Risk and Trade Amid Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Texas Tech Professor of Agriculture and Applied Economics Darren Hudson says even if the Russia-Ukraine conflict ended today, the impacts will be long-lasting… and to make sure you’re prepared for a potential financial crisis.

“I hope what producers really start thinking about is financial risk. Not just price risk, but maintaining cash reserves. Doing things that are strategies of minimizing household risk, so that when we have this event, they’ve got something to fall back on.”

Hudson says international trade will be permanently affected by this war. He hopes in moving forward, the U.S. industry diversifies consumers and suppliers for inputs and other products.

“I don’t know that we are going to be in the same kind of world after this is over, even if it does end fairly quickly. I think the views of a lot of places… is China is not likely to be as reliable of a partner in trade going forward as they were in the past.”

“U.S. agriculture is a little more buffered against this simply because we have a greater diversity of where we send product… we’re not dependent on Russia as the primary consumer. But we are dependent on China as a primary consumer for U.S. ag products and we probably ought to rethink that, being overly dependent on one country or a set of countries that are probably not strategically aligned with the U.S.”