乌克兰是一个幸福度不高的国家。这并非我的观点，，而是联合国（UN）最新《全球幸福报告》（World Happiness Report）的结论。这个报告根据大量调研，对156个国家进行幸福度排名。乌克兰排名第87位，幸福度比拉脱维亚高一点，比加纳略低。

    乌克兰幸福度如此之低，一点也不意外。在224个国家排名中，乌克兰的出生率排在第202位，而死亡率则高居第二（仅次于南非）。人口死亡率几乎是出生率的两倍。理论上，一个国家可以通过吸引移民来抵消人口下降趋势，但乌克兰的做法恰恰相反：人口流出速度快于流入速度。 因此，乌克兰人口不断下降。与此同时，腐败、政治动荡和不稳定对乌克兰经济造成了巨大的冲击，导致它目前的经济规模依然小于1991年从苏联宣布独立时候的规模。如果你生活在那里，你也会感到不幸福。

    那么，一家外国公司的CEO为什么要关心乌克兰呢？有几个原因，其中最大的原因可能就是粮食。老一代美国人在小学课本里就学到过，乌克兰是“苏联的粮仓”，现在它仍然是一个粮仓。粮食是乌克兰的灵魂；它的国旗是蓝黄色条，代表了麦田和晴空。乌克兰自己吃不完这些粮食。随着全世界人口数量不断增长、贫穷减少，粮食成为一个更有争议的全球问题，不幸福的、人口下降的乌克兰变得更加重要——无论是在经济上、还是地缘政治上。

    这就是为什么约翰迪尔（Deere）CEO山姆•艾伦、卡特彼勒（Caterpillar）现任CEO道格•奥伯赫尔曼和前任CEO雷•莱恩都曾告诉过我，乌克兰对于他们的公司战略有多重要。这也是为什么这两家公司，还有Archer Daniels Midland 、嘉吉(Cargill)、杜邦(DuPont)、Mondelez、孟山都(Monsanto)以及其他美国农业公司都在乌克兰经营的原因。

    或许最重要的是，这也是为什么去年中国达成了一个50年的特别协议，将租赁乌克兰5%的土地，也就是740万英亩的面积。这个面积大概与马萨诸塞州或比利时的面积相仿。中国消费全球约20%的粮食，而且这个比例还在快速增长。但中国的耕地面积只占全球9%，而随着城镇化吞噬更多耕地，这个比例还在下降。中国需要从乌克兰这个粮仓中分一杯羹。中国的官方通讯社已经刊发文章，警告中国“粮食安全”面临的威胁。

    普京非常清楚，希望对乌克兰施加影响的可不止俄罗斯和西方。

    未来一段时间我们将看到从乌克兰传出大量的政治军事消息，但几乎都不会提到该国对于全球粮食供应的重要性。不过，我们绝不能忘了，这个问题始终隐藏在背后。（财富中文网）

    Ukraine is a sad country. That's not my opinion -- well, actually it is, but setting that aside for the moment, it's also a finding of the UN's most recent World Happiness Report, which combines massive quantities of research to rank 156 nations by happiness. Ukraine is No. 87, just a bit happier than Latvia and slightly more miserable than Ghana.

    Such deep gloom is no surprise. In a ranking of 224 countries, Ukraine's birth rate is No. 202, while its death rate is No. 2 (behind only South Africa). People are dying almost twice as fast as they're being born. In theory a country can counter that population-draining effect by attracting immigrants, but Ukraine is doing the opposite: People are moving out faster than they're moving in. Thus the population is shrinking, while corruption, political turmoil, and instability have hammered the economy so badly that it's still smaller than it was when the country declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. If you lived there, you'd be unhappy too.

    So why would a foreign CEO care about Ukraine? For a few reasons, of which the largest may well be food. Americans of a certain vintage learned in elementary school that Ukraine is "the breadbasket of the Soviet Union," and it's still a breadbasket. Grain is in Ukraine's soul; the country's flag, a band of blue over a band of gold, symbolizes a clear sky over a field of grain. Ukraine can't consume nearly as much food as it produces. As food becomes a more contentious global issue with the world's population growing richer and more numerous, sad, shrinking Ukraine becomes more important -- economically and geopolitically.

    That's why Sam Allen, CEO of Deere (DE), and Doug Oberhelman and Ray Lane, the current and former CEOs of Caterpillar (CAT), have all told me how critical the country is to their strategies. It's also why those companies plus Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, DuPont (DD), Mondelez (MDLZ), Monsanto (MON), and other U.S. agribusiness companies have operations there.

    Perhaps most important, it's why China last year negotiated an extraordinary 50-year deal to rent 5% of Ukraine -- 7.4 million acres, about the size of Massachusetts or Belgium. China consumes some 20% of the world's food, a share that is increasing fast, but it has only 9% of the world's arable land, a share that is declining as urbanization takes over more farmland. The country needs a piece of the breadbasket. China's official government news agency has published articles warning of threats to the country's "grain security."

    Vladimir Putin is well aware that Russia and the West aren't the only players that want a degree of influence over Ukraine.

    We'll see lots of political and military news from Ukraine in coming days, and almost none of it will mention the country's significance for the world's food supply. Let's remember that that issue is always lurking in the background.