The difference between scarcity and opportunism

This may seem strange to anyone born in Ireland in the last couple of decades, but older people will remember the restrictions imposed during the Second World War, when many goods were rationed. This rationing continued after the war ended in 1945 as the global supply chain recovered, and ended altogether in December 1951.

If you couldn’t get rationed items, a thriving black market allowed you to buy them at very inflated prices. Opportunistic behaviour by some merchants built them huge fortunes, and indeed their greed created further shortages as goods were diverted to this black economy. Wars always bring out the worst in people, allowing avarice to triumph over any notion of doing what is right.

Let me digress a little with a small geography lesson. The River Danube flows from Germany’s Black Forest region to the Black Sea north of Constanta in Romania. The last 100 km spreads out into a shallow delta, but commercial navigation is facilitated by the huge Danube Canal that carries shipping from Cernavoda to Constanta Port, bypassing the Delta. Cargo moves along this canal and the Danube River in barges of 3,000 tonne capacity, grouped in convoys of six.

These barges travel upriver to landlocked countries like Austria and Hungary, and also via the Main-Danube Canal into the River Main and onwards via the Rhine to Rotterdam. So, there is a waterway that carries cargo all the way across Europe between Constanta on the Black Sea and Rotterdam in the Netherlands, two of the world’s largest ports. It’s not something many people give a lot of thought to, but it is an important part of Europe’s transport network.

A few weeks ago I had some business in a town about fifty kilometres south of Constanta. Before travelling down there, I called a Romanian friend in Constanta and he came along with me for the drive. As we drove under the bridge carrying the main motorway to Constanta Port, I noticed several trucks stopped on the overpass above us. As we came closer I could see that there was a queue of trucks, about 3 kilometres or more long, heading for the port. I asked him about it, and he explained that this is a ‘round the clock’ operation, with convoys of trucks bringing grain the 200 km by road from Izmail in Ukraine to Constanta Port for transhipment to Rotterdam and Europe, and via ships on the Black Sea to the Mediterranean and North Africa. The blockade by Russia of Ukrainian ports is being worked around by an army of truckers, ensuring the grain harvest reaches its export markets.

So, the next time an animal feed merchant tells you that there’s a scarcity of grain arising from the war in Ukraine, maybe you should ask them if they’re sure about that.