Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 589 posts

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#41

Post by emptysands »

groby_b wrote: post #9
Zenst wrote: post #2

Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient. Gardens that you grow your own, allotments - the mentality of that has been driven away over decades and now people are starting to smell the roses and realize they can't eat them. So in many avenues - complacency gets highlighted more and I'm sure many and much will change on the back of this period in time. Overall I'd say for the better. Certa…

This is a very naive take on the world. You'll need at the very least half an acre to feed yourself sustainably, and that's if you're highly optimized. It's also backbreaking work, and you won't be able to do much else except subsistence farming. In short, it's not practical for the vast majority of the population. The closest we can probably get to this model is instead CSA memberships, supporting farms right outsid…

OMG Garden in Auckland is an urban garden that produces 1000NZD per week in commercial produce sales. They think they can get to 1400 per week.

Small They have full time farmer.

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#42

Post by gambiting »

maelito wrote: post #31
makomk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in the UK, the countryside has basically turned into a vacation and retirement area for wealthy Londoners. It's pretty much impossible for people to afford to live where the labour is needed on any sort of pay that would make farming actually viable, which restricts it to workers from lower cost-of-living countries that cram into cramped accommodation for the length of the season and then return home. Not su…

The countryside everywhere in UK ? Or just around London ?

Around London and a lot of the "south". But come out to Yorkshire or Northumberland and you can buy a farm and some land for very little. Living outside of the city in Northumberland(say within 30 minute driving distance to Newcastle) can be stupidly cheap.

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#43

Post by Zenst »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #37
peterwoerner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, the market does. Most people won't pay an 50% on food because the farmers pay a living wage.

How much of the cost of food is from how much it costs to harvest it? I find it difficult to believe that even doubling the cost of harvesting would cause the price to increase by 50%.

Labour does play a big part in farming and things like fruit - a lions share of the costs in farm to market.

Overall - this may be of interest: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#44

Post by pbhjpbhj »

groby_b wrote: post #9
Zenst wrote: post #2

Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient. Gardens that you grow your own, allotments - the mentality of that has been driven away over decades and now people are starting to smell the roses and realize they can't eat them. So in many avenues - complacency gets highlighted more and I'm sure many and much will change on the back of this period in time. Overall I'd say for the better. Certa…

This is a very naive take on the world. You'll need at the very least half an acre to feed yourself sustainably, and that's if you're highly optimized. It's also backbreaking work, and you won't be able to do much else except subsistence farming. In short, it's not practical for the vast majority of the population. The closest we can probably get to this model is instead CSA memberships, supporting farms right outsid…

Here's an idea, put everyone's half acres together, then use automation to reduce the labour needed, freeing people to do other useful work! We can share the food, and share the labour!

This will work as long as some malevolent dick doesn't come along and decide they want more than their fair share ...

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#45

Post by yorwba »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #15
alexandernst wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where (physically) do you expect 500.000 (a small town example) people garden their own food? They'd need to travel outside town, garden, then get back (and all this while also commuting to work on a daily basis). Also, the amount of tools every single person would need to buy. "Decentralisation" is a goof idea, but not feasible in the real world, IMHO. And this is a small town example, leave alone a huge capital lik…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening) In Britain and Germany, allotment gardening was promoted as a social measure and by all accounts it was successful.

It's successful at giving people the option to occasionally put some fresh produce on their plates. It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round, let alone your family or everyone else who doesn't have an allotment. If an acute food shortage hit right during harvest season I might be able to hold out for a few weeks, but any other time of year would be pretty bad.

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#46

Post by the8472 »

partingshots wrote: post #4

Doesn’t the Netherlands export the majority of Europe’s fresh food? As long as the supply chain doesn’t break down, I don’t see how it would be possible for Spain and Germany to run out of food. Especially since they’re all in the EU, even if the Netherlands wanted to close off their borders, there’s no way they really could.

Based on the greenhouses I could identify on google maps spain's part seems much larger.

Netherlands - https://www.google.com/maps/@52.021357,4.5405597,46292m/data...

Spain - https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7995257,-2.4654344,60237m/da...

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#47

Post by broAhmed »

groby_b wrote: post #9
Zenst wrote: post #2

Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient. Gardens that you grow your own, allotments - the mentality of that has been driven away over decades and now people are starting to smell the roses and realize they can't eat them. So in many avenues - complacency gets highlighted more and I'm sure many and much will change on the back of this period in time. Overall I'd say for the better. Certa…

This is a very naive take on the world. You'll need at the very least half an acre to feed yourself sustainably, and that's if you're highly optimized. It's also backbreaking work, and you won't be able to do much else except subsistence farming. In short, it's not practical for the vast majority of the population. The closest we can probably get to this model is instead CSA memberships, supporting farms right outsid…

You can grow a surprising amount on even 0.1 acres. Here's a video where a family grows 6000 pounds on about 4000 square feet.

https://youtu.be/NCmTJkZy0rM

Granted, they have the whole family pitching in with the labor and it's a full-time job for them.

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#48

Post by Zenst »

411111111111111 wrote: post #32
usrusr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound as if the farmers were the only ones affected if they fail to get in their harvest.

That wasn't my intention at all. Fresh produce will get considerably more expensive this year, thats for sure. Especially fruits as they're often very hard to harvest through automation. In the coming years I'd wager that a lot of farms will increasingly go for automation now. That'll have it's own consequences. The effect of this virus on our global society is gonna be massive and will likely bring a lot of changes.…

>Especially fruits as they're often very hard to harvest through automation.

So very true and an area in which the robotic revolution has always been mooted to happen soon, for many years...

However the transition will have an impact as once you remove those jobs, you shift the issues. So yes, automation will make things cheaper in one hand, but more expensive in another.

Re: From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

#49

Post by ilaksh »

pascalxus wrote: post #17
Zenst wrote: post #2

Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient. Gardens that you grow your own, allotments - the mentality of that has been driven away over decades and now people are starting to smell the roses and realize they can't eat them. So in many avenues - complacency gets highlighted more and I'm sure many and much will change on the back of this period in time. Overall I'd say for the better. Certa…

It's sad, but here in CA, most people don't have yards and there's nowhere to grow food. It's especially dumb because there's miles and miles of undeveloped land everywhere (at least in the east bay suberbs), not being used for anything in particular except maybe some farms with cows on it: I'm sure they're taking advantage of huge tax wholes because they're sitting on land that would cost 10s of millions of dollars…

I think saying that most people don't have yards in California is misleading. More people have yards in California than in many other places where there are more dense cities.
Post reply on HN