In a joint statement issued after a meeting on the war, the leaders of the global institutions said the burden would fall most heavily on the world’s most vulnerable populations, particularly in low-income, import-dependent economies.

They said their institutions would continue to monitor developments closely and “coordinate the use of all available tools to support those impacted by the crisis.”

Increases in oil, gas, fertilizer prices

U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a two-week ceasefire deal between the United States and Iran, but relief over the truce quickly gave way to alarm that fighting was still raging across the region, with Israeli strikes on Lebanon and Iranian attacks on Gulf oil facilities.

“The Middle East war is upending lives and livelihoods in the region and beyond. It has already triggered one of the largest disruptions to global energy markets in modern history,” the joint statement said.

“Sharp increases in oil, gas, and fertilizer prices, together with transport bottlenecks, will inevitably lead to rising food prices and food insecurity.”

The statement said spikes in fuel prices and potential sharp increases in food prices were especially concerning in countries already facing fiscal constraints and high debt burdens, which would limit their ability to protect vulnerable households.

Institutions vow support

The leaders of the three institutions vowed to provide support in accordance with their mandates, and to lay the foundations for a resilient recovery.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told Reuters on Monday the IMF was also engaging with the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization on food security.

The World Food Programme said in mid-March that millions of people will face acute hunger if the war continues into June. Georgieva said the IMF did not see a food crisis yet, but that could happen if the delivery of fertilizers was impaired.

— Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Daphne Psaledakis

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WHY IT MATTERS: Analysts said the April 5 attack on the ship added to risks to global food security and agricultural trade stemming from the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war against Iran.

Russian media said the vessel was carrying wheat from the Port of Azov, near the city of Rostov, to Port Kavkaz in the strait separating the Crimean peninsula from mainland Russia, where the grain is usually loaded onto larger vessels for export.

TASS quoted emergency services as saying the vessel, which was gutted by fire and began to sink, was towed to the village of Kuchugury in Russia’s Krasnodar region. A video posted by the news agency showed the vessel engulfed in flames and smoke. The agency said two badly burned bodies were found aboard the ship, bringing the death toll to three. An aide to the vessel’s captain had earlier been reported dead.

Public ship databases list Volgo-Balt 138-class vessels at about 3,165 tons deadweight.

Grain consultancy Sovecon earlier described the incident as the first known sinking of a grain-loaded ship in the Black Sea-Azov basin, a major grain-trading route, since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022.

“Against the backdrop of Iran’s conflict and the effective paralysis of diplomacy among Washington, Moscow and Kyiv, the risk of further escalation in the region appears to have increased significantly,” Sovecon head Andrey Sizov said.

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Why it matters: The escalating conflict in Iran and surrounding Mideast countries is causing large price swings in energy, currency and equity markets, with that activity spilling into the fertilizer and agricultural markets.

Crude oil futures in London and New York soared almost 30 per cent in early trading to nearly $120 a barrel, one ofthe biggest one-day jumps on record, threatening to raise costs of products from gasoline to jet fuel. The prices then pulled back, with U.S. crude up 7.72 per cent at $97.92 a barrel and Brent at $100.56 per barrel, up 8.49 per cent on the day.

Investor jitters over soaring energy prices meant a wave of global stock and bond market selling which hung over the Wall Street open. In early trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average 1.4 per cent, the S&P 500 dropped 1.26 per cent, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 1.16 per cent.

Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his father Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader, signalling that hardliners remained firmly in charge a week into the war with the U.S. and Israel.

That was unlikely to be welcomed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who had declared the son “unacceptable.”

With hostilities continuing in the Middle East and tankers unable to cross the Strait of Hormuz amid the threat of Iranian drone attacks, investors were bracing for a long stretch of higher energy costs.

Investors awaited Washington’s response, said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. “With no clear definition of what winning looks like, it is hard to forecast whether this will be a multi-week or multi-month conflict.”

GLOBAL MARKETS SINK

European shares tumbled to their lowest in more than two months on Monday, with the pan-European STOXX 600 down 1.76 per cent in a third session of losses. The benchmark index shed 5.5 per cent last week, its worst weekly performance in nearly a year.

The oil price spike was sobering for major oil importers in Asian markets, with Japan’s Nikkei .N225 closing down 5.2 per cent after a 5.5 per cent drop.

China, another big oil importer albeit with a huge stockpile of crude, saw its blue-chip index fall roughly one per cent. China on Monday said inflation had already picked up in February before the current oil surge, with consumer prices rising 1.3 per cent on the year, not necessarily a negative development, given the country has long struggled with disinflation.

Lisa Shalett, chief investment officer at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, wrote in a note on Monday that the U.S. equity market may still seem placid but there are “extreme” rotations and stock dispersions beneath the surface.

