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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

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's "family farming" where you have a plot of land handed down to you and you tend to it yourself. A few tractors with PTO extensions, and handled by your family and maybe a few local workers. You'd sell to local grocery chains and markets. Then there's "family farming", where you have a fleet of GPS-and-climate-control-equipped John Deere's on finance and invest heavily in automated irrigation and sell to wholes…

A bill to bailout farmers will pass the house and senate with broad bipartisan support.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's "family farming" where you have a plot of land handed down to you and you tend to it yourself. A few tractors with PTO extensions, and handled by your family and maybe a few local workers. You'd sell to local grocery chains and markets. Then there's "family farming", where you have a fleet of GPS-and-climate-control-equipped John Deere's on finance and invest heavily in automated irrigation and sell to wholes…

The later in best off. They are businessmen who know their numbers. Their biggest problem now is low crop prices, a situation that goes back to 2015. An increase in demand is the best things for them.

Agriculture is considered essential infrastructure in the US and not stopped. Except they can't get immigrant labor but that is a problem for the small vegetable farmers who don't need or buy the expensive equipment anyway.

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

#384
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think that probably that would make you and your countryfolk worse off.

To try to illustrate, I'll switch the analogy to my own country, which is Canada, where we fly in Mexican labour to pick crops.

If we didn't fly in migrant labour, we'd have to pay Canadians, who are generally a spoiled, lazy, picky bunch (at least compared to the sort of Mexicans who fly here to work, who obviously are not lazy nor excessively picky). This would drive up the cost of fruit, which is perhaps fine. It would also drive up the cost of unskilled labour in other areas, perhaps construction or retail, because there would be less competition for those jobs. That's good news for the unskilled workforce in the rich country. Great.

Of course, not only do prices go up, but actually just less food will get produced. You could argue that that's good, or bad. Fine.

However, now all those Mexican labourers don't have foreign work, so they compete for work at home. That drives down the price of unskilled labour in Mexico, and if there's a minimum wage then it drives up unemployment. The industrious folks who were savvy enough to get the Canadian jobs will take the next-best jobs, displacing slightly-less-hard-working Mexicans from their jobs, and so on. Of course, this is also foreign cash that is no longer coming into the country, so it has effects on the balance of trade, i.e. on the ability of Mexico collectively to import nice things that they aren't making internally. That's probably bad news on a decade-long timescale, but it might eventually lead to a more robust manufacturing economy, I don't know.

So, in summary, suppose Canada stops using Mexican farm labour (or Britain stops using eastern European farm labour). What are the consequences:

All Canadians get more expensive food.

Unskilled Canadians get more pay, probably offsetting the more expensive food for those people.

Less food gets grown in Canada overall, probably, or at least less luxury food.

Unskilled Mexicans are fucked over hard, especially those who are most vulnerable.

Rich Mexicans can hire poor mexicans at even more exploitative rates.

In the medium to long term, Mexico might have a worse balance of trade, but then again maybe that results in positive industrialization in the long term.

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

#385
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

demand is up in my house, proximity to food storage seems to trump caloric needs

Same here. For God's sake. I am more worried about getting diabetes than coronavirus. :p

Agreed. And it's not even due to proximity to the fridge (I work from home, distance to fridge didn't change) - but all the stress from watching the entire human civilization being dismantled by the coronavirus is making me hungry more often.

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

#386
post #361

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?

That might make things worse, you can have too much fertility. Depending... Potatoes like sand soil. Beyond that I'm not a potato growing expert.

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

#387
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst case with meat shortages, they'll just have to eat the corn and soy they were feeding to the animals or process the grains into grain based meat substitutes. In general grain production is very automated so there won't be as much of an issue with labor issues in the US or South America impacting the global supply of grain compared to fruits and vegetables.

Animal feed is often under less stringent regulations than food meant for human consumption.

When you're facing starvation, such modern niceties will go out the window.

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

#388
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think English people want to do this kind of work ...

They don't want to do it because of the salary.

I don't know about the UK, but I've talked to California farmers who (off the record) tell me they quit advertising locally for workers because at $25/hr they still couldn't get people to work (most wouldn't apply, the ones who did quit after less than a day). Immigrants (not always legal I'm sure but I know better than to ask that question) are happy with $13/hour.

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

#390
post #287
post #209

Since restaurants are one of the major sources of food going to trash, I was wondering whether the current crisis would not actually have an opposite effect with more food being on the market. Sure, not all types of food but on the other hand people have been buying a lot of nonperishable goods from what i have seen last few weeks which would also indicate lower demand in the near future.

>restaurants are one of the major sources of food going to trash Is that the case? I would have assumed that restaurant kitchens are a lot better at avoiding wastage and random spoilage than home cooks. I guess there's left-overs, but you'd also have that at home.

AFAIK catering (not eat-in/take-out restaurants) waste ridiculous amounts of food, because they overprovision for events and then throw uneaten food away.
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