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Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

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Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#81

Post by close04 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #78
close04 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I see no reason why I should reject Moroccan or Turkish olive oil as a matter of principle But this is the point you're missing: it's not just a matter of principle. It's a matter of reasoning. For a EU citizen buying from Italy, Greece, or Spain makes more sense (money permitting) than buying from Morocco because it's far more likely that a weaker EU country economy will negatively affect their country or the…

>For a EU citizen buying from Italy, Greece, or Spain makes more sense than buying from Morocco because it's far more likely that a weaker local EU economy will negatively affect their country or the EU than a weak Moroccan economy. No. You are implying that buying locally strengthens the domestic economy whereas importing weakens the domestic economy. That reasoning is flawed as a general principle (even though it m…

> No. You are implying that buying locally strengthens the domestic economy whereas importing weakens the domestic economy

The more customers local businesses lose in favor of off-shore producers the weaker they get, to the point where they disappear or become importers. If you're an EU citizen you're more likely to be impacted if another EU country's economy isn't going well than if Morocco's economy suffers. One thing is for sure, economies don't strengthen by giving up local production and export in favor of importing or all-local consumption.

> Well, that would be extremely stupid. There is no such moral obligation and I didn't say anything to that effect.

Now why would that be stupid? After the passionate argumentation that trade is very relevant to improving living standards in those poorer countries and that it does not weaken the domestic economy you come back to say that doing it would be stupid? You just shot your argument in both feet and sawed them off for good measure. Or perhaps arbitrarily only some people should buy from off-shore while others from near-shore. As for the "moral argument" you said exactly something to that effect:

> the same countries we want to take in all the refugees from Africa and the Middle East.

The EU-Turkey refugee agreement is for over 6bn Euros in aid. That's in case you thought all that "refugee taking" is expected to be paid in olives or trade assistance.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#82

Post by baud147258 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #78
close04 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I see no reason why I should reject Moroccan or Turkish olive oil as a matter of principle But this is the point you're missing: it's not just a matter of principle. It's a matter of reasoning. For a EU citizen buying from Italy, Greece, or Spain makes more sense (money permitting) than buying from Morocco because it's far more likely that a weaker EU country economy will negatively affect their country or the…

>For a EU citizen buying from Italy, Greece, or Spain makes more sense than buying from Morocco because it's far more likely that a weaker local EU economy will negatively affect their country or the EU than a weak Moroccan economy. No. You are implying that buying locally strengthens the domestic economy whereas importing weakens the domestic economy. That reasoning is flawed as a general principle (even though it m…

> buying locally strengthens the domestic economy whereas importing weakens the domestic economy. That reasoning is flawed as a general principle

I don't see how it's flawed as a general principle, even if it could be true in specific cases or circumstances (like your local economy moving up the value chain or becoming more productive and more competitive).

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#83

Post by close04 »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #76
close04 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You suggested there is a moral duty of an individual in the EU to buy specifically from outside Europe (like Morocco or Turkey) because they were expected to receive migrants. What about the moral argument that by buying from any oppressive or dictatorial regime you are supporting that regime? And wouldn't this directly hurt local businesses? Given that the cost of living and production in the EU is higher the only w…

>You suggested there is a moral duty of an individual in the EU to buy specifically from outside Europe (like Morocco or Turkey) because they were expected to receive migrants. No, that's not what I'm suggesting at all and it's not what I'm doing myself. I'm suggesting to buy the best value for money wherever it may come from (barring special circumstances). I'm also suggesting that reducing trade with poorer neighbo…

> I'm suggesting to buy the best value for money wherever it may come from

Many EU citizens see a lot of value in buying from inside the EU rather from any far-off country. When Greece's economy went bad all of the EU suffered a bit. Not so much if the economy of Chile goes bad. The more customers your "local" (national or EU) business loses to foreign producers that may have far lower production costs and quality, the more likely it is it will downsize or drop quality.

> No, it does not necessarily do that.

You followed this up with a very particular corner case which is not applicable here. The reasons EU olives are more expensive are because cost of living/production are higher, and standards are observed more closely. And the reason someone may prefer them are that standards are observer more closely and the choice to support local businesses. None of the are really something to argue with arguments of trade helping some other country that receives immigrants.

> But that's not what I'm saying at all.

