If we want long-term support for Poland, we must take into account its historical context, urges economist Serhii Budkin. I suggest not to enter into a direct conflict with the farming community of Poland, but to try to find ways around this conflict.
I read that Polish farmers are again planning to block the border crossings between Ukraine and Poland.
First, the Poles are the brothers of Anna Kovalchuk. None of the countries in the world, despite the elections, new and old governments, new and old presidents, etc. did not do as much for Ukraine in the last two years of this war as Poland. From purely humanitarian aid (because where did everyone go to evacuate? To the USA (as in 1914)? To Constantinople (as in 1920)? To Bendery (as in 1709)? No, everyone went to Rzeszów and Przemyśl) to purely military aid (perhaps, in absolute numbers, not as much as the USA or Germany, but very timely - when it was most needed).
Secondly, I'm sorry, but who remembers what Poland and Ukraine look like from a plane? As someone has forgotten during the two years of the war, I will remind you: Ukraine is a "landscape of wide fields", from horizon to horizon. All you see from the plane are forest strips and paths, between which there is land of several hundreds, if not thousands, of hectares in one porthole. Poland is roughly like the photo taken from the plane near Warsaw. Small pieces of land that were like that in 2004, when Poland joined the EU, and in 1991, when the Warsaw Pact ended, and in 1989, when Poland became the Polish Republic, and in 1981, when Jaruzelski imposed martial law... For the most part, Poland looked the same from the cockpit of Richthofen's Me-109 ace in 1939, and from the cockpit of Pokryshkin's Aircobra in 1944.
Actually, thanks to the peasants who owned the land, Poland never became as socialist as the USSR, Albania or, for example, Cuba. But after the fall of socialism, it was thanks to the peasants that Poland remained one of the most conservative countries in Europe. The average size of a farm in Poland is less than 10 hectares. The average size of an agricultural holding in Ukraine is 2,000 hectares.
No matter how much we close our eyes to it, but in relatively similar climatic conditions, the average agricultural enterprise in Ukraine will be much more efficient than the average agricultural enterprise in Poland. And only in Poland. Because in other neighboring countries, the largest agricultural enterprises are much larger in size - the largest landowner in the CIS in 2019, NCH Advisors, was also one of the largest landowners in Romania. In Moldova, the concentration of agricultural production is even higher. The average size of a plot of land in agricultural production in Slovakia is almost 8 times larger than in Poland, and in the Czech Republic it is 17 or 18 times larger.
And this fact will not go anywhere. Directly in accordance with the historical materialism of Marx and Engels, the Polish farmers cannot help but protest that in the immediate delta vicinity they have huge industrialized agricultural enterprises with free access to capital (for the same Continental Farmers, who have either 65 or 70 thousand hectares of land - right here, across the border of Ternopil or Volyn region. And in them, the cost of land is lower, and the efficiency is higher (because the land areas are much larger than in the same Rzeszów), and the cost of labor is lower (because there is a differential between the salary of a Ukrainian peasant and the salary of a Polish), and the cost of capital, even in war, is lower (because Saudi Arabia almost prints those petrodollars)).
That is, Ukraine is doomed. No, not for success, as one of the unsuccessful investment funds once said, but for the conflict situation with Polish farmers. Despite the fact that the Poles are really brothers without any belittling. And it is better to think now about how to maximally dampen this conflict situation for the sake of long-term cooperation (I don’t know - restrictions on our side of grain exports through Polish border crossings, administrative actions to redirect export flows to Romania, Moldova or Odesa, licensing of exporters with financial responsibility to Polish customs for grain transit, active communication of these or similar programs to Polish farmers?), than telling each other on Facebook that this is a special operation of the FSB. This is not a special operation, it is simply a historical fact, about the same as the use of the imperial system of sizes in the United States. So it turned out, and if we want to sell, for example, oil to the States, then we need to learn to conclude contracts in gallons and barrels. The same is true here - if we want long-term support for Poland, then we must take into account this historical fact and not enter into a direct conflict with the farming community of Poland, but try to find ways around this conflict.