“Over the past 80 years, war-induced oil shocks have not been kind to equities, as nearly every episode has catalyzed a recession and market sell-off,” Shalett wrote.

CENTRAL BANKS FACE INFLATION CONUNDRUM

In bond markets, the risk of rising inflation outweighed safe-haven considerations to shove yields higher globally. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes rose 2.6 basis points to 4.158 per cent, up from a trough of 3.926 per cent just a week ago.

Interest rate futures slipped as investors feared the risk of higher inflation would make it harder for the Federal Reserve to ease policy, though disappointing U.S. jobs numbers seemed to argue for stimulus.

Data on U.S. consumer prices due on Wednesday is forecast to show the annual rate holding at 2.4 per cent in February.

The Fed’s preferred measure of core inflation due on Friday is forecast to hold at 3.0 per cent, well above the central bank’s two per cent target, and analysts see a risk of an even higher number.

The danger of energy-driven inflation has led markets to wager the next move in rates from the European Central Bank could be up, possibly as early as June.

For the Bank of England, markets have shifted to pricing just a 40 per cent chance of one more easing, compared with two cuts or more before the Middle East conflict started.

Nervous investors sought the liquidity of dollars while shunning currencies from countries that are net energy importers, including Japan and much of Europe.

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While thousands of men served at home and abroad during the Second World War, an army of young women were putting this adage into practice. Known as the Farmerettes, these young teenage women worked at farms across Ontario, ensuring that food production continued as farm labourers were sent to the front, with the program continuing after the war.

Why it matters: More than 40,000 young women supported the war effort between the 1940s and early 1950s, helping grow and harvest crops amid labour shortages.

A documentary touring Canada called “We Lend A Hand” brings these stories to life. The production came about when Exeter-based author Bonnie Sitter was searching through old family photographs. She told Farmtario that while sorting the pictures, she found an image of a group of women on the running board of a car she recognized. The caption on the photo simply read, “Farmerettes 1946.”

Sitter quickly discovered her family had hosted a group of young women, and she decided that the story of these women needed to be told. She composed an article for a local publication, which retired journalist Shirleyan English reviewed. The two of them quickly agreed that the story of the farmerettes needed more than an article, and the pair set out to put a book together, Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz, featuring interviews and stories of the women who worked on the farms during the war.

Sitter said that the program itself was received by both participants and farmers with significant doubt.

The young women were coming from towns and cities, never having seen a farm or been involved in farming in any way.

“They had no idea what they were really signing up for,” Sitter said.

And on the farms, there was skepticism that the young women would be up to the challenges of farm life.

“But they didn’t have a lot of choice, because they needed labour, and they were willing to give it a try,” Sitter said. “And by the end of the first season, if you asked a farmer what they thought about it, they would say, I couldn’t have done it without them. I hope they’ll all come back next year and help me again.”

The program covered the cost of bringing women to farms and camps. They were expected to work throughout the week doing various forms of farm labour. Participation in the program meant being able to skip exams during the school year.

“The teachers thought it was a really lousy idea,” Sitter noted. ”Farmers were willing to give it a try. So the program went into effect and started in May of 1941 with girls living in army tents.”

On location

The documentary takes viewers to the first farms in St. Catherines that hosted farmerettes. Sitter said that the work was arduous and backbreaking, with many women giving up shortly after arrival. However, many stuck to it despite sunburns, blisters, and homesickness.

“If they made it past two weeks, they generally proved that they could do the work and they could adapt to camp life and the curfews and all the other things that went along with it,” Sitter said.

Participants were paid 25 cents an hour, receiving an additional four cents a quart if they were picking strawberries. Farmerettes were expected to pay $4.50 a week for room and board as well as assist with keeping the living quarters clean, laundry and other duties as assigned.

On the weekends they were allowed to spend their free time as they pleased, with many becoming a part of the local communities.

“There were recreational things available for the girls. Some camps would have a piano. Some would have a record player. They would usually have a little library and maybe a ping pong table and puzzles, that sort of thing,” said Sitter. “At that time, transportation was by sticking your thumb out and hoping that somebody stopped to pick you up at the country home.”

Sitter said the contributions of the farmerettes were significant, providing food for soldiers at home and abroad. She said that the fact that they were involved in the food industry may be part of the reason they never achieved the status of other war images like Rosie the Riveter or bomb girls.

“People, I think, just expect food to show up in the grocery stores, and they don’t think about the labour that’s involved in planting and preparing the land, sowing the seeds, pruning the trees, all the things that have to be done to make sure that there’s a food supply. They just expect it to be done,” she said.

Spreading knowledge

For director Colin Field, this was motivation to help find a medium to get the stories of farmerettes into the public domain. Field took up filmmaking as he was approaching retirement, and met Sitter at a local vendor market. The pair spoke about the book she was working on and decided to take it to the big screen.