Perhaps if next time you make your point clearer from the first attempt and not issue just a blanket, generic statement supported by an appeal to pity there would be no need to come back repeatedly to bring clarifications that in no way are obvious from your original comment. Especially when that comment was supposed to counter someone's personal opinion about what they prefer doing. Maybe you had the right idea but left too much of it out to the point where it becomes a frustrating puzzle of a discussion where you keep getting new pieces, some are the wrong size, some from another box, and some are actually onions.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#85

Post by mikorym »

yaktubi wrote: post #72
mikorym wrote: post #38

To put this in perspective, it has happened before along similar lines in different produce types. For example, almost all of the vineyards in Europe were wiped out in the 19th century [1]. This is why the oldest vineyards in the world are somewhere in South America. (I think Chile?) Today, as we all know, France is still the most important wine producing country. South Africa has 100k hectares of wine; France has 10…

I think it would be great if you could invest in creating biodiversity more so than accelerating mono-culture agriculture with pesticides. The real problem is that these folks (And all other cash crops) have rows and rows of the same crop and nothing else. That’s not how nature works. Work WITH nature by creating bio-diversity and pests will be eaten by something else, etc. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend watchin…

I don't think that monoculture (or agriculture in 2020) is a problem in of itself. The problem is producing food, and science attempts to improves the efficiency. The methods that work so far are things like crop rotation, and anything away from monoculture should generally be attempted scientifically. If you look at things like deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil, I wouldn't say the problem is the monocultured palm oil: The problem is they are cutting down forests, whether they plant ten crops on the burnt land or one.

One example is nematode diversity. The more diverse your nematodes, the better your yield. If you kill all the nematodes then you have one season of massive yields followed by really vicious Meloidogyne the next couple of years. If you condition your soil for diverse nematodes (e.g.: multiple genetically diverse rootstocks) then from the top it will look like monoculture (and it is), but your costs and impact with regard to nematicide will go down.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#86

Post by jelliclesfarm »

mikekchar wrote: post #37
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #26

there is some truth to this. same news was posted here on HN last year. but in reality, there is more to it. yes, there is a pathogen. but EU olive industry is moving to turkey and morocco. why? simple. cheap labour. olive trees can live for a very very long time, but there are two kinds of olives harvested. for oil and then for table olives. the former has been mechanised and the latter is not. so it's expensive. it…

There are other solutions. Institute a minimum wage for farm work. Make it attractive to those who would ordinarily choose to work in a factory to work at a farm. Break the monopolies on food distribution (probably will require the companies to be restructured by law). Create a national food distribution service to compete with the original companies. Provide minimum prices for farmers with the national food distribu…

Minimum wage is a way to perpetuate poverty. It is similar to subsidies.

Manual labour is brutal. No one is going to pick it as a long term stable job. But food is a long term issue. We are always going to eat no matter where we are in our time line. Perhaps that’s why it’s cheap.

Currently food is cheap and food commodities are traded on the exchange. These two things must change.

Another suggestion I have is to subsidize food but for the consumer. Like food stamps. Not farm subsidies. Dairy and grain subsidies have destroyed the sectors. And the environment. They have no choice to keep pumping volume to break even. We have a glut in the market, prices crash and eventually farms shut down..leading to land grabs and shuttering of the sector. The only one making bank is Wall Street and those who sell inputs/machinery to farmers. It’s obscene and perverse.

Coming back to labour in food farms. The only solution is automation and erasure of most tasks involving manual labour. We simply must change the way we farm systems up if it has to be automated and use minimal labour.

If farming is a career, minimum wage is not a sustainable wage. Once upon a time everyone had a farm and grew for themselves and sold/bartered what was in excess. Now population has exploded, farming land has shrunk and food is cheap..but we still use manual labour to grow food to feed 7+ billion people.

Ask yourself this..why isn’t food farming and small farms automated? Simple..because if ag automation steps in, ag machinery will lose their market. They have just miniaturized the machinery used for commodity grain crops but that’s not a good fit.

A corn field gets harvested once a year and a farmer doesn’t have to touch dirt and esp so if he had a Netflix watching air conditioned 250k tractor(that he can’t repair anyways) that is smarter than him and his phone. Available on credit of course. Credit lines make this all possible. Within a generation or two, guaranteed the family will stop farming and start selling the land to developers. That seems to be the gentle way to separate a farmer from his land and vocation.

And who do you think buys all this land? Pension funds, insurance companies, foreign investors from China, Middle East(just like we buy in South America and Canadian pension funds buy into Australian ag land). Farm REITs are owned by insurance companies(hello, prudential!). Harvard wealth fund spinned off a investment company that bought all the farm land in Paso Robles growing corn, alfafa and food crops from small holder farms and converted it into vineyards. But you know what they own that is more valuable than the land itself? Water rights. Because of how fucked up California water politics is, this company has water rights for their vineyards that has led to a moratorium on water usage for food growing family farms for the past six years. If you want to buy a farm in Paso Robles, the prices are diff and drastically so depending on which side of the freeway you are on wrt Harvard’s water sucking vineyard.

Back to small food farms..so the mvp of a 250k smart tractor is a 24k tiny 40HP tractor that does 1/10th of the tasks involved and covers about 1/40th of the farm expense(cost studies available). So the manual costs that is labour from weeding to harvesting to packing takes up 60% of the entire pie. And if it has to be mechanized, economies of scale will fail.

