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

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

#221

Post by Torwald » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

2ion wrote: post #190

I'd go to the fields at once if it be worth my time. That means 50€/hour plus benefits, and fully paid transportation and accommodation. There are enough jobless people in Germany that should be able to pick any number of fields. For this kind of money, that'd be a no-brainer. Here we have two problems: Wages are too low to pay for higher food prices that could sustain local field labour, and the majority of average…

> It's the consequence of having an export-oriented economy: labour must at all cost be as low as possible.

In what type of economy would that not be the case then?

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

#222

Post by robocat » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:08 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…

> China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself

References? And of course, that is by value... I’m in NZ and it’s been in the news about how our our crayfish (lobster in US) exports to China crashed, but that’s a high value food. China imports a lot of “unnecessary” luxury foods from NZ (deer, fruit, salmon, mussels, etc), although I don’t know anything about volumes of staples like wheat.

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

#223

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #143

banmeagaindan2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not need to be most Americans and a lot of office workers would prefer to be farmers if the wage were correct. We have markets - let the prices rise and we will see more farmers in the future. E; I know it is not your theory Doreen - but it is a popular species of liberal (meaning democrat + republican) political propaganda. Everything Moravec's Paradox ever said, everything Peter Thiel ever said about automa…

> It does not need to be most Americans and a lot of office workers would prefer to be farmers if the wage were correct. Most everyone would prefer to be farmers (= farm owners = capitalist of at least the petit bourgeoisie, if not actually the haut bourgeoisie) instead of wage laborers. But, no, I don't think that many office workers would prefer to be manual laborers, whether farm laborers or otherwise. Sure, with…

Some people do white collar work because they aren't physically capable of doing hard physical labor.

That includes me.

One thing missing from a lot of conversations is the detail that modern medicine is good at keeping you alive after a serious medical crisis. It's not so talented at restoring you to full function. The result is a lot of disabled people and that fact rarely enters the conversation about labor trends.

I suspect another element is that we have more pollution and what not impairing the functioning of pretty much everyone, but saying that risks being accused of being a conspiracy theory nutter. But it's been on my mind a lot here lately because pollution is down across the globe, traffic is down in my small town and my energy is -- "coincidentally" -- up and I'm getting more done than usual here lately, in spite of my underlying condition being an incurable genetic disorder.

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

#224

Post by ericmay » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

phenkdo wrote: post #122

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.

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

Well, alternatively you’re just paying people slave wages to do this work so you can have cheaper groceries. Don’t forget that.

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

#225

Post by carapace » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:10 PM UTC

Plant your Victory Garden now. (You should have a garden anyway or you're just not living the good life, eh?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

One packet each of your favorite veggies: $10-$30. The next three months of spring & summer: priceless.

If you live in an apartment or condo fill your windows with plants using little planter boxes and whatnot. Every bit helps.

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

#226

Post by neonate » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:12 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…

> 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

Oh, I heard that too, years and years ago and always wondered who it was. Somehow the internet has delivered!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PewDctni5c#t=90

That's some pretty sharp comedy writing and delivery.

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

#227

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:12 PM UTC

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…

Being prepared is how you survive and thrive in 90% of situations. While I am not one, I never thought it made sense to make fun of them. Folks who laughed at them played a stupid game and won a stupid prize...

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

#228

Post by vonmoltke » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

robocat wrote: post #222

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…

> China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself References? And of course, that is by value... I’m in NZ and it’s been in the news about how our our crayfish (lobster in US) exports to China crashed, but that’s a high value food. China imports a lot of “unnecessary” luxury foods from NZ (deer, fruit, salmon, mussels, etc), although I don’t know anything about volumes…

> crayfish (lobster in US)

Crayfish is crawfish in the US, not lobster

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

#229

Post by DoreenMichele » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:16 PM UTC

phatfish wrote: post #220

DoreenMichele wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because young people are less physically fit than they used to be, so they don't have the muscle and stamina required by such jobs. But the reasons why are almost irrelevant. The pertinent detail is that employers can't fill these jobs without immigrant labor. Most Americans don't want them at any pay rate.

Not sure how attacking "young people" as weak solves anything. It's simply what the job demands. If you are working in construction chances are you are stronger than someone sitting at a desk. Put the person sitting at the desk in the construction job for a month and I bet they build some muscle. Same as sitting the construction worker at a desk 8 hrs a day will make them physically weaker. This is the reason for the…

I'm not attacking young people as weak. It's a known trend, a trend that even the federal government implicitly acknowledged by lowering fitness standards for younger military members but not older members.

Gym membership may be up because we've lost a lot of other avenues for getting some exercise. Lifestyles have changed in recent decades. Kids are much more likely to play video games instead of playing sports with neighbor kids out in the yard or street.

I'm not against vide games. My kids always played a lot of them. But I also made sure they had opportunities to get some physical exercise, if only so my insomniac oldest child would sleep some and he couldn't sleep if he didn't get some physical activity in on a daily basis.

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

#230

Post by carapace » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:20 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…

s/cedes/ceases/ (I don't mean to criticize, I've been noticing a lot of malapropisms recently. Auto-incorrect I imagine.)