“This is really my first feature film. As I was approaching retirement, I thought it would be fun to do something that would get me out in the world using my creativity and curiosity,” Field said.

He remained in contact with Sitter and when she presented the completed book she had been working on, he knew it was time to put his creativity and curiosity to work.

“It was such an honour, really, to hear their stories. The project was supposed to be one year and 10 women,” he said, adding that as more people became aware of the project, he soon had a roster of 20 women ready to share their stories.

“The whole project took two years to put together, but it was just fabulous. They’re in a 95-year-old woman’s body, but you ask the right question, and you create a sense of trust, and then you just let them talk, and they’re just like 16-year-old girls in their in their brain, and they had such beautiful stories, heartwarming stories, a lot of humour.”

Field said for many of the women, it was the first time they had discussed their role as farmerettes in 80 years.

“I think they think it’s going to be this history lesson that we should all learn about what happened during the war. There are these beautiful, wise women, full of vigor, reliving their youth and sharing all these memories,” he said.

Great interest

Screenings for “We Lend A Hand” continue across the province to sold-out audiences. Field said the documentary was also an opportunity to bring to light footage gathered by the National Film Board during the 1940s that had been stored in the organization’s archives.

“It shows teenage girls at Lawrence Park in Toronto learning about the recruitment and putting up their hands and asking questions of the recruiter, and then out in the fields, picking the fruit or getting up and brushing their teeth,” he said.

As screenings continue, Field said he wants the film to be an opportunity for young people to learn about the impact youth had on the war effort.

He said he is also appreciative of the many individuals and sponsors who helped bring the film to the theatres across Canada. He noted that timing was of the essence due to the age of many of the participants and that money had to be raised quickly to ensure that every story could be told.

“We’ve lost six of the women since a few months ago,” Field said. “There’s that sense of urgency to capture their stories and to hear it firsthand and to reflect the spirit of what they were saying.”

He added that the story of people rallying behind Canada echoes today.

“I think the timing of it. Two years ago, we weren’t talking about tariffs and how patriotic it was to eat local strawberries,” Field said, noting that the message of the strength of Canadians and the importance of patriotism reflects modern times. “Suddenly, these things that seemed quaint from 80 years ago are now on the nightly news, and people are emotional and all about this whole patriotic moment and proud of Canada and what we can do in our own communities. That’s all reflected by what these teenage girls were doing on the screen.”

To date, the film has won eight awards with more than 60 screenings. Field said the film will continue to show in theatres as long as there is demand and there is a strong focus on bringing it into schools.

“We really wanted to get out to more schools and universities and for younger people to see it,” he said, adding that the film is even being screened at a school in Yellowknife.

The duo has also been invited to do a showing of the film at the Juno Beach Centre next year in France. He hopes this will be the catalyst to show the film in Europe more broadly.

“Some people have seen it five times, and they come back with their family. They come back with their neighbours. We think after it’s been shown in the community, the need for it will dry up, but what we find is more people come the second time because they’ve told people about it,” Field said.

To learn more about how to arrange a screening, visit www.welendahand.ca.

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You should probably sell your farm, the United Church minister told Tokusaburo and Yoshi Ooto.

The couple had lived in British Columbia for nearly 40 years. They, along with their daughter, son-in-law and grandkids, made their living on their seven-acre farm growing fruit and berries in Haney — present-day Maple Ridge.

That was before the Second World War though, and things were about to change.

Why it matters: Anti-Japanese sentiment in the Second World War led to thousands of Canadian citizens or immigrants of Japanese descent being displaced or put in internment camps.

In February 1942, the Canadian government passed an order-in-council to remove all people of Japanese ancestry from within 100 miles of the B.C. coast.

It was a couple months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Canada was afraid it was next.

It didn’t matter that the Ootos were naturalized citizens, or that their children and grandchildren were born in Canada. It also didn’t matter that neither the RCMP or top-ranking military officials were concerned about Japanese Canadians’ loyalties.

They had to leave — either for internment and work camps in B.C. and Ontario, or for sugar beet farms in Manitoba and Alberta.

The federal government told Japanese Canadians their land and property would be held in trust, but the church minister told the Ooto family the war would probably last another four or five years. They should sell the farm rather than let it be confiscated, he advised.

There wasn’t much time to put the farm on the market. Tokusaburo settled for $2,500 (about $46,850 in 2025 dollars, according to the Bank of Canada’s calculator) for his business and land, wrote Art Miki in his memoir, Gaman — Perseverance.

The author, who is the Ooto’s grandson, was five-years-old when his family and grandparents boarded a cramped train bound for Manitoba.

Tokusaburo would never see his farm again.

The beet farmers

Manitoba’s sugar industry had a problem in the early 1940s. The federal government, its war economy in full swing, wanted to maximize sugar production but farmers were reluctant. Sugar beet prices were low and labour was short.

