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From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

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

#191

Post by lotsofpulp »

Scoundreller wrote: post #172
lotsofpulp wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone was raising wages, so everyone’s prices also went up, and Walmart still likely has the best cheap:convenient ratio. Point is Walmart can’t choose to raise everyone’s wages 6%, unless everyone else does too, because the whole reason people go to Walmart is it’s the cheapest.

Costco targets people with more disposable income, so not exactly a comparable market.

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

#192

Post by op03 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #111
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…

> it takes actual work to grow, harvest, and distribute crops. I look forward to the test of "Europeans don't want to do _____ work" when the shit-pay factor is removed.

It's not going to happen. Europe will handle it better than anyone else if they use their imagination and not loose their minds - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

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

#193

Post by DoreenMichele »

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.

Historically, Walmart thrived in relatively small town, rural areas. When I was homeless in downtown San Diego, I had to take a bus elsewhere to occasionally visit the Walmart. There aren't any in the downtown area. They don't typically do well in the big city.

You presume people have those options. You presume they can readily and conveniently get to them in a way that makes financial and logistical sense.

In my small town, people who hate Walmart and are happy to drive an hour to a bigger city once a month to "visit the city" and do some of their shopping grudgingly shop at Walmart because it's the only source for a lot of things, even if you are happy to pay more money just to spite Walmart.

People from even smaller towns around us take the bus to shop here (or drive here), mostly at the Walmart. My small town is a regional shopping hub and has shopping and eateries more like a city several times larger because of it. We still can't reasonably get away from shopping at Walmart.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a Walmart fan and wouldn't have moved here if there was no Walmart. I'm just saying I've spoken with a local who hates Walmart and grudgingly does some of their shopping there anyway because they can't always find reasonable alternatives, try though they might.

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

#194

Post by avip »

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.

It's simpler than you think.

1. Commercially viable picking actually requires some training (identify pickable fruits, avoid damaging plants, don't half pick)

2. Farmers (rightfully) don't like people who have no knowledge in growing crops hanging around in their fields. They just do dumb things like drink from irrigation pipes (for some crops irrigation is periodically mixed with fertilizer or pesticides).

3. Volunteers are not trustworthy. You have 30 RSVP-ed and 5 show up. Picking season is usually a narrow window of opportunity.

4. Most importantly - the vast majority of people (from the subset of human race who may volunteer for picking in the first place) really don't know how to work consistently for 8-10 hours. They show up 8 AM (3h too late), then they sit down to drink coffee. Your equation is 10 volunteers ~ 1 professional labourer. And then you have to bring professional labour anyhow to clean after them.

All in all, this doesn't work.

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

#196

Post by odshoifsdhfs »

k__ wrote: post #50

I also read, the nurses that were commuting from other EU countries to work in Germany are now going back to help their home countries.

mind sharing a source? Would be interested to know abou this since I have been defending the reason some countries are at a better position than others Healthcare wise is due to brain-drain in those segments.

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

#197

Post by KarlKemp »

roenxi wrote: post #58
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.

There is a faint whiff of hypocrisy in hiring foreign labour, it suggests to me that some sort of cash-in-hand deal is afoot that isn't in line with local labour practices. This is a serious and concerning situation. However, it also has a certain schadenfreude of wealthy Europeans waking up in horror at having to pay local wages in excess of local social safety nets in order to grow their own food.

There’s certainly exploitation happening, but it’s just as true that these were relatively good jobs for those that did them based on costs of living in their home countries. As such, this practice has been important to reduce differences between richer and poorer countries, not just in Europe but also between the US and Mexico, for example.

That Schadenfreude seems to be prevalent among the far right here, who might just as soon become the object of it when differences start to widen again and thousands of people start seeking a better live by migrating outright.

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

#198

Post by 0xcoffee »

op03 wrote: post #192
Scoundreller wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it takes actual work to grow, harvest, and distribute crops. I look forward to the test of "Europeans don't want to do _____ work" when the shit-pay factor is removed.

It's not going to happen. Europe will handle it better than anyone else if they use their imagination and not loose their minds - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...

The Dutch vegetables are picked by Polish workers though. The problem remains: https://nos.nl/artikel/2328611-wie-gaan-de-asperges-steken-n...

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

#199

Post by balola »

yunusabd wrote: post #90
baybal2 wrote: post #68

Coworkers in Shenzhen are already saying that more fancier foods are already getting scarcer in the inland China, and prices are going up by day. China has done a massive livestock slaughter campaign when the quarantine was declared. That has actually depressed the food prices quite a bit for the first months, but after that, the prices have shot up. This is how they got that much meat: https://mustsharenews.com/wp-c…

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...

The pork supply gap is too big for any national reserve, the gap is 20 million tons. That's why China is importing Canadian pork despite the Huawei situation.

Compounding the matter is the party bureaucracy effectively killed most small farms since villages were completed sealed off, chickens weren't allowed to be sold (or killed in fear of bird flu) and feeds can't be sent in.

The pork shortage drove the chicken market to overheat last year and just right when they were suffering from oversupply during the winter this virus hit. Double whammy.

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

#200

Post by Mirioron »

ornornor wrote: post #173

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 c…

Preppers are just a more extreme version of the people who have a gun for defending themselves. A bad enough emergency can wipe out everything you have.

I guess you could compare this to IT plans for disasters. Most of us have barely any backups for most things. Yet there are those who have multiple off-site backups that are tested often whether they work.

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