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

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

#251

Post by ALittleLight » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #246

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.

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 pr…

People should pay more for fruit and food if more money is required to fairly compensate laborers. The solution shouldn't be importing a disadvantaged population to exploit for cheap labor.

If our modern economy is so weak we cannot afford fruits and vegetables we should confront and overcome that weakness rather than conceal it by importing an underclass.

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

#252

Post by luckylion » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:43 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…

> Wages are too low to pay for higher food prices that could sustain local field labour, and the majority of average people are already having their hands full with and pockets empty from paying rent, gas, transportation, emergency fund & food as-is.

Food isn't the issue on that list. Expenses for food have been stable for 20 years at ~14% of income (down from 45% in 1950). Given that these issues would only affect a few fruits and vegetables (but not grains, potatoes, rice, meat, dairy, which are the main foods), higher wages for harvest workers wouldn't make a significant dent in the average German's budget. Yeah, asparagus would be 20% more expensive and so would tomatoes, but the former is rare and somewhat of a luxury anyhow and tomatoes are cheap - at 1,99€ a kg, you won't notice a price hike to 2,49/kg in your budget at the end of the month.

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

#253

Post by felipemnoa » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

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…

>> And people were saying that we will never see a famine in Asia in the 21st century. That optimism was premature...

I wonder whether people will decide to take their chances with the coronavirus if faced with famine?

Something tells me that people will risk it with the coronavirus rather than die of starvation.

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

#254

Post by swixmix » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #208

DoreenMichele wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If that. Many farm-products have negligible farm-labour cost in their production: beans, rice, tomatoes, pulses, potatoes, onions, grains... Their farm costs are in land, storage, drying and expensive equipment. They're not being picked by hand and manually weeded. And even then, the price difference between the farm-gate and grocery store is massive.

But the small and medium sized farms that do those things by hand with the local work force will not be able to afford to pay their workers.

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

#255

Post by jellicle » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:47 PM UTC

phenkdo wrote: post #115

jellicle wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest advertising some fruit-picking jobs at a guaranteed $50/hour to test your theory that Americans don't want them at any pay rate.

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.

If you spend $1 on food, the farmer gets like 12% of that. Total. For everything. Seeds, fertilizer, gasoline, labor, tractors, whatever.

You could quintuple the pay of fruit pickers and your grocery bill would go up maybe 50%? Less?

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

#256

Post by banmeagaindan2 » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:47 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…

I don't claim I know what to do - but I don't like us jumping straight to the answer that this would not work - it is like the meme "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas".

This is where an imaginative government or community runs experiments - there are people like Elon Musk's brother - have they not been thinking about this?

If we have a large number of people turning their hand to something new - the solution space will open up and we might see new business models in production and distribution.

The political is part of this - there are now large numbers of angry young people wearing masks in the cities.

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

#257

Post by kharms » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

Zenst wrote: post #10

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Tangentially related, NPR aired an interview the other day with undocumented migrant workers (in the US) living very close together when traveling (sleeping sitting up together in a van) and having very limited access to water for bathing and hygiene when lodging at farms where they were working picking produce; it's likely this causes grave loss of life in the migrant community, and decimates produce farms economica…

Undocumented migrants have for all effect become the modern day equivalent of slavery without the associated compasion. Many happy to lambast such people and yet, be first to complain if their avocados go up in price or out of stock. Hopefully, some level of amnisty and clean slate is driven here as currently without that, will only shoot themselves in the foot on many levels. After all, many live day by day, kinda h…

>Undocumented migrants have for all effect become the modern day equivalent of slavery without the associated compasion.

Except for the fact that it's a choice - they aren't kidnapped and sold, they are choosing to work in (to us) shitty conditions because the conditions in their home countries are even worse. If you want to talk compassion - have some compassion for what they are running from.

I'm actually a little stunned at your disregard for the realities of slavery, both modern day and historic.

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

#258

Post by dirtyid » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:48 PM UTC

balola wrote: post #211

dirtyid wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely coming to the US too, big suppliers are ringing very small producers to fill in orders because US can't get any Mexican farmhands in. Canada is exempting and flying in migrant labours. There's also panic in meat supply chains with Tyson strikes. I'd like to think Canada is safe but prices would probably get nutty if there's excess US demand unless we ban exports. Also migrant labours live like sardines, 20+ sh…

>massive waste and spoilage in the supply chain. Maybe in the west, but not the case in China, food is relatively expensive, so very little is wasted, even poisonous rice can find snack factory buyers. Restaurant waste is colleted by small pig farms.

China's food supply chain has a lot of inefficiencies spread over many small farmsteads with old technology and poor conditions instead of highly mechanized large agriculture farms in the west. I don't remember the exact numbers but lost in harvest, storage, transportation, refining was equivalent to total food imports before it reaches consumers. There's also massive waste in food services, the number is something ridiculous like enough to feed 400 million annually. This was from a study from ~5 years ago.

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

#259

Post by Daishiman » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:49 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #203

Zenst wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undocumented migrants have for all effect become the modern day equivalent of slavery without the associated compasion. Many happy to lambast such people and yet, be first to complain if their avocados go up in price or out of stock. Hopefully, some level of amnisty and clean slate is driven here as currently without that, will only shoot themselves in the foot on many levels. After all, many live day by day, kinda h…

> Hopefully, some level of amnisty and clean slate is driven In the absence of the actual border and viable border enforcement a proper border would enable, that will only make the problem 10x worse, as a significant chunk of Mexico will try to go North in hopes of another "amnesty" in the future.

The total number of immigrants to the US has dropped dramatically as living conditions in Mexico have improved over time. This keeps getting repeated but does not agree with evidence.

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

#260

Post by neilwilson » Sat, Mar 28, 2020, 8:50 PM UTC

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...

With 3 million people in the UK still without work that want it - and many more laid off, redundant or self-employed without clients, the solution should be obvious. Pay a decent wage and you'll get the people. The era of cheap labour is over.