“Prior to the advent of mechanization, sugar beet production was a large consumer of hand labour,” wrote John Friesen in his 1962 geographical study of the Manitoba sugar beet industry.

“As much as 70 to 80 hours of hand labour were required to produce one acre of sugar beets.”

That included hoeing, thinning and weeding in spring and chopping the tops off beets and loading them at harvest—though at the beginning of the war, a mechanical loader was available.

The Manitoba Sugar Beet Growers Association approached the B.C. Security Commission (BCSC), which was charged with moving Japanese-Canadians out of the exclusion zone, wrote Louis Dion in a 1991 thesis.

The association suggested that Japanese-Canadian families with agricultural experience could fill the labour gap on Manitoba beet farms.

While the security commission initially suggested a trial run with 20 to 25 families, that strategy soon dissolved in the haste to resettle Japanese-Canadians. The first 20 families arrived in Winnipeg in April of 1942. Within a week, 44 families had been sent, Dion wrote.

For Miki’s family, traveling to Manitoba meant a chance to stay together.

“My mother was pregnant at the time, and if you went to an internment camp, the families were separated,” Miki said in an interview. “The men were usually taken away to work camps in the interior of B.C.”

His parents, siblings and grandparents arrived in Manitoba in May 1942, where they were paired with the Lemoine family, who farmed near Ste. Agathe, a French-Canadian community south of Winnipeg.

“The first we lived in a house out in the field,” Miki said. “Unfortunately, the houses were not very well insulated. There was no water or electricity and it was really cold.”

The next year, the family moved into a house in Ste. Agathe.

While the security commission had told farmers they were required to provide good housing and sanitation, the hasty manner in which the families arrived and the chaotic nature of the entire enterprise meant guidelines were rarely enforced.

At a Headingly farm, four families were housed in a converted cattle barn.

“The barn-house was dirty and insulated with manure piled to the windowsills,” Dion said.

The work was hard — harder than berry farming, Miki said. For their efforts, his family members were paid 25 cents an hour, the equivalent of $4.68 today.

Hard times

Poor weather plagued the harvest of 1942 and by October, 100,000 tons of an expected 130,000-ton harvest were still in the fields, Dion wrote. Growers brought in more labourers from schools and Winnipeg to harvest the crop, but for every acre these workers picked, the Japanese-Canadian families lost wages.

The families were expected to pay for their living expenses from their wages, but it became clear that the seasonal work wasn’t going to be sufficient to live on. The security commission was forced to look for winter employment for the Japanese-Canadians.

By June 1943, 23 per cent of the families required financial aid to meet their daily needs.

“Expenditures beyond food, shelter, heating and clothing bankrupted many families,” Dion wrote.

Faced with poor living conditions and financial ruin, Japanese-Canadians began to filter into Winnipeg, despite many lacking permission to do so, looking for better work and housing.

This was the eventual fate of Miki’s family. Proceeds from the sale of their farm were spent keeping the family afloat. Eventually, his father got permission to work in Winnipeg and took a job as a machinist.

“The Japanese had to pay for their own internment,” Miki said.

When the government eventually sold the Japanese-Canadians’ land, any expenses for the families’ removal from the province were deducted from the revenue.

“You ended up paying for being incarcerated in a sense,” said Miki. “Most Japanese ended up with nothing.”

The aftermath

Japanese-Canadians hadn’t been treated as equals before the war. The population, which was concentrated on Canada’s West Coast, was largely barred from voting by B.C. law, a rule upheld by the federal government.

When they were relocated from B.C., Japanese-Canadians technically gained the right to vote, but the federal government quickly closed that loophole, according to an Elections Canada article. They did not unconditionally gain the right to vote until 1948.

In Manitoba, while a group of Japanese-Canadian community advocates negotiated better wages for those working on beet farms, families continued to trickle into Winnipeg in search of better living conditions, but were often met with suspicion.

“Getting a job was difficult,” Miki said. “You have to remember that the Japanese, a lot of them, couldn’t go into the professions.”

Pre-war, he noted, they couldn’t become engineers, lawyers or teachers in B.C., and most had work in the fishing, farming or lumber industry.

In Manitoba to stay

Most Japanese-Canadians weren’t able to go back to B.C. after the war.

The Miki family settled in East Kildonan, then a predominantly Mennonite community and not part of the City of Winnipeg. They got busy getting back on their feet. Miki’s mother, who had never worked outside the home before, got a job in a tannery, and both parents worked long hours. Neither spoke about their forcible relocation or being treated as traitors in their own country, he recalled.

“I think it was humiliation they had to face,” he said.

“I know that in my community, many of the younger people found out after, once we got into the redress movement and the apology and so on. But up to then, they didn’t know.”

Japanese-Canadians kept their heads down and tried to blend in, Miki said.

