"4,000 tons is almost four million kilograms"
"4k tons" is 4 gigagrams (Gg).
4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
21–30 of 154 posts
Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#22In America, we just let people go hungry while grinding the excess crop back into fertilizer.
We let people go hungry? This is really not a problem today.
Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#23This is an interesting example of what happens when the supply and demand curve goes into the extreme ends of the chart: The price of "selling" your product goes negative. It costs money to get rid of it. Negative prices occur from time to time in the electricity market because some types of power plants are slow to ramp up and down. So if demand falls too rapidly, spot electricity prices can negative.
When I worked at a Coke bottler in Japan, we had similar issues with product.
Stuff that didn't sell was called "Flush Out" and had to be disposed of.
You couldn't legally just dump the contents without paying money so I made an app that let employees get cases for shipping costs. It was popular, even though we were usually talking about weird flavours that no one liked (stuff akin to Apple Ginger ale)
They eventually got rid of it, but I was already out of the company so I didn't know the reason.
Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#24Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#25Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#26This is great news to me.
Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#27These particular potatoes won't be wasted.
But other potatoes likely will be.
It's not like people are suddenly going to want more potatoes.
Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#28Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#29This is an interesting example of what happens when the supply and demand curve goes into the extreme ends of the chart: The price of "selling" your product goes negative. It costs money to get rid of it. Negative prices occur from time to time in the electricity market because some types of power plants are slow to ramp up and down. So if demand falls too rapidly, spot electricity prices can negative.
Oil briefly went negative a couple years ago too which was shocking. I thought about “buying” some, but then realized I’d have to set up for the oil to be picked up (or try to sell the contract before it expired).
> a couple years ago
It was near the beginning of the pandemic, due to the demand shock of everything shutting down.
There were probably practical ways to profit off the low prices (assuming the risk of them not recovering), but I never did figure out something that would work for a retail investor.
Re: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
#30In America, we just let people go hungry while grinding the excess crop back into fertilizer.
We let people go hungry? This is really not a problem today.
According to non profits, 1 in 7 Americans, 1 in 5 American children: