I’d add the push to produce ethanol as a ‘biofuel’ in the US which takes the acreage for that corn out of food production (something the US no longer needs other than as a TEL replacement, given shale oil which both plentiful and light/sweet making it easily refined into fuel).

>>For example, Ukraine’s trains run on slightly broader tracks than most tracks in Europe.

If anyone’s interested in track gauges across the world, there’s a good summary here (image below is from that summary).