“I mean, I don’t speak Japanese. That was discouraged, after to even be Japanese, never mind speak it,” he said. “We grew up thinking we’ve got to be like other people, and so you begin to lose the feeling of culture and who you are.”

Redress

In a September 1988 news photo, Art Miki sits beside Brian Mulroney, looking on as the then-prime minister signs an agreement apologizing for the wrong done to Japanese-Canadians and providing $300 million in financial redress.

Miki called it “a settlement that heals,” CBC reported in a 2018 article.

He’d become an elementary school teacher and principal, a community leader, and as president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians a leader of the movement to seek redress.

He pointed to the sacrifices his parents’ generation had made to ensure their kids went to school and to instill the importance of education in their kids. A very high proportion of Japanese-Canadians are now university graduates, he noted.

“The Japanese community has done well,” Miki said.

The end of Manitoba sugar beets

In 1997, Rogers Sugar announced the closure of its Winnipeg plant, which had been in operation since 1940. The Winnipeg plant had sold more than half of its 50,000-tonne production into the lucrative U.S. market until that country set a 22,000-tonne quota on sugar imports. The company was also facing greater domestic condition.

Manitoba hasn’t produced sugar in more than 20 years.

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First World War

The Battle of the Somme was a strategic, costly and hard-fought battleground for both sides. The conflict in this area lasted from July 1 to Nov. 18, 1916 — four and a half months of constant back-and-forth push in a huge attempt to advance for whatever territory could be gained. During one of the battles, 20,000 casualties occurred in one hour. One million soldiers, including more than 24,000 Canadians, died or were wounded.

At the Courcelette Memorial site we stopped to remember those who fought at the Battle of the Somme. At the Thiepval Memorial we witnessed a tribute to over 72,000 unknown soldiers who died and are memorialized there. At the Trail of the Caribou monument at Beaumont-Hamel we took a moment to remember the Newfoundland Regiment that was totally wiped out.

READ MORE: November: A month for remembrances

We visited Cabaret-Rouge cemetery with 7,000 gravesites, from which the body of an unknown soldier was exhumed and returned to Ottawa, where it lies in state in a tomb on Parliament Hill. Then we arrived at Vimy Ridge to stare in wonder at the imposing memorial to Canadian soldiers who fought so valiantly to take the ridge.

We struggled to grasp the enormity of what had happened at Vimy. We walked in reconstructed trenches and were told that 25 metres away were the German trenches. Soldiers could smell each other’s cooking and cigarette smoke and hear chatter and even snoring from the other side. More than 3,600 Canadian soldiers were killed and 7,000 wounded in four days of fighting at Vimy.

In Belgium we visited the Passchendaele battle site and were told of the mud, the injury, more mud, loss of life, screams, gunfire and drowning in even more mud. Passchendaele was successful but fighting there lasted for four years, in a “bite and hold” form of grinding warfare over just eight kilometres of muddy plain. There were more than a million casualties at Passchendaele. While there, we were shown a field where Bev’s grandfather, George McNeil would have been laying communication cable for the trenches. We were just 50 metres away. At Tyne Cot Cemetery are buried almost 12,000 soldiers from 10 different countries, including 966 Canadians, all from the battles of Passchendaele.

At the Menin Gate at Ypres (Ieper) we attended an 8 p.m. memorial service, which has taken place every night (except during the Second World War) since 1928 to remember those who fought to preserve freedom for the local inhabitants.

Second World War

We visited the beaches of Dieppe to witness the site of the disastrous Aug. 19, 1942 raid, an ill-advised campaign sacrificing 60 per cent of the Canadian soldiers who fought there. From German pillboxes huge enemy guns could swivel to shoot down on the beach or out to sea to maim and destroy incoming landing craft that carried the brave soldiers and equipment. All the while aircraft from both sides created a deafening roar as they battled above the beaches.

Operation Overlord was the name of the D-Day landing on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. General Dwight Eisenhower commanded five areas of attack along the beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. More than 156,000 soldiers landed despite high winds and rough seas, which made the landings treacherous. Earlier we had visited the site called Pegasus Bridge where three gliders carrying soldiers and small tanks had flown and landed, in the darkness of night, within 50 metres of a fortified bridge and silently overwhelmed German guards. This strategic manoeuvre helped Canadian and British forces who landed at Normandy to cross this important canal to push back German forces.

In the Netherlands we visited Abbaye d’Ardenne where Canadian POWs were executed by order of German Divisional Commander Colonel Kurt Meyer. My cousin, Lance Corporal Ron Gompf, was later placed in charge of guarding POW Meyer and wanted to disarm him, but wasn’t allowed to disarm a POW who was of a higher rank.

We stopped at several small towns where our soldiers had valiantly fought. In each town the townsfolk never forgot the gallantry displayed by the Canadians and monuments were erected to honour the Canadian soldiers who lost their lives there.

