Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 589 posts

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

#271

Post by Barrin92 »

catalogia wrote: post #236
scanr wrote: post #233

Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...

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.

nobody has to do the work, the work is voluntary. Eastern Europeans do the work because the wages are still higher than in Eastern Europe, so it makes financial sense for them to move to the UK.

In contrast to the exploitation narrative this is actually mutually beneficial. The food is produced at low cost which is good for consumers (in particular poor ones who would otherwise not have access to expensive vegetables), and the workers who earn higher wages than they otherwise would have.

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

#272

Post by occamrazor »

ALittleLight wrote: post #251
Daishiman wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People should pay more for fruit and food if more money is required to fairly compensate laborers. The solution shouldn't be importing a disadvantaged population to exploit for cheap labor. If our modern economy is so weak we cannot afford fruits and vegetables we should confront and overcome that weakness rather than conceal it by importing an underclass.

Another solution is increasing the susidies to food production, which would shift part of the cost to people with higher income. This has some disadvantages (the market is distorted by subsidies and resource allocation may be suboptimal) and some advantages (a healthier diet is available for a larger proportion of the population).

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

#273

Post by rad_gruchalski »

rjsw wrote: post #239
rjsw wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are on a different continent, we can just look at the labels on food to see where it comes from.

We also get to see the trucks carrying the food. Go on any French autoroute and 2 out of 3 of the trucks will be from Spain.

You mean registered in Spain. Where is the trailer registered? And what does the place of a vehicle registration has to do with the origin of the cargo they carry?

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

#274

Post by jekro9n »

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…

Cost in financial terms is an emotional mechanic that the species can no longer validate.

I imagine the younger generation with internet will begin to do exactly that as they read about contemporary politics where ministers of finance dictate what we’re allowed to put agency into for the emotional stability of elderly investors in that emotional model

Lazy westerners can have fresh fruit: start digging.

We’re outnumbered and pretending we can point big bombs at people and say “lol no we do what we want” forever is foolish.

The west needs to import new social norms from elsewhere. Exporting it’s opinions alone isn’t sufficient anymore.

And the billions outside the west don’t owe us the luxury of sitting around wanking our theories all day after shipping us all the gadgets to boot.

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

#275

Post by jajag »

nitrogen wrote: post #263
balola wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>massive waste and spoilage in the supply chain. Maybe in the west, but not the case in China, food is relatively expensive, so very little is wasted, even poisonous rice can find snack factory buyers. Restaurant waste is colleted by small pig farms.

What makes rice poisonous, and how is it made safe for use in snacks?

Possibly referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice#Bacillus_cereus

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

#276

Post by sct202 »

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…

Worst case with meat shortages, they'll just have to eat the corn and soy they were feeding to the animals or process the grains into grain based meat substitutes. In general grain production is very automated so there won't be as much of an issue with labor issues in the US or South America impacting the global supply of grain compared to fruits and vegetables.

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

#277

Post by andarleen »

scanr wrote: post #233

Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...

Actually, this is a golden opportunity for east european countries to grow their agro industry. COVID now gives legal grounds to keep workers in their own country, so they neither catch the virus nor enjoy british racism. This can help their economies as well.

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

#278

Post by ndell0 »

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…

This is a mathematically naive comment.

Mathematically, plenty of people are physically capable of this such that the problem you describe is likely not a problem

They’re emotionally lazy and want to chase shallow dopamine driven experiences and excessive manufacturing of disposable shit to avoid having to deal with reality

Do some DMT and grow some food for yourselves.

“It’s just chemicals in the brain” is good enough for when it comes to “experience chasing”.

All the technology enabled experience is terrible for the environment. Yes that includes our tech jobs of pointless todo app making.

We may like to think our political social contracts we were taught about as kids are going to insulate us but we can see how easily those fall down while we’re over here behaving like proper subjects.

Get over yourself, westerners. I don’t know what’s worse, the idiot ones or the woke ones who still ignore the reality created by their agency

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

#279

Post by burntoutfire »

andarleen wrote: post #277
scanr wrote: post #233

Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...

Actually, this is a golden opportunity for east european countries to grow their agro industry. COVID now gives legal grounds to keep workers in their own country, so they neither catch the virus nor enjoy british racism. This can help their economies as well.

There's plenty of agricultural industry in EE (at least in Poland), it's just that it pays a pittance, so the locals prefer to go west, while farmers employ migrants from poorer countries.
Post reply on HN