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What are their ventures, and what hath globalism wrought? Here are three illustrations:

1. Pregnant cows. For complex reasons I explained in the magazine, Eastport had worked up a booming business as the east coast shipping center for pregnant cows, which were en route to markets across the Atlantic, especially in Turkey. (Short explanation: Countries in Europe were looking to rebuild their cattle stock, with a preference for cows from the U.S. It was more efficient in various ways to send cows over while already pregnant, so the calves would be born in Europe.) We didn’t happen to be in town during one of the pregnant-cattle drives, but we heard about cowpokes from Texas guiding their herds into hay-filled containers that would be put on ships, and riding with them until they debarked on the other side.

When we visited the dock in Eastport last week, we saw the special cattle-containers stacked up—and empty. Why? Because of war in Syria and the related tumult in Turkey. Turkey had been the main customer for Eastport’s cows; violence and disorder in Syria spilled over the Turkish borders, including to major cattle areas; the Turkish buyers had put their orders on hold.

“We watch to see what the PKK is doing with ceasefires,” the port director Chris Gardner told me last week, when I had breakfast with him and Bob Peacock at the WaCo diner. He was referring to forces from the Kurdistan Workers Party who have been fighting in Turkey. “I can’t believe I’m sitting in little Eastport talking about the PKK, but that’s the reality,” he said.

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2. Wood pellets. Some 90 percent of Maine is now covered by forest. That is a larger share than a century ago, when parts of the forest had been cleared for little farms and grazing areas. It may be more than at any other time in the state’s post-colonial-era history. There is a whole lot more to say on this theme—which I’m not going to say, and will instead refer you to this University of Maine report as a starting point. (Plus its Forest Bioproducts Research Institute, and its analyses of what climate change will mean for the state.)

Maine’s tree-based industries have been in a long decline—fewer mills, fewer loggers, fewer viable businesses based on growing, cutting, and processing trees. The three big commercial uses for trees are: making paper, building, and energy-production (burning). For a variety of reasons, the trends in all these areas have been down.

But then an anomaly of European “clean-energy” policy created a big market opportunity for “pelletized wood” from American forests. Short version: because trees can be regrown, ground-up wood counts as “renewable energy” biomass by European standards. EU policies require that renewable biomass make up at least 20 percent of EU energy supply by 2020; in practice, this means a big market for substituting wood pellets in place of coal in power plants.