In Apeldoorn we saw the home of Princess Margriet, who was born in Ottawa in 1943 in the Ottawa Civic Hospital. Her maternity ward and two floors of the hospital had been declared sovereign Netherlands territory so she could be born as a Dutch citizen.

On April 12, 1945 Canadian soldiers liberated the village of Westerbork. Camp Westerbork had been a camp for Jews from all over the Netherlands to wait their turn to be sent in cattle cars to Auschwitz and Sobibor in occupied Poland. Starting in January 1942, close to 100,000 Jews of all ages passed through Westerbork; upon liberation there were only 1,000 left in the camp. Many had been deported just as Canadian soldiers advanced toward the camp. We silently walked around the shell of the camp, which is a stark reminder of its existence.

At the Groesbeek Canadian War cemetery we attended a solemn ceremony complete with a marching band of drums and bagpipes and featuring a number of Canadian veterans of the war. Some were in wheelchairs and a 102-year-old veteran made an impassioned presentation. While in Groesbeek we also toured the Vrijheidsmuseum (Freedom Museum), which included a stark graphic display of the number of people, civilians and soldiers killed in the war, estimated at a frightening 70 to 85 million.

With a few thousand other folks, we attended the Memorial Presentation of Remembrance that takes place every year at Holten Canadian War Cemetery and in 2025 marked the 80th year since Canadian soldiers liberated the Netherlands from Nazi tyranny. Again, Canadian veterans were present to speak and lay wreaths. Princess Margriet was present, Governor General Mary Simon spoke, and local schoolchildren placed two roses at each tombstone. Canadian pipe and drum bands played and the poem “In Flanders Fields” by John McCrae was read. Taps and The Last Post created an eerily silent audience. It was certainly an emotional experience that one will never forget.

The most unforgettable emotions at all the cemeteries we visited, and the most poignant memories, were the ages engraved on the tombstones. A name followed by an age — 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. These were just kids, who lived and died fighting for the freedom we enjoy today. They were somewhat innocent but brave beyond their years. They had answered the call and they died for our freedom. And one couldn’t help but hear their whispers: “Please remember us.”

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THIS IS OUR STRENGTH.

The red letters stand against a dark blue sky on the poster, just above a scene of two men driving a harvester through a rolling wheat field with a white farmhouse and red barn visible in the background.

Why it matters: With hungry troops overseas, the Canadian government during the Second World War had incentive to bolster public opinion of farms as part of the wider war effort.

Another tells passersby that “FOOD WE MUST HAVE, BUT FARMERS NEED YOUR HELP,” accompanied by a simple drawing of a farmer on a tractor. Smaller text below encourages “town and village folk” to lend their help to the farmer on “holidays … odd days, or even half-days.”

These and other war-time propaganda posters stand as a window to Canada’s veneration of farmers and agriculture during the Second World War.

Stacey Barker, a historian at the Canadian War Museum, has built a research expertise in Canadian agriculture and food during wartime. To her, such agricultural propaganda images reflect one of the more mundane realities of war: Soldiers have to eat, and that food has to come from somewhere.

Until the United States joined the war in 1941, Canada was the breadbasket of the Allies, she noted.

“Everything gets dominated, and with reason, by the battles and the troops and D-Day,” Barker said. “This is sort of a little more subtle, and it’s not often thought of.”

The pall of the Dirty ’30s

The story of Canadian agriculture during the Second World War is incomplete without considering the historical context.

Farmers in the early ’40s weren’t just operating in a world at war, they were coming off of years of financial devastation. They were in need of a break.

“Farmers (were) coming out of the (Great) Depression,” Barker said. “They had had a very difficult time of it in the 1930s. The Second World War starts and they’re starting to climb out of it, but there’s a lot going on in terms of, ‘What are we going to need to do for the war effort?’”

In the First World War, Canadian farmers were given a clear goal: produce as much wheat as possible. One poster from 1918 proclaims “The World is Short of Bread” and that Ontario must increase its wheat production from 3,700,000 bushels in 1917 to 10,000,000 bushels through “good seed,” “thorough soil preparation” and “early sowing.”

The start of the Second World War saw that supply situation flipped on its head. Farmers had done their jobs too well, and now Canada had too much wheat in storage.

“One of the big things that the government asked farmers to do was grow less wheat, diversify, grow more feed grains, raise livestock, because that’s what Britain needs,” Barker said. “They need protein sources; they need things that are easily shipped. They don’t need as much wheat.”

Pork became one of Canada’s key exports as it could be canned or turned toward long-lasting rations like bacon. According to a 1947 document from The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, production of pork from 1935-39 doubled during the war.

