From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by dasil003 » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

Sawamara wrote: post #80

dasil003 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a weird comment, you might as well say no one forced humans to be such social creatures allowing viruses spread easily. People make relatively optimal local decisions based on the situation at hand. It's ludicrous to suggest they should have foreseen this situation and just paid more for labor. That kind of second-guessing could be applied to basically 90% of the world right now, and the other 10% just g…

Its not a weird comment. The current global mode of production is engineered to ONLY work when there are no global crisises at hand. Guess what: we have a global crisis at hand now. Which means that the neoliberal modus operandi fails without a struggle. It just collapsed overnight. And if you think otherwise, just answer me this: if tourism cedes to exist, what do wild west neoliberal goverments do (with their curre…

Why are farmers responsible for this? How do you propose they would have paid for more expensive labor without broad collusion to keep prices high?

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

#162

Post by robk » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #51

411111111111111 wrote: post #8

Nobody forced the farmers to become reliant on migrant workers though. It was just a simple decision for them: cheap labor that's available today or expensive labor... They mostly went with cheap, and now they don't have anyone available. Tough luck I guess, but it always was just a question of time until this happened.

Some years ago, I saw a comedian mock the idea that immigrants were a threat to American jobs by joking that he had always wanted to be an underpaid farm laborer and can't make that dream work because the illegal immigrants took all those jobs. In America, it used to be common for young men in high school and college to do construction work during the summer. Now, it's mostly immigrants. When I was still a military w…

I'm with you. I'm optimistic that if the market can set a fair price there's plenty of work. As someone from maybe a generation after you I'd have been happy to work in the manual labor sector if it paid better than my job at Staples but alas it paid far worse.

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

#163

Post by 6510 » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

phenkdo wrote: post #139

robk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if it means people are being paid a fair wage. I should pay more for things where I'm exploiting labor tbh.

Somehow I think your keyboard bravado will vanish once you start paying 60-70% of salary for just basic necessities. And even if I were to concede that you - presumably high paid tech workers - were willing & able, imagine the fate of the pensioners, bus drivers, retail workers...they barely make ends meet as it is.

Things already are expensive and with all the automation the salaries make up a crazy tiny amount of it.

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

#164

Post by amalter » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #97

yunusabd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your second link goes to a still image. I assume you mean this [1] video? Though I don't see how that supports the statement that China has spent a big portion of its national reserve. [1] https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett/status/122072527639456563...

China imports a gigantic amount of food, and ports were first to be hit by disruption . As a person who works in OEM electronics in China, I can tell at least that. So, at any normal day, China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself. Agriculture has been on shutdown for the past 2.5 months. Farms have slaughtered a large portion of their livestock, and a big portion…

Where is the source on Chinese ports being closed? I work in the international trade sector and since March 9th we’ve had record breaking activity on our system.

Even looking at AIS you can see 1000+ dockings over the next 3 days at Shenzhen - https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/data/?asset_type=arrivals_d...

Also air freight volume is off the charts! We’re starting to see airlines use their 777’s with cargo in the belly and boxes on the seats.

I can’t speak to the food security situation at all. However, from my vantage point, supply lanes are screamingly full of something.

How that plays out for individual products ... shrug ...

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

#165

Post by TeMPOraL » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

phenkdo wrote: post #139

robk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure if it means people are being paid a fair wage. I should pay more for things where I'm exploiting labor tbh.

Somehow I think your keyboard bravado will vanish once you start paying 60-70% of salary for just basic necessities. And even if I were to concede that you - presumably high paid tech workers - were willing & able, imagine the fate of the pensioners, bus drivers, retail workers...they barely make ends meet as it is.

The free variable that consumes all available spending money tends to be rent. If food prices go up, I'd expect real estate prices to stop growing so fast. It would be a welcome change.

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

#166

Post by rubber_duck » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #141

phenkdo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you also look forward to the 10x grocery shit-bill you will be stuck with?

Numbers I've read is that farm labour accounts for ~10% of retail food cost for fruits. https://www.prb.org/usfarmworkersfoodprices/ If that doubles because they have to pay local labour rates, the price would go up 10%. Possibly less if it just eats into the margins through the rest of the chain. We might also see a shift toward less laborious foods, which is fine by me.

You realise such transitions take crop cycles - if the current crops fail because lack of labour and it leads to a food shortage food prices will go through the roof.

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

#167

Post by KarlKemp » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

klipt wrote: post #101

aazaa wrote: post #60

> From Huelva to Hamburg and Newcastle to Naples, Europe’s farmers are struggling to find people to bring in rapidly ripening fruits and vegetables, which frequently must be hand-picked, usually within a window of just a few days. They typically rely on seasonal workers from eastern Europe or northern Africa, but fears of the coronavirus are keeping hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers from leaving home, and con…

Hopefully this won't lead to any actual starvation? As I understand it, staples like grains and root vegetables can mostly be harvested by machine. While it would be sad to waste fruits and leafy vegetables, I expect you can survive without them for quite a while, especially if you have access to multivitamins.

Zero risk of starvation. The labor-intensive produce at this time of year (and the next 3 months) is mostly asparagus and strawberries. Grain & corn is all machines. If there’s a second wave, or it takes very long, olives could become a major problem (Nov/Dec). Not for nutrition, but economically and my breakfast routine.

There’s still a lot of fresh fruit in warehouses. Apples, for example, which will last until the end of year.

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

#168

Post by chewz » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

joshvm wrote: post #129

groby_b wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this is also naive. You don't need an acre, nor is it backbreaking labour. The biggest time sink for home gardeners in my experience is watering, which you can solve by timed drip irrigation. Some plants like beans and peas are so easy to grow that they'll take over if you don't manage them. Potatoes are also pretty robust. However, growing year-round is hard. It's relatively easy to feed yourself over the su…

> like bagged salads, tomatoes

salads, tomatoes are extremly wasteful form of transporting water so the benefit of growing your own is enormous

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

#169

Post by KarlKemp » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #157

avip wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience organizing groups for picking tells me this feel good effort doesn't work.

I'd be interested to hear more about what you think will go wrong. It seems like this is an important problem to solve.

Search for images or videos of asparagus or strawberry picking. Or try holding small bottles of water in each hand, bend over with your arms stretched out, hold for 8 hours.

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

#170

Post by dehrmann » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

broAhmed wrote: post #47

groby_b wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not many calories in what they're growing, either.