What people seem to forget is that the politicians of rheinland have been bribed for a few centuries now, there are planets other than stuttgart that can support food growth. Nuremberg can grow food, the politicians however have forbidden this because of the slight toxiditiy of the soil. Not harmfull for humans, but with a bit of bribing a politician will say what ever synthfoods wants.
Stuttgart on the otherhand has been altered from a green planet into a planet stretching with grey fields of the Synth paste plants. Synth has been piping terraforming gasses into the atmosphere killing off most of the crops of the other farmers. Only 10% of growing areas are in free hands, the rest is synth owned). You can't grow anything else on a large scale that will feed your population.
Basically if synthfoods decides to stop shipping food and stop growing as well rheinland will have no food production of any real scale to feed millions. Synthfoods would rather torch their production facilities then let someone else take them. Ofcourse LWB has biodomes but they can only support their own population and the hessians. Anything rheinland wants to buy to enhance the food growth comes a Libertonian or a bretonian company(Flora Gro from planetform and Synthfoods), sure, ALG has fertilizers but it ends there really.
Face the facts, even with the altered lore of Nuremberg the food market is for 90% in Synthfoods hands and they are a Libertonian company. They've got Rheinland in a stranglehold.
What do you think happens to the government when the population on Berlin starts to starve even more(they already are). You think the population is going to just sit around and die, they will revolt all right.
Ofcourse you can start shipping in food from cambridge but who is going to pay for that? The prices will rise to absurd highs because of the added demand.
The Rheinland companies are organised around mining(Kruger+DHC), construction of machinery(Kruger+DHC), construction of arms(DHC) and construction of ship(DHC+REPUBLICAN) as well as recycling(ALG). Food comes from Synth Foods because they bribed the Governement and killed off the competition. Pharmaceuticals come from Cryer because no one else offers it on their scale. Lane maintenance is a Libertonian monopoly. Insurance of all the rheinland activities(excluding Dresden) was done by interspace, with the Hessians, LWB and Unioners at large this was needed badly, they'd rather pay for insurance then loose full shipments at a much larger cost.
Face the facts Knjaz, this conflict is Rubbish and should be solved diplomatically quickly or the population of Rheinland would suffer. A closed economy would not function for Rheinland, all the necessities of life, food, pharmaceuticals and Fuel come primarily from outside sources or are under the supervision of others that you cant just cross out without suffering the effects.
However, if you purely look at long term effects this might be a chance for stabilize, the current governement gets kicked out by a large uprising of angry citizens and pissed off military that stands by their side. Ofcourse the economy would need to be restructured as the industrial markets collapse and the demand for human commodities increases. Most stuff will have to be rationed for the time being and just about any faction with goals to over throw the government could swoop in causing horrid effects on the diplomacy. A Neo-communist state comes to mind right now, something the SCRA would love..
There used to be pictures here
once known as Richard Farbridge, OBE and Ronaldo Benitez
