Our planet was created to abundantly sustain itself and the host of beings that reside on it. Bad sadistic human beings create poverty and food insecurity to exist on this planet. They create the hunger, addiction, homelessness, pain, and suffering on a mass scale. They create the imbalance on this planet that will soon be corrected. The chaos will be alchemized into harmony. These low vibrational beings will not be able to transmute the passage of time and they know this. They think they're clever. But they will be undermined and brought to nothing by their own hubris. (emphasis mine)
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BBC News, UK
written by Sarah Fowler
Saturday March 18, 2023
A deal allowing Ukraine to export millions of tonnes of grain through the Black Sea despite the ongoing conflict with Russia has been extended.
But it is unclear how long it will last, with Ukraine pushing for 120 days, and Russia calling for 60 days.
Russia has warned it will not allow the deal to go on longer unless sanctions against Moscow are softened.
The UN and Turkey helped broker the export agreement last July following fears of a global food crisis.
Ukraine is one of the world's top producers of grain, but its access to ports in the Black Sea was blocked by Russian warships following the invasion in February last year.
Countries that suffer with food insecurity, such as Yemen, rely heavily on these supplies.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced an agreement on extending the deal on Saturday, with hours to go before it was due to expire.
"This deal is of vital importance for the global food supply. I thank Russia and Ukraine, who didn't spare their efforts for a new extension, as well as the United Nations secretary general," he said.
But neither Mr Erdogan nor the UN clarified how long it would last. Ukraine wanted it to be extended for 120 days, but Russia said it was only willing to renew the pact for another 60 days.
Vassily Nebenzia, Russia's ambassador to the UN, said on Friday that the EU, UK and US had two months to remove any sanctions targeting Russia's agricultural sector if they wanted the deal to continue.
Moscow wants Russian producers to be able to export more food and fertiliser to the rest of the world, but says Western sanctions are preventing them.
While food and fertiliser exports have not been targeted, Russia says restrictions on payments, insurers and shippers makes exports difficult.
Russia briefly withdrew from the deal in November last year, accusing Ukraine of attacking its fleet in the Crimea - but it re-joined a few days later.
According to the UN, the deal has already allowed nearly 25 million tonnes of foodstuffs from Ukraine's Black Sea ports reach global markets.
๐จ๐ THIS WAS IN NOVEMBER 2022 ๐๐จ
I had to go get more information because this is the first time I hear of this agreement.
Bloomberg Quicktake published November 2, 2022: Russia Resumes Ukraine Grain-Export Deal in Abrupt Reversal
Russia agreed to resume a deal allowing safe passage of Ukrainian crop exports, abruptly reversing course after Turkey and the United Nations pushed ahead with the shipments over Moscow’s objections. Wheat prices dropped on the news.
The Kremlin’s pullout from the agreement on Saturday and Russian warnings over the safety of ships in the Black Sea corridor had sowed chaos through agricultural markets and sent prices soaring. But as the shipments continued this week - with a one-day interruption Wednesday - despite Russian warnings they could be in danger, Moscow’s leverage appeared limited.
President Vladimir Putin said Russia was resuming participation in the deal because it had received “written guarantees” from Ukraine that the safe-passage corridor wouldn’t be used for military purposes. Ukraine has long said it wouldn’t use it for such operations.
Chicago wheat futures were down 6.7% as of 2:10 p.m. London time, the most since March, after surging in the first two days of the week. Grain prices have been volatile over the past few months amid speculation over the fate of the deal which is set to expire Nov. 19.
In televised comments, Putin warned that Russia reserved the right to pull out of the agreement again if Ukraine violates it. The Foreign Ministry said that the issue of the extension of the pact would be discussed separately and it would decide by the deadline, according to Tass.
๐จ๐ THIS WAS JULY 2022 ๐๐จ
DW News published July 22, 2022: Ukraine, Russia agree deal over grain exports.
A deal has been signed to allow the resumption of grain shipments from Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea following months of Russian blockades.
Representatives from both sides attended the signing in Istanbul, along with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoฤan and UN secretary general Antonio Guterres. It's hoped that reopening the ports and allowing grain to leave Ukraine will help ease global food prices, which have spiked in recent months.
At the signing ceremony Mr. Guterres stressed the deal's significance, calling it an 'agreement for the world.'
