Enemy
9.2K posts
@EnemyMen
PMs. Commodities. RT ≠ endorsment. Haiku: Winni, winni, winni. Larum, o wy obdarci ze złudzeń. Albowiem czeka was los Kasandry.
BREAKING: Israel is preparing to attack Iranian energy facilities but is awaiting a green light from the US and any such attacks would likely come within the next week, reports Reuters, citing an Israeli military official.
Global food prices are rising as energy costs spike: The World Food Price Index jumped +2.4% in March, to 128.5 points, the highest since September 2025. This index tracks the cost of grains, sugar, meat, dairy, and vegetable oils globally. This marks the 2nd consecutive monthly increase, after February ended a 5-month streak of declines. Surging energy and freight costs, along with disrupted flows of grains and fertilizers through the Strait of Hormuz, are the major drivers. The energy crisis is spreading into food.
Iran hasn’t requested a 10-day pause on strikes on its energy plants and is yet to deliver a final response to a 15-point plan to end the war, peace talk mediators said. President Trump said earlier Thursday he was pausing strikes on Iran’s energy sector for 10 more days, to April 6, so peace negotiations can take place. Trump’s previous deadline was Friday. He said the extension was at Iran’s request. Iranian officials have told the mediators that they are interested in negotiations but the country’s leadership is yet to weigh in and give a final decision, the mediators said. The U.S. has offered a 15-point plan that essentially would swap an end to crippling sanctions for Iranian concessions on every point of conflict between the two sides, including its nuclear and missile programs and support for regional militias. Iranian officials already have demanded that the U.S. scale its excessive demands outlined in the 15-point plan before it agrees to meet to discuss a potential cease-fire, the mediators said They also ruled out discussing Iran’s missile program as a starting point to the talks and doesn’t want to commit to ending enrichment of uranium forever, they added. The odds of success for a cease-fire remain low, with Iran and the U.S. staking out maximalist demands that are unacceptable to the other side, the mediators said wsj.com/livecoverage/i… via @wsj
JUST IN: The most irreversible consequence of this war is not happening in Tehran. It is happening in a barn in Iowa. A farmer is standing over a kitchen table looking at two seed catalogues. One is corn. One is soybeans. Corn needs 180 pounds of nitrogen per acre. Nitrogen costs $610 per ton on the CBOT March futures settlement as of yesterday, up 35 percent in a month. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria called rhizobia. They need nothing from the Strait of Hormuz. The farmer is choosing soybeans. Millions of acres are choosing soybeans. And once the planter rolls into the field, the choice cannot be reversed until next year. USDA projected corn at roughly 94 million acres for 2026, down from 98.8 million. Soybeans at 85 million, up from 81.2 million. Those projections were published February 19, before urea surged past $683 at New Orleans. The actual shift will be larger. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. By then the seeds will be in the ground. This is the transmission channel the world is not watching. A 21-mile strait enforced by provincial commanders with sealed radio orders just rewrote the planting economics of 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. Not through sanctions. Not through diplomacy. Through the price of a single molecule that corn cannot grow without and soybeans do not need. Now follow the cascade. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually. That consumes roughly 43 percent of the entire US corn crop. The mandate is set by the EPA. It does not flex when corn acres shrink. It is inelastic demand consuming a fixed share of a declining supply. When supply tightens against a fixed mandate, the remaining corn reprices upward. Corn above $5 per bushel compresses every margin downstream. The US cattle herd stands at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low per USDA NASS. Poultry and pork operations face compression from higher corn prices. Feed is the single largest cost in livestock production. When feed reprices, protein reprices. When protein reprices, every grocery shelf in America absorbs the increase. This is the protein cascade. Corn to feed to meat to eggs to dairy to the checkout counter. Each link tightens because the link before it tightened. The originating cause is a urea molecule that cannot transit a strait because a provincial commander’s sealed orders say it cannot. The farmer did not start this war. The farmer cannot end it. The farmer responds to the price on the screen and the biology of the two crops in front of him. Corn needs the molecule. Soybeans do not. At $610 the arithmetic is settled. The planter rolls. The season is locked. Israel just authorised the assassination of every Iranian official on sight. The US has spent $16.5 billion. South Pars is burning. The Fed is holding rates because oil inflation will not break. Gold touched $5,000. Bitcoin is bleeding. China is running exercises near Taiwan. Sri Lanka shut down on Wednesdays. And underneath all of it, a man in a barn is making the decision that determines whether four billion people pay more for food this year. He has never heard of the Mosaic Doctrine. He does not know what a sealed contingency packet is. He knows what nitrogen costs. And he is planting soybeans. Full analysis - open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
Hormuz shuts, fertilizer vanishes, shipping freezes—and famine stops being a Third World story. Close that choke point for weeks, and hunger goes global fast. The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just an energy crisis. It’s the fuse for mass starvation. @Michael_Yon joins me ⬇️
Fuel for planting corn and soybeans is expensive, but what you read below tells you this will be a thing for the next 1-2 seasons. Drilling is stopped, production is cut more and more while some infrastructure is destroyed. The longer the war goes, the longer the restart will take. Don’t expect cheap fertilizer or diesel anytime soon (unless Trump TACOs)
Joint Statement on Strait of Hormuz now with 20 countries signing on—🇬🇧 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇮🇹 🇳🇱 🇯🇵 🇨🇦 🇰🇷 🇳🇿 🇩🇰 🇱🇻 🇸🇮 🇪🇪 🇳🇴 🇸🇪 🇫🇮 🇨🇿 🇷🇴 🇧🇭 🇱🇹
