Farmer Diaries

  The Energy crisis The effect of the war in the Persian goes gulf are about to generate critical shortages in our economy. The reality of the United Kingdom, is that our primary energy imports are from the United States, Norway, and North Africa. That means, that none of our energy is sourced from the Middle East. So for the United Kingdom, the problem will not be supply. It will be price.  In its war with Iran, Donald Trump has decided to blockade the straight of Hormuz in order to deny income to the Iranians. In this fight, America is largely energy independent. It produces and exports more than it imports. It’s a net balance, as opposed to true energy independence, that most of the light and sweet crude produced in the United states has to go elsewhere to be processed. America’s refineries were built for heavy sour crude. This shift by America from being the policeman of the seas to Mercantile protector of the interest of North America is a long expected shift, excep...

The stage is set, the American President is about to commit war crimes by bombing civilian infrastructure.  It is amazing that Donald Trump has managed to make the repulsive Iranian regime into anti-heroes.  Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and now Trump…   Considering that Trump has fired a dozen generals, and is probably going to fire a bunch more, who probably refused his illegal orders, the stage is set for a pain over the next five years.  Rumors are that Iran has already bombed Saudi Arabian production and transport facilities, that were previously protected by Qatar and Kuwait, the situation could not be more dire. The impact on the global economy and on people's lives cannot be understated.  Poverty, famine and pestilence will be the result of the actions of this madman.  What is truly unbelievable is that there is no one stopping this madman, this is clearly a case of calling for the 25 amendment, but his replacement is as mad, and a religious nut too....

It has been years now, but Americans are crazy, there's no doubt about it.   It is evident that their electoral system is broken (we're not doing that great either) special interests run the place, and if you think otherwise you are lying to yourself.  It is more than likely that the 2026 mid term election will be the most honest in decades, because of the disgust of the population.  I want to be clear the wantonness of the republican party is matched by the wokeness of the Democrats.   The current occupant of the White House is an old kleptocrat, that was elected by an electorate that was so disgusted with the old bunch that they decided to punt for "that guy"  who proved over and over to be not only a bully but an idiot. Things are serious now, the situation has become dire.  Let's be clear, Trump has invaded Venezuela, threatened the same for Canada, Greenland and Cuba.   In addition he has started a war with Iran, that is going so ba...

I have not posted in more than six weeks, mainly because I have no insights to add.  Things in the UK are deteriorating rather quickly, and I am finally impressed with our Prime Minister who seems to have finally found parts of his backbone…  Things on the farm are unchanged, as I said a number of times we are largely unaffected by the moods and changes of the nation, the reality of our business model.   In terms of timing, 2025 we decided with our investment partners to restrict capital expenses on our various businesses, first because the new injections were massive, several of our businesses, if they were to grow further, had to undertake substantial investments, we were by some coincidence at a inflection point for several businesses.   Neither us or our partners were keen on moving ahead, especially with the political and economic challenges.   Boy are we glad to decide to pause our investments now. It would be a huge lie to say that we "knew...