Episode 129 · 2022-04-02 · 34:28 · Original in Finnish
Finland's Food and Energy Crisis | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 129
Originally published as “Suomen ruoka- ja energiakriisi | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 129”
The economist Tuomas Malinen returns to the studio on April Fool's Day, but the subject is not a joke: Russia and Ukraine together produce a third of the world's exported wheat, sowing will not happen in Ukraine, and Malinen's estimate is that Finland's entire agricultural production could collapse. The cost spike in fertiliser and diesel lands on farms that are already heavily indebted. He calls for the agriculture minister to be replaced and for producer prices to rise. On energy the conversation covers peat and the taxonomy decision, and it closes on accelerating inflation and the European Central Bank's rate rises.
Core theses
- Finnish agriculture is a one-harvest system: a single season lost to input costs cannot be recovered the following year, which is what makes the risk discontinuous.
- The fertiliser and diesel spike lands on farms already carrying debt, so the binding constraint is financing rather than price.
- Russia and Ukraine's third of exported wheat is a supply fact; whether it becomes a Finnish problem depends on domestic production, not on imports.
- The peat and taxonomy decision is presented as a security-of-supply question that was settled as an environmental one.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — Tuomas on his way to the World Economic Forum in Davos. April fool!
- 00:56 — The levels of misinformation and war propaganda
- 02:04 — Ukraine and Russia's share of the world's food supply, and the critical state of Finnish security of supply
- 06:35 — The risks in a single Finnish harvest season and the critical state of agriculture. The threat of feed and meat production stopping. The Centre Party's feebleness: Anne Kalmari against Antti Kurvinen
- 09:01 — City economists' carefree view of agriculture. The K and S groups' responsibility for producer prices
- 13:21 — The energy crisis brewing. How Finland could have been a great power in the use of peat. The role of Satu Hassi and the EU
- 19:02 — EU support package II: what might 'precisely bounded and one-off' mean this time? Negotiating aims: peat reclassified as renewable, money for Finland, or no thank you?
- 23:24 — Putin 'removed Covid'. Is there still reason to worry about the constitution? Which risks actually matter?
- 25:11 — The Fed's rate rises did not crash the market. Europe's roaring inflation. Electricity generation, the Energiewende and Olkiluoto 3
- 30:10 — Sobering up in the face of the crisis. Financial support for farms
- 33:33 — Tuomas's news for April
Summary
The economist Tuomas Malinen returns to the studio on April Fool’s Day, but the subject is not a joke: Russia and Ukraine together produce a third of the world’s exported wheat, sowing will not happen in Ukraine, and Malinen’s estimate is that Finland’s entire agricultural production could collapse. The cost spike in fertiliser and diesel lands on farms that are already heavily indebted. He calls for the agriculture minister to be replaced and for producer prices to rise. On energy the conversation covers peat and the taxonomy decision, and it closes on accelerating inflation and the European Central Bank’s rate rises.
Why one season is the whole risk
Agriculture in Finland gets one harvest. A farm that cannot afford fertiliser and diesel this spring does not simply have a worse year — it may not have the following one either, because the working capital is gone. That discontinuity is what separates this from an ordinary cost-inflation story, and it is the strongest part of Malinen’s case.
The constraint is the balance sheet
Input prices rose for everyone. What decides whether a farm survives is how much debt it was already carrying, which is why Malinen’s proposals are about financing and producer prices rather than about subsidy in general.
What did not happen
The headline forecast — a collapse of Finnish agricultural production — did not occur as stated. That is worth saying plainly on the page: the mechanism he identified was real and the magnitude was not, and both halves of that belong in the record.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Suomen ruoka- ja energiakriisi | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 129. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
Go deeper
Explore the ideas in depth
Guides connected to this conversation, with frameworks and further reading.
Negotiation Strategy, Leverage and Power: Reading the Counterparty You Actually Have
A negotiation guide from the co-author of Neuvotteluvalta — the sources of leverage, BATNA and anchoring in practice, using information asymmetry, breaking deadlocks, and what to do when the counterparty negotiates on power rather than consensus. Grounded in Neuvottelija conversations and two decades of negotiation writing.
People and topics
Guests: Tuomas Malinen
Topics: Finnish Economy & Policy Geopolitics