Farming pride

With so much of the usual labour force fighting overseas, the Government of Canada needed to drum up support and a sense of national duty among those who could help farmers at home. That’s where the posters come in, encouraging Canadians young and old to help farmers in any way they could and often featuring similar art and messages to military recruitment posters or other propaganda.

“There was definitely a conflation between the military and this work,” Barker said. “It’s characterized as war work, as service.”

Young Canadians were targeted by farm labour initiatives like the Farmerettes for girls, or the Farming Commandos for boys — notable for its invocation of a military title, much like the Soldiers of the Soil did during the First World War.

“War conditions calling for increased production, heavy enlistment, munitions and supplies requirements have brought about an acute manpower shortage situation throughout Canada,” reads a Farm Commandos recruitment pamphlet. “Agriculture has been among the heaviest sufferers in this regard.”

The slogan on the back of the pamphlet reads, “Let us Help, Hoe, Hay, Harvest for Victory.”

Other examples further pushed the link between farm work and military service.

In one poster from the federal Department of Labour, a farmer stands tall with a pitchfork resting on his shoulder like a rifle. In front of him are the words “FARMERS: CANADA NEEDS YOUR HELP THIS WINTER.” Another outlines how Canadians can “SERVE BETER MEALS AND SERVE CANADA’S WAR EFFORT” by using more fruits, vegetables and milk. Even the famous “ATTACK ON ALL FRONTS” poster features an apron-clad woman brandishing a hoe, easy to miss below the soldier and munitions factory worker.

Knowledge gaps

Such campaigns helped address the farm labour shortage, but there were downsides to the influx of workers as well. Not everyone being called to work on farms was familiar with farming.

“There’s this underlying feeling, especially with the farm labour programs, that farming is unskilled, right? Anybody can pick it up and do it. And that’s not true at all,” Barker noted.

What inexperienced Canadians could do, however, was grow small quantities of food on their own land. One poster encourages Canadians to start their “victory garden” by planting “fighting foods” like tomatoes, onions, carrots and potatoes at home. Accompanying the message were images of vegetables, lined up and marching in unison with rifles on their shoulders — little nutritious soldiers doing their part.

“It shows you some of the themes that are coming up: This is our strength. Agriculture, of course, is one of the ways we’re contributing to the war effort in a very significant way,” Barker said.

Post-war attitudes

War-time agriculture and agriculture policies would end up having impacts beyond the end of the conflict.

Canada’s Official Food Rules, for example, outlined in a poster where a young woman looks up at a table of recommended servings in a grocer, would eventually develop into the Canada Food Guide, which would become a fixture of elementary school health classes from coast to coast for decades.

“It’s an outsized impact that they had on the war effort,” Barker said. “When you consider how small the farming population really is and how important food was, they don’t get their due in how we conceive them and think of the war.”

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Ukraine is a major grain and oilseeds grower and exporter and the new system became operational on Dec. 1.

The government launched the plan to tackle price distortions linked to Russia’s invasion, which has seen an increase in domestic cash purchases of some agricultural products and their subsequent export at artificially low prices to avoid taxes.

In line with the new rules, minimum permissible export prices will be calculated on the basis of state customs service data, taking into account the terms of delivery for the previous month and using a 10 per cent discount.

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Traders did not expect a significant impact on grain shipments from the decision, saying measures to restrict grain exports have been announced in past years but had not had a major impact on shipments.

“The general opinion is that the minimum prices will not disrupt Ukraine’s export flows,” one European trader said.

“The expectation is that the minimum prices are being set so low that traders should be within their comfort zone and happy to continue sales. But we still need to wait to see if the government takes stronger measures.”

The farm ministry has already published the minimum prices at its website minagro.gov.ua and will refresh it on the 10th of each month.

The ministry also said that it has abolished the need for exporters to go through the vetting process and obtain licences to export food products.

The mechanism implied mandatory registration of an export company in a special agricultural register and, in the absence of such registration, the need to obtain a licence for each export operation.

– Additional reporting by Michael Hogan in Hamburg

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That included 2.18 million tons of wheat, 553,732 tons of corn and 454,641 tons of barley, the data showed.

Ukraine’s UGA grain traders union said this month that overall grain and oilseed exports totalled 4.3 million tons in August, up from 4.2 million in July.

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UGA said that included 2.2 million tons of wheat, 794,000 tons of rapeseed and 646,000 tons of corn.

Ukraine typically sends about 95 per cent of its grain exports via its Black Sea ports.

Agriculture Ministry data on Wednesday showed that Ukraine’s grain exports in the 2024/25 July-June season had jumped to 7.2 million metric tons as of Sept. 4 from 4.9 million by the same date of the previous season.

That included 3.8 million tons of wheat, 2.3 million tons of corn and 1.1 million tons of barley.

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Ukraine is a major global wheat and corn grower and before Russia’s invasion in 2022 the country exported about 6 million tons of grain alone per month via the Black Sea.