Can you visualize this as numbers? And see why labour costs is killing farming? ESP small acreage farms. What we need is automation and ag robots for SMALL and MEDIUM food producing farms to replace labour.

AI shouldn’t be used to collect data that makes farmers consumers of ag inputs and machinery. Automation should be reduce costs for the farmer not be used to make them spend more money on inputs and machinery. Not surprisingly, the only people interested in investing in Ag automation are ag input companies and ag equipment giants. And for them if it’s not on a commodity crop listed on the exchange they are not interested. Because it’s a market hedging play for them.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#87

Post by fauigerzigerk »

baud147258 wrote: post #82
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For a EU citizen buying from Italy, Greece, or Spain makes more sense than buying from Morocco because it's far more likely that a weaker local EU economy will negatively affect their country or the EU than a weak Moroccan economy. No. You are implying that buying locally strengthens the domestic economy whereas importing weakens the domestic economy. That reasoning is flawed as a general principle (even though it m…

> buying locally strengthens the domestic economy whereas importing weakens the domestic economy. That reasoning is flawed as a general principle I don't see how it's flawed as a general principle, even if it could be true in specific cases or circumstances (like your local economy moving up the value chain or becoming more productive and more competitive).

Economies moving up the value chain and becoming more productive is not a special circumstance. It's the most fundamental force of economic progress and prosperity.

That's why acting in a way that weakens this force should be a rare exception rather than the rule.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#88

Post by jelliclesfarm »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #30
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #26

there is some truth to this. same news was posted here on HN last year. but in reality, there is more to it. yes, there is a pathogen. but EU olive industry is moving to turkey and morocco. why? simple. cheap labour. olive trees can live for a very very long time, but there are two kinds of olives harvested. for oil and then for table olives. the former has been mechanised and the latter is not. so it's expensive. it…

>automation and robotics is the only solution. Maybe to us idealist techies wishing for a fair world, but to the people with big bucks who own and run the show as long as there is someone willing to work for cheaper than it is to develop, buy and run machines it's not worth investing in automation and the world is currently not in short supply of cheap labor unfortunately. There is always a cheaper place with poor op…

But this isn’t about ‘idealist techies’ or ‘people with big bucks’. It is not their domain of expertise. Only their influence. The ones whose input must be taken are farmers.

Like me. This is my domain of expertise but I have no influence. I am a farmer. Why isn’t my opinion valid when I ask for automation to save my sector? But everyone’s opinion is considered from engineers to VCs to politicians to the public. But I am the one who is going into debt and scrambling for labour and making agonizing decisions about what to do without..but when I ask for automation, it falls on deaf ears. It’s very depressing. And frustrating. And beggars belief.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#89

Post by jelliclesfarm »

sondar wrote: post #64
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #26

there is some truth to this. same news was posted here on HN last year. but in reality, there is more to it. yes, there is a pathogen. but EU olive industry is moving to turkey and morocco. why? simple. cheap labour. olive trees can live for a very very long time, but there are two kinds of olives harvested. for oil and then for table olives. the former has been mechanised and the latter is not. so it's expensive. it…

I don't think olive industry will move out in the south of euorpe, it is highly vinculated to people and villages. There are huge extensions of land dedicated to that, and that land can't be used to grow many things. As far as I remember I've only seen almond trees, sheeps, vinewoods and grain, and the last two only in plain lands. I don't know if those extensions can be used to grow more profitable stuff, but I don'…

They will make more $ as tourist destinations and cottage ag industry. Modern olive groves are planted for mechanization of harvests. Olive trees can go on for a hundred years even and a tree that old is no longer profitable. esp for the demand we have and for cost of labour involved. Automation will at least secure local production profitably.

Re: Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

#90

Post by jelliclesfarm »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #56
lostlogin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I completely agreed with until 3 weeks ago. When borders close you need local industries and a degree of security in terms of food and other resources. The foreign owned supermarket couldn’t provide and the locally owned one couldn’t either (there are only 2 here in New Zealand), and it took over an hour queuing to find this out. However I contacted a farm with a mill which could. I don’t know what to think now,…

I don't doubt that it's a good idea to have some local food production everywhere. But huge olive plantations in Spain, Italy or Greece are not that. They wouldn't exist in this form without trade. Also, self sufficiency doesn't really work, not for very long at least. After a few weeks, you run out of some chemical or some replacement part. The right response to a pandemic can't be to return to a medieval style econ…

Depends on how you define self sufficiency. If Sweden considers olive oil a staple and thinks it can’t be self sufficient because they can’t supply locals with locally grown olive oil, then that’s a wrong definition of self sufficiency.
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