Energy & Commodities risk-off · 0–6 months
A what‑if from the future

What if war takes Ukraine's farmland out of production?

Renewed war damage to Ukrainian farmland is a genuine global-grain tail — long wheat, corn and sunflower oil, with a real (if modest) risk-off bid; here the geopolitical-vol leg is at least defensible. Rhymes with the Feb-2022 invasion and the 2023 Black Sea grain-deal collapse, which spiked wheat ~40% intraday before normalizing. Transmission hits Egypt/MENA and EU import bills; WHEAT-direct plus geopolitical_risk is reasonable, though the 3.7% Nasdaq move likely overshoots given 2022's fast mean-reversion.

35%
our model probability
over 0–6 months
prediction markets — the market's odds
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Anchored to measured history 35% · 90% range 16–55% · 40 dated precedents behind it — a wider range means thinner evidence

Every number ships with its receipt — the odds, the range, the precedents, and a public grade at Reality Check. The statistical machinery that produces it is proprietary.

The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 0–6 months horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Renewed conflict and mined fields take vast Ukrainian cropland out of production, tightening global grain and sunflower oil. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Wheat ▲ · Climate/crop supply ▲ · Geopolitical risk ▲ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.