YORKTON - While it is far from a new situation for someone now into their seventh decade of living, but we do seem again to be flirting with dark times.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not new. The former Soviet Union has sent tanks and troops into other countries through the years, as the residents of the former Czechoslovakia can attest.
And the Hamas attack on Israel is just the latest of a long list of Middle East wars.
As has always been the case is the shadow that such seeming isolated conflicts will boil over into more encompassing engagements.
The expansionist heart of Vladimir Putin certainly hints that if he can finally quell the dogged determination of Ukrainians he might well roll his tanks across other borders.
And the Middle East has been a powder keg that only needs a misguided missile to ignite a broader conflict.
In the case of the Middle East the United States becomes a much more invested viewer because of threats to oil production and distribution.
We’ve been here before, and have always skirted broader conflict, but here mere weeks before Remembrance Day the threat looms large again.
So why all this in an agriculture column?
Well if the world is ever crazy enough to head into a war encompassing large areas of Eastern Europe, or the Middle East, the disruption to ag trade could be huge.
And we live in a world today with far more mouths to feed than at any previous time in our history.
Anything which significantly alters food production and distribution could very quickly create food shortages and starvation even for people well-removed from the direct areas of broader conflict.
There are people in our world already going hungry because of distribution problems for food, or the inability to afford substance.
Amid the unknowns of a major war getting food to all will not be a priority, and prices will rise, and that is a double whammy which would be dire for many.
For Canadian farm producers of course, it could signal better prices, but no one wants a bigger pay cheque because a war rages somewhere else in our world.
The situation today is perhaps not more dire than at other times over my past 63 years, but because of it is happening at this moment it ‘feels’ more likely that we might topple into broader insanity.
Ahead of Remembrance Day we as a world need to pause and find a way back to peace, although with the likes of Putin and Hamas that sadly seems unlikely.
