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From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

bloomberg.com

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

#461

Post by catalogia »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #390
ginko wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

If the host plans ahead and brings some cheap cardboard cartons, they can tell guests to take what they like before leaving. Maybe in some places regulations or liability wouldn't allow this, but I've seen it done and it results in very little food being thrown out.

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

#462

Post by andarleen »

pnako wrote: post #450
cortesoft wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think we should force the people to stay in the poorer country?

You can't force people to stay in a country, but you can certainly prevent people from coming in a country.

I dont think we should - COVID does. People are forced to stay in their own countries due to travel restrictions. And it is likely this pandemic will last for a while, and with summer coming, people might just as well work locally until this nightmare is over.

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

#463

Post by richk449 »

infinite8s wrote: post #406
empath75 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So pay more than $25 an hour. There is surely a salary that people will accept to do the work. I don’t know why everyone assumes that manual labor only deserves near poverty wages.

No one will pay $5 for an avocado.

Have you ever been to brunch in San Francisco?

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

#464

Post by spanktheuser »

I must be reading the introductory paragraphs incorrectly. Because it seemed like a wealthy landowner was complaining that the virus was preventing them from exploiting the desperately poor to do the actual work of producing a crop (and opposed to just rent-seeking on some family land). Dooming Wimbledon to mere cream without strawberries or something.

But I probably misunderstood because mind kept drifting to what would become of those immigrant farm laborers once covid19 is alight in their country. The ones we pay so little they don’t have access to decent healthcare. So we can save €2 on a carton of berries.

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

#465

Post by 6510 »

avianlyric wrote: post #448
qqssccfftt wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human civilisation has reached the point where keeping our fake paper moving is more important than staying alive. How exciting!

Unfortunately life expectancy and quality of life is very strongly correlated to GDP. I’m not saying we can’t live without money, or anything like that. But modern society strongly relies on complex economies for even basic functions like food supply. The health of that economy can be roughly measured using GDP, a significant drop in GDP (such as a depression) strongly suggest that economy isn’t healthy, and then the…

In biology the health of a species is in its fertility. High GDP is associated with low birth rate. Life expectancy drives it down even further.

> But modern society strongly relies on complex economies for even basic functions like food supply.

This is as true as it is stupid.

> The health of that economy can be roughly measured using GDP

I would argue that if you have to depend on others you are not fit enough. You do want efficiency but not to the point where it dramatically eats into your resilience.

> Unfortunately plenty of people already rely on food banks to avoid starvation. You can’t feed an entire country like that.

It wouldn't be pretty but agriculture employs amazingly few people, we makes a lot of luxury products we don't need and we feed a lot to our cows, pigs and chickens. If it is impossible or not will depend on administrative tasks/logistics/bean counting. I could see us screw that up tho.

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

#466

Post by 6510 »

nine_k wrote: post #452
qqssccfftt wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human civilisation has reached the point where keeping our fake paper moving is more important than staying alive. How exciting!

Without paper moving, other things, like goods, can't move efficiently enough to feed 8B of the population.

This was true and tested before IT.

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

#467

Post by mantap »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #367
djsumdog wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I've noticed that often people who think fruit picking and other "undesirable" jobs should be done by locsl people, never express any interest in doing the aforementioned jobs themselves.

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

#468

Post by nine_k »

richk449 wrote: post #463
infinite8s wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one will pay $5 for an avocado.

Have you ever been to brunch in San Francisco?

The cost of the raw food is 10-15% of the price of a meal. (Source: my wife ran a popular restaurant for 4 years.)

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

#469

Post by prawn »

groby_b wrote: post #9
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…

This is a very naive take on the world. You'll need at the very least half an acre to feed yourself sustainably, and that's if you're highly optimized. It's also backbreaking work, and you won't be able to do much else except subsistence farming. In short, it's not practical for the vast majority of the population. The closest we can probably get to this model is instead CSA memberships, supporting farms right outsid…

To be fair, they did say "a bit more self-sufficient". I have a half-dozen raised garden beds, herbs and fruit trees on a very standard-sized suburban block. I can cook occasional meals that are largely from the garden and definitely supplement staples (protein, pasta/rice from the shop). In recent weeks, I've paid more attention to sowing seeds and looked at adding chickens. With reliably laying chickens, we could do a meal/day at least.

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

#470

Post by 6510 »

twomoretime wrote: post #415
alexandercrohde wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm downvoting this because it's a huge claim without adequate evidence. Feel free to cite some sources showing what % of harvests have been missed, etc, and I'll change my downvote.

Migrants can't make it to harvests because countries/states are locked down. Isn't that literally in the article? There won't be any sources for a while because this is literally just starting. I mean 3billion people are on lockdown of some sort globally right now. Not hard to imagine it may be hard for workers to get to farms across borders, or even within borders. CA alone will probably see a shortage of migrants.…

So, to put it bluntly, people are sitting on ass and their food crops are rotting in the field?

Even if you do nothing the market will probably fix it: Less food in the markets > high demand drives up prices > higher salaries > slightly lower prices

At some point some people are hungry enough to get a... shall we say... real job?

With some regulatory sanity we subsidize it a bit.

Perhaps we should test and quarantine the farm workers when money stops being an issue.

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