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Comment by groby_b | Hacker News Reader

You might want to (much less quickly) figure out what percentage of their exports is affected by their war, how the war & sanctions affect transportation & trade partners, and what the end result of that is.

Nobody has stopped exports completely. Nobody has stopped planting wheat.

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How much of the capacity is affected by:

- manpower shortages due to war

- infrastructure destruction (roads, ports, etc)

- cropland destruction

- higher fuel prices

- higher fertilizer prices

- regional weather fluctuations

I see many towns in Ukraine are destroyed or emptied of people. I don't suppose farms in those towns will be producing anything this year.

These are all good questions, and I'm not denying Ukraine is suffering.

What I'm saying is that they likely still will export wheat. The amount is the question. I'm saying that the question is harder (a lot harder) than a quick Internet search on what percentage of world wheat production comes from Ukraine.

Sure but that would lead to a low confidence estimate given the war has just started, it's not clear whether the ports will be captured, it's not clear whether the sowing season will be disrupted, and it's not clear whether Russia will engage in protectionism of wheat. A shortage of more than 3% is possible. The tweet should have highlighted that uncertainty instead of presenting the 0.9% figure as a near fact. They smuggled in the word "estimate" somewhere but they obscured the uncertainty.

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