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From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

bloomberg.com

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

#171

Post by phenkdo »

rubber_duck wrote: post #166
Scoundreller wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...and not to mention everything is interconnected in an economy. If food prices rise by x%, there is a cascade effect on the prices of everything, not just groceries.

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

#172

Post by Scoundreller »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #146
Scoundreller wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is, the proportion of your fresh fruit cost that is migrant labour isn't very much. If that cost only were passed on, we wouldn't see much of a difference in price. Kinda how like Walmart could double the wage of its retail employees by increasing its prices by 6%.

And then Walmart would fail because everyone would shop at target or Another store. In a low margin business, every percent counts.

'cept Walmart has been raising its corporate minimum wage. Then there's Costco that has always paid a wage about the prevailing for retail. No shortage of price-conscious customers at either.

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

#173

Post by ornornor »

Holly shit since this whole pandemic thing has started, I couldn’t stop thinking about the preppers who must be popping champagne every night and be so happy all their work was for something after all. Everyone made fun of them, but now they’re the ones laughing. The rest of us? We’re just clueless. Seriously, if society was going to collapse I don’t think I’d last very long. I could maybe trade some tomatoes for a couple bullets but then what?

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

#174

Post by Scoundreller »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #151
DoreenMichele wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I have ever read indicates that white Americans don't want farm labor jobs even if you pay $20/hour.

What people want to do work that damaged their body, is subject to short term changes in demand due to weather and has high income instability, and leads to no future growth? $20/hour for temporary backbreaking work in exchange for not being near friends or family, having to move constantly, having to live in a rural area (not what most people want), having no upward income mobility. The people that do it, do it beca…

> The people that do it, do it because they have no better option. Not because they want to.

Isn't that most people in their current job?

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

#175

Post by Scoundreller »

phenkdo wrote: post #149
Scoundreller wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a chance. When you're paying a couple bucks a pound for fresh ______, it didn't take 15 minutes of a migrant worker's time to plant/pick/care/pack that pound. My guess is that the migrant worker proportion of retail cost is edit: > What would happen to consumer food costs if farm wages rose and the extra costs were passed on to consumers? The average earnings of field workers were $9.78 an hour in 2008, according…

Again such a naive viewpoint, in an economy everything is interconnected. If the prices of groceries rise, there are knock-on effects on everything. Yep, EVERYTHING From healthcare to housing, to transport, and whatnot will rise many-x and this bravado will evaporate in the time you took to read this post.

And benefits when your purchases go into the pockets of a local instead of foreign remittances.

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

#176

Post by [deleted] »

nicoburns wrote: post #150
phenkdo wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't the point of this change to give farm workers (who like bus drivers, retail workers, etc barely make ends meet) the ability to cover their basic needs more easily. If we could implement this across all low-paid jobs, I would more than happily pay a greater proportion of my own salary on these goods.

[deleted]

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

#177

Post by microtonal »

the8472 wrote: post #46
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...

I am not sure about fresh food, but The Netherlands is world's second largest agricultural exporter (and no, it's not only flowers):

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

Also, it's not only about size, also efficiency. Scroll down the article and look at the insane yields per square mile for tomatoes, chilies + green peppers, and cucumbers. No other country comes even close.

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

#178

Post by ghaff »

alexandernst wrote: post #5
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…

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…

Your idea of a "small town" has the population of Sacramento or Atlanta (and almost the population of Frankfurt, if you prefer Europe). I live in what would reasonably be considered a small town in the northeast US outside a major metro. The population of our town is about 7,000 people. (And most people would have the room for respectable garden.)

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

#179

Post by baybal2 »

amalter wrote: post #164
baybal2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bell…

> 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.

Yes, after resumption of commercial activities, air freight was record cheap for a few weeks, than it was hit again by airport closures.

Now I got news that SZ airport will be reopening again for freight only flights under some special regime

As for ports, we have a container stuck in Yantian since Feb 14, no news from the shipper when they can load. The freight broken says the shipping company says the ship is there moored, but they have no permission berth or to do anything besides pass instant noodles to the crew.

Yeah, it's best to say we are having a monumental pileup that is continuing since the spring festival

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

#180

Post by DoreenMichele »

Scoundreller wrote: post #134
phenkdo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that pay rate, your grocery bill will rise 5x-10x and while that might not bother you, there are several people from whom that's a death knell.

Not a chance. When you're paying a couple bucks a pound for fresh ______, it didn't take 15 minutes of a migrant worker's time to plant/pick/care/pack that pound. My guess is that the migrant worker proportion of retail cost is edit: > What would happen to consumer food costs if farm wages rose and the extra costs were passed on to consumers? The average earnings of field workers were $9.78 an hour in 2008, according…

A long time ago, I read that you could double the wages of farm laborers and it would add like two cents or four cents to the cost of a box of breakfast cereal.
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