was spent alone with his wife and not with the president. In the end, two minor and inconsequential agreements were reached in the two nations. What is important to understand, is that the summit between China and America has been on the books for more t...

 At first I thought it was a joke, the US treasury is issuing one dollar coin with the face of the current US president for $2.10 each. In fact, you have to buy a roll of 25 for about $62. It is quite remarkable, that Donald Trump is doing such a thing. In addition, these coins are legal tender for a dollar each. That means, that if you go to Starbucks, and buy a four dollar coffee, with a Trump coin, the coffee will cost you eight bucks.  Now, if it was a real commemorative thing, they wouldn’t sell them in roles of 25. Instead, that would make a plaque in which you put the coins and somehow somewhere the coins would eventually be worth more than $2.10 each. But no, it seems that US treasury wants real Americans to buy something for two dollars that is valued at one dollar.  It’s hard to believe that people will do so? On the other hand, it’s not the first scheme that Trump introduced. Finally, is it even legal for an image of the current sitting president to be on a coi...

Scott Bessent is "called" a bean farmer but is nothing of the sort.   He worked at Brown Harriman and Soros fund, when things were serious. He was a young trader at Soros' when that fund attacked the pound sterling exchange rate against the newly formed Euro (and won).   Scott Bessent is many many things but he is not stupid… and then he does something incredibly stupid.  He bets against the bond market!    There is no doubt that Scott's descent into hell was at the prompting of his boss, the American President, another deluded idiot.   Scott's first announcement was that he was pledging tens of billions of dollars to defend bond prices (i.e. lower interest rates).   Now to be clear, 10 billion is about five minutes of trading in the international bond market. Anyway that's not the real drama, the real drama is that for the past 20 years two buyers have accounted for nearly ⅓ of all new international issuances (the international bon...

I was for 25 years an analyst in a very successful fund manager.  I was very lucky as was the fund.  The owners of the fund had been around for a while, the family behind the fund have been investment managers for the better part of three centuries.   They knew the value of people who work for them.   One of my closest friends at school took a very different path, and eventually became a member of Her Majesty's armed forces.   Our lives never really intersected professionally on a formal basis, but I had almost quarterly meals with my old school chum.   Over 30 years it adds up.   The truth is that I paid for most of these meals, the reason was that I was employed in the City, and my friend, well, had limited official income.   I didn't care!   He was smart and well informed; a foil against whom I could gauge my world views.    To this day, we meet on a quarterly basis, granted that the conversatio...

Farmers, as a whole, are price takers!   That cannot be a surprise, as a supplier of widely available staples.  The market is far larger and diversified, therefore, prices at which we sell our produces are dictated by the market and not by us, hence the prices in Q1 and Q4 when the vast majority of fruits and vegetables are imported, are a lot higher. That is true for about half of our turnover.   It is not true for our cheese or our butter, which are both produced on the farm.  Our butter is sought after by restaurants for several reasons, but primarily the fat content (don't ask, it's not important).  Both productions are severely limited and we sell to a small list of buyers that have been with us for a long time. The fruits, vegetables and animal protein we sell to our ancillary business are different, we still sell at market prices, as per our initial agreement with our partners, we also share in the upside in increased prices to buyers and consum...

In 1990 I purchased a Rolex submarine watch for about £1,500.  At the time I thought it was a fair price for a nice practical "sports" watch.   I saw it on the wrist of a friend while scuba diving in Australia.  36 years later I still own the watch.   I mention this because last week as a surprise my wife had it cleaned and maintained professionally in London, as a surprise delayed birthday gift. Now, I treat the watch as any watch I own. It's for work and little else, I stopped wearing it about three years ago because it did not keep time very well. I owned a seiko perpetual (which I bought ten years later) that was also automatic and kept time perfectly. The gift was thoughtful and also included an electric autowinding case for three watches, nothing outrageous but still.  What surprised me was the value of the watch.   A 1990 (which is the year my watch was manufactured) watch is worth between £9,500 and £14,000, down from nearly £20,000 –...

Three quarter of the financial year have now been completed, and for the farm and its ancillary businesses the year so far has been on budget, that is despite fuel costs being through the roof.  The average has been 127 pence per liter, which is about twice what it was last year.  Not insignificant.  All other energy costs have been stable for the year since 100% of our energy is produced on the farm.   We have not had to use the generator once this year and we have "given away" the waste gases our biodigestors produce that we cannot use.  All our farm equipment, aside from tractors, are now electric.  The range, price and quality is more than sufficient for our needs.   We have actually used my car once to drive down to London, but we did this only once, the train is far more convenient. In terms of profits, we are on budget for the year.  Granted, that most of our "real profits" are generated in Q1 and Q4 when produce prices across the...

After spending five days in the US, we flew to Calgary to see friends of ours. The province of Alberta is in the middle of an independence debate that is going badly, especially when the leader of the independence movement has just been served with a $100 million lawsuit by a US hedge fund that was backing his independence movement activities. It seems that the hedge fund was sold something that could not be delivered. Our stay in Canada was limited, but one thing we found amazing was the new Canadian identity that has been created since Donald Trump, the American president, began his trade war with the country.  Canada, like Germany at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, know that a trade war with America will be costly. Aside from a few crazy separatists, the vast majority of Canadians, even in Calgary had the same view, as they say "elbows up". Somehow that refers to ice hockey. In our two days stay in Canada, it was apparent that there was a strong anti-American sentimen...