The Breadbasket of Europe

If I grab a shovel and dig a hole in a field near my place in Brittany, a couple of feet down I come across layers of ancient granite.?If I do the same across most of Ukraine, I’ll start digging a hole into very dark soil, almost ‘black’ … and I’ll still be digging that hole until the depth is about from your ceiling to the floor … and it’ll still be ‘black’. The “black soil” of Ukraine is due to its richness and fertility,called “chernozem” *. I know about this because back in 2010, I joined a group of European investors into Ukraine’s agricultural sector. I hiked far and wide across the thousand hectares we leased from local villages. It was a win-win deal all-around, at any rate it should have been.?In the beautiful balmy late summer days I could stand in the middle of the fields and do a slow 360 and all I would see in front of me was the Ukrainian Flag in its greatest splendour! ‘God’s Golden Gown!’ **?

As I hiked across my farmland I could feel powerful energy of telluric proportions emanating from the ground beneath.?I’m actually just your average, Baguette-Eating-Frenchman and I can state that I’m mighty happy to have a friend and neighbour with the most enormous fertile farmland across all of Europe!

Across history, many cultures have left their footprints on Ukraine from the Romans, Greeks, and Byzantines to the Vikings and Austrians whose collective influence has created a very cool country with excellent positive energy.?Some of my most memorable adventures are of crossing Ukraine in my rented 4x4 and military-grade GPS unit. Everything from taking Mass in Lviv Cathedral to feasting on delicious Shashlik in the Tatar communities of Crimea.

That was the nice bit ... Now here’s the truth:

Exactly 90 years ago, in this vast idyllic agricultural ecosystem,?Ukrainians underwent a near-genocidal famine. This was due to a strategically-engineered man-made famine. Ukrainians called it ‘Holodomor’***. It was planned and executed by the Russian (Soviet) government, lead by Joseph Stalin and his thugs. The purpose was to forcibly take all agricultural land in Ukraine and inflict Russian (Soviet) style Collective Farming across this fertile country.?I won’t go into the details of Collective Farming, but it was so inefficient, brutal and selfish that it raped, suffocated and murdered the mother soil across Ukraine.?

When we first arrived in 2010 the terrible scars of Russian (Soviet) Collective Farming were evident everywhere. This was reflected not only in mother earth, but in the faces of local villagers themselves. It takes a good year of patient hard work and lots of resources to aerate, water to start bringing the soil back to life and nurture an inclusive farming community.

I stood on this earth murdered by Joseph Stalin and his thugs, closed my eyes and I could feel the energy of the earth screaming in pain beneath my feet.

Ukrainians know their land best and are naturally very proud of it. However, their large neighbour, Russia is particularly jealous of what they have.?During the reign of the Tsars their solution was to marry into Ukrainian aristocracy and thus there are many old family ties between Kiev and Moscow. When aristocracy finished, Russian envy of Ukraine mutated to barbaric violence.

However, Russia will of course never succeed in conquering Ukraine.?At the end of the day, it’s not just about using nifty Western smartphone-based weaponry to wipe out massive Russian steel platforms of war, it’s about living with the morality of The Golden Rule ****. And Ukrainians have the upper-hand on both counts…that's for damn sure !

Slava Ukraini !!