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Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

theguardian.com

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Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#41

Post by pixl97 »

solatic wrote: post #3

> “There were pictures of huge mountains of ‘earth apples’,” she recalled, using the word Erdäpfel, an affectionate term for the potato sometimes used by Berliners Fun fact: the Hebrew translation of potato, תפוח אדמה, is the portmanteau of "earth" (אדמה) and "apple" (תפוח). If you should ever be so fortunate as to have too many potatoes, see if you can shred them with a food processor and combine with onion, egg, sa…

>make potato kugel,

This seems very similar to a hash brown breakfast casserole in the US.

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#42

Post by yongjik »

Flavius wrote: post #5

This is a massive missed opportunity for financialization. We need a 3x Leveraged Bull Potato ETF immediately. Tokenize the crop, lock it in a vault and trade futures against the harvest. Why feed people for free when we could create artificial scarcity and pump the price 10x by next week? McDonald’s fries pricing suggests the market has already priced in a massive supply squeeze. They are generating better margins o…

I know it's fashionable to blame capitalism on everything, but dealing with excess produce is legitimately a hard problem because they have a shelf life and someone has to harvest them and move them to where consumers are.

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#44

Post by BadBadJellyBean »

novaRom wrote: post #28
seb1204 wrote: post #25

I heard the potato harvest was generally good in Germany. This particular company is rumored to transition to organic farming in the next season. I think it is great to ensure the product gets used but I also heard that it puts many other potato farmers under price pressure in the area.

Interestingly, some other products are also cheaper today than few months ago: Basmati rice: -25% (2.5 Euro/Kg) Pork: -25% (7-8 Euro/Kg) Butter: -33% (4 Euro/Kg) Coffee beans: -25% (10-12 Euro/Kg) Chocolate: -15% (20-30 Euro/Kg)

And then I went to the supermarket today and they wanted like €1.50 for a cucumber. A cucumber! That is essentially crispy water.

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#45

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

Flavius wrote: post #5

This is a massive missed opportunity for financialization. We need a 3x Leveraged Bull Potato ETF immediately. Tokenize the crop, lock it in a vault and trade futures against the harvest. Why feed people for free when we could create artificial scarcity and pump the price 10x by next week? McDonald’s fries pricing suggests the market has already priced in a massive supply squeeze. They are generating better margins o…

Crop futures are already a thing. Potatoes are traded on EEX for example: https://www.eex.com/en/markets/agriculturals/potatoes

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#47

Post by novaRom »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #34
novaRom wrote: post #24

Fun facts from Germany: - Fresh Aldi potatoes are like 0.5 Euro per 1 Kilogram - basically the same price as 25 years ago when Euro currency was introduced - Our national TV channel now shows a great collection of "potato recipes" videos on demand on its main page - Price of McDonalds/BurgerKing fries is around 4 Euro, and 5-6 Euro as a street food - Crisps like Pringles are like 15 Euro per 1 Kilogram (a typical 2.5…

Small fries at McD had been lately around 2,99 EUR, that was very expensive given that the "small fries" are actually really small :-D

Most of it is probably labor, marketing & franchise fees, rent, utilities, and equipment depreciation. Raw ingredients are likely 5-10%.

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#48

Post by novaRom »

labrador wrote: post #46

Gemini 3.0 informs me that the surplus is so large it has overwhelmed the German biofuel industry capacity.

I heard crops now cost more to transport than they are worth. Also, it drives most other prices down e.g. pork is getting cheaper.

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#49

Post by novaRom »

pixl97 wrote: post #40
didgetmaster wrote: post #31

Crops are a commodity where you can't instantly ramp up or down the supply to meet demand. Most require the better part of a year from seed to harvest. If it grows on trees, it can take years before they produce. Forecasting crop output can also be tricky. Weather conditions, pests, or other things can lead to failed crops or bumper crops. The life of a farmer can literally and figuratively be 'feast or famine'.

This is why nations tend to have things like large stores of long lasting foods, and do things like crop insurance, so that they actually have farmers after a bad year to feed their people. It is a very risky profession and unless you want to depend on other nations for your continued survival is absolutely needed.

But how do they store and preserve that surplus for a longer time cheaply? Probably dehydration helps, but it adds some energy and storing costs.

Re: Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes

#50

Post by LePetitPrince »

sleepychu wrote: post #9
docdeek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French term for potatoes is also ‘earth apple’: pomme de terre

I'm fairly sure that is the origin of Erdäpfel. We certainly thought this was a funny name for potato when we learned French in Scotland :-) When I learned German the word for potato was Kartoffel.

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