Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 589 posts

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

#361

Post by booi »

jagger27 wrote: post #309

Got a butternut squash in your pantry? Maybe a couple of tomatoes? Cook it up for dinner and save some seeds! Wash off the pulp and dry them out on a paper towel. It's not too late to start some seedlings, and it's a nice way to pass the time. I've also been experimenting with different dried beans that we stocked up on, and most of them have a pretty high germination rate. Roma beans are super tasty and high in prot…

"Potatoes are easy to get started but can be a little finicky with soil conditions."

mm have you tried fertilizing with poop?

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

#362

Post by Tade0 »

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…

As an eastern European I think the British should pick their own fruit and pay the appropriate price if they like it so much, otherwise the market is artificially inflated.

Germany has the exact same problem with asparagus.

We can't be everywhere with our low wage expectations.

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

#363

Post by Spooky23 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #351
Spooky23 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends who are locomotive engineers, none of them have been called out for 3 weeks. Everything is stopping. I think the US is going to learn why it’s dangerous to centralize food supply. Most of the local farmers in my region (upstate ny) are bankrupt, and much of our production or processing of food is from far away. The half and half from my grocer is processed in Virginia.

The crisis started not even a month ago. What kind of business are people running that go bankrupt in a couple weeks? At least where I come from, most local farmers can't "go bankrupt" as they are family businesses and have very low operating costs - worst case is sitting idle at home.

Farmers have taken the current administration very hard, and the previous administration wasn’t a bright light either, especially if you’re not a Midwest grain farmer.

Between trade policies (Canadian onion farmers, for example, are importing subsidized onions for 25% of the production cost) and the federal government no longer enforcing anti-trust law (groups of grocery wholesalers are now colluding to set prices via reverse auctions) this is one of the most bleak periods for farmers in the last century.

Other operations are like tenant farmers. Chicken producers are a great example of that. They basically own risk.

Many businesses operate on the edge or need lines of credit that may or may not continue to exist.

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

#364

Post by Etheryte »

jiggawatts wrote: post #354
Etheryte wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I think this is an example of what I would maybe call the HN Dunning-Kruger approach to many problems: "just" use IT/AI/robots/etc. There are many companies who have been working in this space for a long time, there's a reason why it's still manual work — it's freaking hard. Berries are a good example of this, personally I'm intricately familiar with the strawberry industry, but I believe it applies elsewhere…

It has been done! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCivsotZEjk There's actually several designs out there for picking strawberries, but like the OP said, expensive robots aren't competitive with cheap labour. If the labour pool dries up, they're more economically viable.

There's a very big difference between a proof of concept "can pick some berries" and a solution that's viable at scale, even if ignoring financial limitations. The video edgewise admits to it as well:

> The country's largest supplier of berries has made use of the robot at one of its berry fields.

The operation shown in the video is likely not viable for actual pick and sell with a number of the issues I outlined above. As I said, there are many companies working on it, but claiming it's a solved problem is simply handwaving away the truth.

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

#365

Post by pm90 »

gutnor wrote: post #330
chewz wrote: post #52

So we have labour shortages in countryside and unemployed people in urban centers. Problem?

The only reason people are unemployed is that they are confined in their homes. Once they can head to the countryside to pick strawberries, chances are they can just head back to their regular job too.

Not if a lot of small businesses shut down. In which case it will take a while for the jobs to come back.

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

#366

Post by robocat »

boznz wrote: post #289
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…

One of my clients in NZ sells mussels to US and China and has had to close down production as you dont need them for your restaurants anymore. No other food issues here I can see our local supermarket was well stocked and quiet, though I am out in a rural area

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22711661

I have only heard of kiwifruit going unharvested. We’ll all soon know (if product has no coolstores, and assuming farm to supermarket delay is about a week).

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

#367

Post by throwaway894345 »

djsumdog wrote: post #322
burntoutfire wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of agricultural industry in EE (at least in Poland), it's just that it pays a pittance, so the locals prefer to go west, while farmers employ migrants from poorer countries.

That's such a fucked up cycle.

Doesn’t it prosper everyone? What happens if the workers from the poorest countries aren’t allowed to work in the wealthier countries? Surely they and the wealthier countries are all worse off? “Non-zero-sum game” and all that...

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

#368

Post by Gustomaximus »

Extremely anecdotal but in Australia we are seeing people from the retail sector looking at farm work, often the domain of backpackers who are now.not traveling.

It is a rebalancing so will likely come with some issues but if cafes/stores etc remain closed perhaps we will likely see these workers head to farms and balance the issue.

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

#369

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

kharms wrote: post #257
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…

>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…

I’m stunned you believe they have a choice. Choice is one of the greatest fallacies of modern economics, responsible for extreme harm.

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

#370

Post by pvaldes »

Zenst wrote: post #54
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.

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.

Netherlands provide seeds to all Europe and Spain buy a lot of their seeds to them. They do extensive research on vegetables
Post reply on HN