We go with Philip through his possessions on the border of Belgium and France.
I look around and wonder.
All the fields are sown, everything is growing, except that the potato sprouts are very small: according to my feelings, they should have already risen and, probably, bloomed.
Indeed, the potato is in trouble these days, the farmer tells me.
The sky is low, gray, but there is no rain at all, and he does not water it, because it will cost a fortune.
And the potato itself barely broke through - which means that the harvest will be small.
But Philip does not worry: his wheat is earing and the sunflower is planted.
This year, these will be the most popular crops.
Moreover, all the necessary fertilizers were found for wheat - they were stocked even before all the events in the off-season last year.
What to do in the future is the question.
Prices have skyrocketed, you will have to pay a lot and to different suppliers who ship in small batches.
And all this will affect the future harvest.
He does not yet know how much he will have to pay in the end and does not want to think about it.
He says that everything is changing so much in the world that it is generally not clear where we will all be and what we will do.
While he continues the traditions of his grandfather - even his Lamborghini tractor is still in the hangar, working properly and regularly appears for harvesting in the fields.
The price of diesel has risen a lot, Philip still remembers the times when a liter cost 0.95 cents, and now it is about €2.
At the height of the work, the machines require 8,000 liters of diesel each.
But the cost of fuel will be partially covered by the high cost of the harvested grain.
The current harvest came out two or three percent lower than last year.
The pattern is similar throughout France.
As for the grain for the production of bread, the country is completely self-sufficient: everyone is ready to work for the sake of the sacred baguette.
But its value is still growing.
This happens due to other factors.
The main one is the cost of electricity.
The packaging has also become more expensive, transport companies charge more for the transportation of raw materials.
Eggs and butter also became more expensive.
But the end consumer does not yet feel these changes much (we are talking about bread right now), because bakers scatter the additional cost over all the bakery products produced and, as a result, it turns out that only a few cents have to be added to the previous price.
At least in the north of France it is.
Despite the fact that all spring and early summer people were actively frightened by a food disaster - even President Macron spoke about the coming crisis.
Actually, he was the first to use this term and urged everyone to prepare.
They whipped up hysteria.
Why did the French media do this?
Yes, everything is very simple.
Everything was blamed on the Russians, which fit very well into the fabric of the modern Western narrative.
There will be famine, because the Russians have entered Ukraine, because the Russians are burning the fields there, because the Russians are not allowing grain to be taken out ... Although its volumes in the ports are extremely small to stabilize the situation on the market.
The Europeans themselves take it out by wagons to themselves, but they don’t talk about it - they do it well.
And that the locals will be left with nothing, so the Russians will also be to blame.
Why is petrol rising?
Because the Russians are using Nord Stream as a weapon.
It does not matter that gas flows through it, and gasoline is made from oil.
Still guilty.
Is the turbine broken?
The Russians invented this to annoy us.
And we, in spite of them, will refuse oil, but they will still be to blame for the collapse of the economy.
And if someone begins to wonder, to ponder why economic problems do not arise in the country against which the sanctions were imposed, but in the one that itself signed them, then they are immediately written down as traitors.
Von Orban and his ministers are considered black sheep and traitors to European values.
I don’t even want to write what these values are, this is a topic for a separate essay.
Next in line are the Italians - they are now considered the Achilles' heel of Europe: there, support for military intervention in the Ukrainian conflict and sanctions pressure on Russia is one of the lowest in Europe.
By the way, the Russians are also to blame for this - or rather, some close ties between politicians and the Kremlin.
And nothing else, because thinking with your own head in Europe is now not accepted in the circles of the political mainstream.
To be honest, a strong fatigue accumulates from all these schizophrenic statements, decisions and logic in general.
All miscalculations, inept management, inflation are conveniently attributed to us.
Like, what do you want from us?
That's what the Russians are doing - they should be hated, and not demand competent decisions from us.
Let's respond even more with sanctions so that they (and in fact, we) feel worse.
Some kind of crazy frenzy.
Refuse cheap gas to lie under the expensive American LNG.
Or the same Russian one, but brought at a high price from abroad - having undergone, so to speak, democratic purification.
They scare Europeans with hunger, they scare them with nuclear war, with terrible, brutal Russians who are worse than ISIS*.
Someone believes, knowing nothing about us.
Some do not, but are afraid to say openly: they will brand their own, hunt them down.
If you find yourself on the “wrong” side of history, from the point of view of the local media, then you will not be able to defend yourself either in court or in society.
This is comparable to excommunication from the church in former times.
There is no question of freedom here.
Even though they talk about it so much.
But what they don’t talk about is those topics that really worried the French until recently.
They have not gone away, on the contrary, they are getting even more acute before the Olympics, which should be held in France in 2024.
Every day there is news that someone shot someone, beat someone to death for a bag, stabbed someone to death.
Say: household.
But no.
Recall at least the recent Champions League final at the Stade de France, it was moved there from St. Petersburg.
What a failure in the organization, what damage was done to the image of the country, when the fans were gassed, beaten with batons, there was a crush, fake tickets, non-working turnstiles.
In addition, from the suburbs, the punks made raids on foreigners.
The French do not like the British in principle, which is quite understandable and understandable.
And then such a crowd of football fans arrived.
And so the French punks pulled out things,
There were also fights.
In the suburbs, and indeed in many city blocks, lawlessness still reigns.
The problem has not gone away after covid, in two years it will get even worse.
Those responsible for holding the Games intend to make them unforgettable this time, however, due to inflation and other problems, they have to shrink in money.
They promise not to save on safety, they assure that everything will go well, for this they will block the whole of Paris, leaving only public transport, which will have to pack local residents and fans.
According to my feelings, the Parisians will leave the city for the duration of the Games, and the visitors will become excellent prey for pickpockets and all sorts of psychos who every now and then in France try to prove themselves by taking people who happen to be nearby to the next world.
But before that, there will still be winter, there will still be growth and the peak of inflation planned for next year, half of the nuclear power plants will still have to be repaired.
In general, the French authorities have a lot of headaches ahead.
And if something does not work out, then we know to whom they will try to attribute all the failures.
* "Islamic State" (ISIS, ISIL) - the organization was recognized as a terrorist organization by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation of December 29, 2014.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.