And why did the global food prices spike? Remember covid vaccine mandate nightmare that shutdown our ports. Those who act like they care created the global instability and insecurity, death, and destruction. (emphasis mine)
Bloomberg News
written by Augusta Saraiva
November 11, 2021
The head of the organization representing companies in labor relations at the U.S.’s largest ports is worried that the federal vaccine mandate set to take effect in January could worsen the current supply-chain crisis.
CCJ Digital
written by Jason Cannon, CCJ chief editor
September 29, 2021
A COVID vaccine mandate, which entered the Federal Register Nov. 5, will require more than 730,000 employees in the trucking industry – including drivers – to be vaccinated against the coronavirus no later than Jan. 4, 2022 or undergo weekly testing and mask up. Thousands of drivers have threatened to walk away from their trucks rather than take the jab.
Meanwhile, near-daily record numbers of container ships are staging off shore at ports around the U.S., and soaring spot market rates and logistical hurdles aren't drawing inbound drivers to those very same ports. None of that sounds like ingredients for a very merry Christmas, but those are the realities heading into the season.
This has been a challenging year for shippers as the number of loads to available drivers hovers at about a 6:1 ratio and skyrockets the closer you get to a port. Chris Preboth, vice president of Shipwell Logistics and a 15 year veteran of C.H. Robinson, said he expects the rest of 2021 to look a lot like it does now, "in fact, it's probably going to get a little worse."
"We start to think about peak season and normal peak season where, if you look at just the history of trends over the last four or five years, that long haul load, the truck ratio starts to increase, especially out of the port areas and, specifically, LA and Long Beach," he said.
President Joe Biden in mid-October announced that the Port of Los Angeles would move to 24/7 operations by adding a night shift. Additionally, Biden announced that major movers of goods Walmart, FedEx, and UPS would also add shifts to clear up the backlog at the ports. Samsung, Home Depot and Target will also increase work during off-peak hours, according to the announcement.
There's currently a queue of more than five dozen freighters floating off California's primary ports waiting to be unloaded and wiping out that backlog will be neither an easy nor a quick process.
"To get those ships unloaded – just to get them unloaded at the port – there would have to be no more ships coming in for the next at least two months," Preboth said.
Even when unloaded, the freight has got to go somewhere "and with the market already at a load to truck ratio, on average, north of six the last few weeks – and in those port areas, 10 to 20 load to truck ratios and vans – I don't see it getting any easier for our shipper community and our brokerage community over the next few months."
With the holiday crush looming, Preboth said consumers can expect "significant delays" that will require a lot of flexibility on the part of shippers, carriers and end users.
"I've read a couple of times where the industry is somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 long haul for-hire drivers short, and it could be more now, but we can't just go hire that many drivers," he added. "And that doesn't even account for the warehousing and the office people that they're still short, too. So, we would have to see something hit demand pretty drastically for supply and demand to get a little bit closer together – to get back to what we would say is a normal load to truck ratio where things are moving pretty seamlessly."
Vax mandate impact similar to a weather event
Biden vaccine mandate, which was developed and will be implemented by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.
Preboth doesn't foresee the potential mandate having a crippling impact on freight movement, or prompting a tidal wave of drivers to exit the industry. "We would see more drivers like we've seen the last 18 months," he said. "Because of spot rates and because of supply and demand, we've seen drivers go from those larger companies to a smaller company to, or to be an owner-operator to where they control their own destiny."
Any potential impact could take upwards of two months to ripple through the entire supply chain, and the severity of it is difficult to predict.
"From the very beginning, I think it's similar to like when ELDs started," Preboth said. "All of a sudden we were freaking out, 'Oh, it's going to be crazy. We're gonna lose so much.' And what we actually found out after a few weeks is, 'Hey, this actually isn't that bad. Things are still moving like they're supposed to.'"
Preboth theorized the immediate impact of a vaccine mandate would likely be similar to a hurricane or major weather event, "like in February when the freeze happened in Texas. Where it's not just in that one area, but the load to truck ratio of viable drivers, it would probably peak really quickly," he said. "After a few weeks, it would come back down. The thing about the supply chain is we have so much more visibility than we've had ever in our history. All companies and all brokerages are working to enhance their visibility and their visibility platforms. These physical tools that we have now allow us to be more agile, more nimble.
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