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

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

#241

Post by gdubs » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

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…

Every bit counts and even on a small balcony it’s possible to at least grow fresh herbs and a few other things in pots and containers. There’s also the indoor microgreen approach. There have been some cool prototypes that look about the size of a mini fridge and can grow a decent amount of fresh salad greens.

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

#242

Post by tgv » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #177

the8472 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's import+export for you. It's not all local produce.

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

#243

Post by gdubs » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

downshun wrote: post #76

What is limiting robot-assisted telemetric food harvesting? Why cant I connect to the web with a gaming console, play farmer and be rewarded for it? The data could eventually be used to develop self-harvesting farms. There's already automated computer assisted surgery, so is this really that far off? Is it desirable? It runs eventually into a similar problem as self-driving cars and the looming unemployment of trucke…

I hope we get there. Things have gotten closer. The ideal is being able to harvest something like a strawberry without ruining it and it turns out to be rather difficult. With enough attention and investment, this is certainly a solvable problem. Let’s hope our attention spans get a little longer and we can stay focused on the need to innovate on food security when this is all over.

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

#244

Post by soperj » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #228

robocat wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Crayfish in NZ is the size of lobster in the US.

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

#245

Post by noemotion » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #236

scanr wrote: post #233

Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...

Why have eastern europeans do the work instead of the normal workers? It's not like eastern europeans have any special resistance to corona, nor are their lives worth less.

I guess Eastern Europeans were the normal workers until now.

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

#246

Post by Daishiman » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

catalogia wrote: post #236

scanr wrote: post #233

Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...

Why have eastern europeans do the work instead of the normal workers? It's not like eastern europeans have any special resistance to corona, nor are their lives worth less.

The cost of picking fruit such that it being affordable is not coherent with the cost of living of Britain. Such is the case in a lot of places in the first world.

You can keep having affordable fresh fruit, or you can pretend you can pay laborers local prices, driving up the price dramatically, reducing the total size of the market (because nobody's going to be able to afford the new prices), and having even less produce being made, further driving up costs as economies of scale become less effective.

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

#247

Post by Zenst » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:37 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #147

Zenst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain grows most of the fruit and veg, whilst the netherlands grow mostly flowers. The demand for flowers has somewhat waned and recently saw an article of flower farmers in Africa suffering as nowhere to sell and case of piles of flowers composting away. The impact in that market will be very impacting.

> whilst the netherlands grow mostly flowers. 38 km² of flowers in glasshouses and 272 km² of flowers on open ground. Total agricultural land use is 18163 km², 11815 km² of which is for growing grass and fodder, most of the remaining 6347 km² is food for human consumption, dominated by potatoes and grain. So not even 3%. We do not grow mostly flowers .

Aha, thank you for the correction.

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

#248

Post by catalogia » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:38 PM UTC

noemotion wrote: post #245

catalogia wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why have eastern europeans do the work instead of the normal workers? It's not like eastern europeans have any special resistance to corona, nor are their lives worth less.

I guess Eastern Europeans were the normal workers until now.

Oh, well if that's the status quo that makes sense. I assumed the normal workers were unavailable due to quarantine/etc.

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

#249

Post by cma » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

banmeagaindan2 wrote: post #231

cma wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thiel also said companies shouldn’t have big cash reserves because it is a sign of running out of ideas.

Hello Slow Ban my old friend. For growth technology firms that is true - I remember his debate with Eric Schmidt - he was really arguing being a technology firm should be a temporary award contingent on how the firm behaves instead of a title. Technologies mature into infrastructure and stop being thought of as technologies. This is part of his thesis that technology companies should be monopoly companies - and that…

It could be hard for Google to weather a downturn without cash reserves. Ad revenue could dry up substantially.

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

#250

Post by rad_gruchalski » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:40 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…

> 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.

Following your thought: if it is worth their time and effort. They can’t earn more than €450/month to not have their Krankenversicherung affected. And then, there are taxes, tax classes and whatnot. What if they earn too much and they lose their unemployment status?

The situation requires changes in law.