Last week, as Santa’s reindeers were treading softly across every rooftop in Ireland, on the Siberian Tundra their Russian cousins were having a less salubrious Christmas.

Lidl’s gourmet meat counter in Ireland shows the extraordinary diversification and globalisation of our national food menu. You can find kangaroo steaks from the Australian outback, legs of venison from New Zealand, fillets of hare from the Argentinean Pampas and gammons of wild boar from Germany’s Black Forest. In previous years, you could even get a haunch of Russian reindeer at your local Lidl.

But this year, Russians need all their reindeer meat. Replacing Russian food imports from Europe, America, Canada and Australia comes at a very high price to the most unsuspecting of victims. To millions of Russian people, Russian reindeer are now even bigger heroes than Santa’s team are to Irish children. That’s because Russian reindeer deliver every day of the year. Reindeer meat is a highly nutritious food staple in the vast regions of Russia, with more Omega 3 oils and vitamin B complex than oysters. Smoked and served with pickled blackberries, reindeer steak carpaccio is a high-end gourmet health food.

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Reindeer meat production is an important rural enterprise, not only in Russia, but also in many parts of Scandinavia and Canada. In fact, reindeer are the only meat-producing animals adapted to live in the frozen wastes of Siberia.

No reindeer, no people

In the northern third of Siberia, an area of three million square kilometres – 40 times the size of the island of Ireland – reindeer are essential to the economy. Indeed, where there are no reindeer, you’ll find no people in northern Russia.

Russian reindeer farmers have the capacity to produce 10 times more high-quality meat than all of Ireland’s beef, sheep, pig and poultry farmers combined. That’s the relevance and the context of Russia’s reindeer herds.

Other Russian options

This year, Russia produced a record crop of 105m tonnes of wheat. This set the country up very nicely to be the world’s fourth largest wheat exporter. But late on Christmas Eve, the Kremlin slapped a 15% export duty on wheat exports, an effective €35/t price increase.

In addition, the state-controlled Russian railways announced a 13.4% increase in tariffs for transporting wheat to port. These extra charges will harvest €2.5bn a year when applied to Russia’s 40m tonnes of wheat exports. This fund will be used to subsidise Russian food prices.

Two things are clear from this move. Russia has immediate options, plus a long-term plan to ride out a very protracted trade war with Europe and America. These tariffs are a big setback to Ireland and Europe’s pig and poultry farmers. But they do bring some badly needed good news to our more efficient grass-based beef and dairy farmers. However, this respite could be very short-lived. Russia also has the capacity to control the bulk of the world’s fertilizer production and supplies. Putin could now decide to impose an export duty on Russian nitrogen and potash. Let’s hope he doesn’t.