Grain sales are a crucial revenue source and while global prices are weak, Ukraine’s cash-strapped farmers have little choice but to push ahead with exports because they need to fund the next winter sowing season.

Ukraine doubled food exports in July to over 4.2 million metric tons from the same month last year, according to data from Ukraine’s UGA traders’ union, despite intensified Russian attacks on Odesa, a key Black Sea export hub, and Izmail, a major port along the Danube River taking grain into Europe.

Ukraine has not yet reported the destinations of its exports in July, but last season it exported most of its wheat to Spain, Egypt and Indonesia, with its corn mostly heading for Spain and China.

The surge comes despite this season’s drop in output caused by war-related disruptions, and there is no guarantee that Kyiv can sustain the trend into the full 2024/25 season.

“We are doing everything to make business feel comfortable even in wartime conditions,” Dmytro Barinov, deputy head of Ukraine’s Seaport Authority, told Reuters.

The exports are a combination of new season wheat plus corn from stocks following last year’s bumper harvest.

So far, Ukraine has exported 3.7 million tons of agricultural goods in July through Odesa and 569,000 tons via the Danube, export data showed. That compared with 291,000 tons via Odesa and 2.07 million tons through the Danube in July 2023.

There were six shipments of corn from Ukraine’s other two operational Black Sea ports of Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi in June and July to Rotterdam, Europe’s busiest port, and Spain’s Cartegna, separate LSEG shipping data showed.

Since July, Ukraine has also shipped cargoes to China, Egypt and Turkey, separate data from Kpler showed.

Despite last month’s stronger sales, overall exports for the 2024/25 season are expected to fall because of unfavourable weather and the war’s impact, the ASAP agricultural consultancy said.

“We expect that grain exports from Ukraine could plunge by 14.5 million tons per year and touch almost a decade low of 35 million tons,” ASAP said.

Ports targeted

Ukraine has managed to create a shipping corridor after a U.N.-backed Black Sea grain export initiative collapsed last year. Russia’s Black Sea Fleet has been forced to move nearly all its combat-ready warships from occupied Crimea to other locations.

While the improved security situation has lowered insurance and freight rates, making exports more competitive, Kyiv’s challenge is to ensure its ports that are accessible can ship out cargoes.

Ukraine has sustained multiple missile and drone attacks in recent weeks, some of which have targeted Odesa and Izmail.

Even as ships have so far avoided any major damage, Ukrainian officials say port infrastructure is being targeted.

“The Russians are well aware of that and they’re hitting the weak spots,” said Barinov with Ukraine’s Seaport Authority.

“They’re hitting with precision missiles, they’re deliberately destroying our ability to export, to process.”

Barinov and other shipping officials said Russia was avoiding strikes at the international sea lanes outside of Ukrainian port limits, keeping escalation contained.

Ukraine’s military assists ships entering and exiting ports, with captains operating under specific safety instructions, the country’s navy chief Vice-Admiral Oleksiy Neizhpapa told Reuters.

“Ukrainian air defence forces cover these corridors and ports. All assets, from air defence groups to missile systems along the coast, contribute to this effort,” Neizhpapa said.

Nonetheless, Ukraine has to cope with a multitude of other difficulties, including energy blackouts that disrupt port operations and exports.

Munro Anderson, head of operations at marine war risk and insurance specialist Vessel Protect, part of Pen Underwriting, said Russian strikes at targets inside Ukraine while less frequent than earlier in the war, continued to pressure Kyiv.

“Such attacks persist in applying pressure on the commercial maritime environment in Ukraine and thus achieve the Russian intent of eroding Ukrainian ability to fully capitalise on the potential output from these ports.”

Additional war risk premiums for ships entering Ukrainian ports have been quoted in recent months at up to 1.2 per cent of the value of the ship with discounts that could mean a lower rate, insurance sources said. Those premiums spiked to as much as 3 per cent in November after a missile strike damaged a ship in Pivdennyi.

This still works out at hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional estimated costs for a seven-day voyage and those costs could increase if security conditions deteriorated.

Industry sources said war underwriters were keeping the situation under review in the light of the recent attacks.

“Increased shelling of ships in corridor ports may prompt reinsurers to revise their war risks insurance rates,” said Maksym Dubovyi, managing partner with insurance broker Atria.

During its year of operation, Ukraine’s sea corridor has enabled 2,059 ships to deliver 57.7 million tons of cargoes to 46 countries, including 39 million tons of agricultural products, said Neil Roberts, head of marine and aviation at the Lloyd’s Market Association, which represents the interests of all underwriting businesses in the Lloyd’s of London insurance market.

“Individual underwriters will decide the rate as appropriate in the light of events and take their own view on the risk.”

– Reporting by Jonathan Saul and Tom Balmforth in London, Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv.

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