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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

#471

Post by 6510 »

beerandt wrote: post #402
catalogia wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That logic is good when the farm is next door and you can pay cash $ for a bushel of feed grade corn or whatever. But it starts to fall short when you're still relying on the normal supply chain to get food in a city center. Desperate and hungry people will be resourceful, but it likely won't be as simple as a lower grade of corn in the produce section of the grocery store.

Stores try new products all the time. If people want 100 kinds of breakfast cereal the store will figure it out by trial and error.

Failing to do so would take a huge number of people whose job description is to do exactly that. If one tries something new that works the rest is sure to follow.

They are puzzling all the time, how much eggs to buy? how much potatoes? how much this? how much that? They never get it exactly right, they are always a few bags of apples short or have to throw them out.

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

#472

Post by lenkite »

PeterisP wrote: post #290
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…

During the last 100 years Asia has seen a significant shift towards eating much more meat as their prosperity has increased, and that's very 'calorie inefficient'; if you have some chickens or a pig at a farm, then that's often a form of "recycling" various scrap; but factory farmed animals consume huge amounts of crops grown for them that have much more calories than the resulting meat/eggs/dairy/etc. If your daily…

Depends on what you feed farm animals in your nation. They feed cows and goats stuff here that humans can't eat - grass and grain not fit for human consumption.

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

#473

Post by jodrellblank »

drstewart wrote: post #427
downrightmike wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ennnnnnnnt. That's the buzzer, signaling that this is some bullshit. No one wants to die period. full stop. Greedy to the very end.

Guess what? Everyone dies. And every day is a choice between things that increase that risk. Saying "no one wants to die, stop being greedy!" as if you can eliminate all deaths through a simple action is a nice low effort slogan that doesn't make any sense in the real world.

> Guess what? Everyone dies

The unpleasant part is not solely people dying, it's the volunteering of other people dying by people who assume they won't die from it, and not for their own survival but to keep a level of personal comfort and luxury.

Assume you are in the group who would die, but economic sacrifice keeps you alive. Now, hands up if you are willing to trade that - to definitely die in April 2020, or suicide today, to prop the world GDP up for a few minutes. What, nobody?

Now assume instead that you're definitely in the group who will be unemployed and bankrupted by the economic costs, but you get to survive COVID-19 and do whatever you can to survive after. Hands up if you would prefer this to the guaranteed death situation? What is that, basically everybody with their hands up?

If you don't believe in the importance of GDP enough to die for it, only enough to support others dying for it, perhaps you really have different motives to the ones you're saying.

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

#474

Post by 01100011 »

nemo44x wrote: post #300

In the US I expect prime meat to be considerably cheaper than usual. With restaurants not buying there will be a glut and I expect regular stores (instead of just speciality shops and suppliers) will be getting it for awhile. If there’s 1 thing the US has it is food and the supply chain is excellent. If anything this is an opportunity for the US to make a move on trade with Britain and possibly the EU to export our A…

Anecdotal but at Costco the other day all beef was sold out except the prime cuts. I ended up buying some after noticing the price wasn't much higher than what I used to pay. Now, granted, I don't remember what prime meat used to cost, so maybe it was always competitive at Costco?

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

#475

Post by throwawayjava »

kasey_junk wrote: post #436
makomk wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bulk commodities which have futures markets will likely be fine. Grains are mechanically harvested, so they don't need much in the way of labour. Meat might be a little more in short supply, but not due to labour shortages so much as problems in China. The problems are with fresh food like fruit and vegetables that aren't well suited to futures trading.

Historically problems in fresh veg supply has translated into higher prices for both meat and grains as consumers switch their preferences. The futures markets for grains and meats are both running lower right now. The pros think that demand is going down due to economic activity and the supply chain issues aren’t going to make a dent in that. I have no position but the reading of the markets is that no one is worrie…

> The pros think that demand is going down due to economic activity

Does that make any sense? Do people eat fewer grains when economic activity goes down?

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

#476

Post by jmalicki »

6510 wrote: post #470
twomoretime wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So in other words, after one famine where a large fraction of the population dies, the market will be better afterwards?

Especially with anti-price-gouging laws - this process is explicit forbidden from happening during a crisis.

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

#477

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

hocuspocus wrote: post #420
k__ wrote: post #50

I also read, the nurses that were commuting from other EU countries to work in Germany are now going back to help their home countries.

That sounds a bit hard to believe. Walk away now and you'll probably never be employed in the country ever again. If they were OK with wages in their home country they would not be cross border commuters to begin with.

Perhaps they wanted to be closer to their families and the communities they grew up with.

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

#478

Post by narrator »

bluGill wrote: post #388
jsjddbbwj wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People quit after a day because they are in poor shape and those jobs are really hard on the body.

I read a story a while back where this guy went to work as a bike messenger and the first couple of weeks his body hurt every day, but he eventually really got into it once his body adjusted.

Maybe you could tell the gringos that they have to ease into the work. They only get to work 1 hour their first day, then 2 hours their second day and eventually work up to 8 hours a day so they don't give up.

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

#479

Post by fyfy18 »

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…

The problem isn't just cost of living, it's that these are seasonal jobs. You will be out of work for 3-6 months of the year, so although these jobs typically pay slightly more than the minimum wage, it's not enough to survive the rest of the year. Plus a lot of these farms are in remote places which aren't that desirable for young people to live (compared to cities).

Someone else posted that around 10% of what you pay for fruit and vegetables goes to the farmers, so maybe that's where we should start to fix the issue.

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

#480

Post by 6510 »

phenkdo wrote: post #181
6510 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things already are expensive and with all the automation the salaries make up a crazy tiny amount of it.

have you read the article?

Asparagus are pretty labor intense. Apparently last year NL markets forced the price down to half of what it costs to grow them while prices in the store stay the same.[1]

Say a kilo of asparagus costs 6 euro in the store and has about 16 spears.[2] Say field work in pays 12 euro, 32 spears or 2 kg. One employee harvests 30 kg per hour on average.[3]

2 kg worth of pay for the worker and 15 kg vanished into the market? 40 cents of the 6 euro goes to the field worker which is a lot!

I would love to pay 6.40 for my asparagus if they raise the pay to 24 euro.

I would also quit my job and go work there.

(In Spain the asparagus might be cheaper, have more spears in a kg, people earn 3 euro per hour and they might be less productive. It's hard to calculate from here)

[1] - https://www.1limburg.nl/prijs-asperges-dramatisch-laag-helft...

[2] - https://www.ah.nl/producten/product/wi99045/ah-asperges-wit

[3] - http://www.engelsmachines.nl/EN

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