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

Olive tree disease across Europe 'could costs billions'

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 95 posts

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

#31

Post by DoingIsLearning »

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…

> it's cheaper to raze down old olive orchards and just plant new ones

Sure there are a lot of mass production olive oil across southern europe consisting of 'young' olive trees.

However, I don't think you realize how much history there is associated with some olive orchards and how old some of these trees are (multiple centuries old). To have a disease wipe these trees or voluntarily chop them down would be a huge heritage loss.

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

#32

Post by rjzzleep »

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…

The irony is that I think some of these "knowledge economy" jobs i.e. doctors and lawyers(and even software engineers) are easier to replace than say nurses(although there is a big conflict going on where lots of nurses actually have more experience and knowledge than doctors) and cleaners.

The idea that creating robots that mimic certain mechanic function is easier than creating something that replaces a person that is essentially an overpaid human dictionary is ludicrous.

But I guess lawyers have better lobbies than cleaners.

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

#33

Post by Der_Einzige »

rjzzleep wrote: post #32
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

The irony is that I think some of these "knowledge economy" jobs i.e. doctors and lawyers(and even software engineers) are easier to replace than say nurses(although there is a big conflict going on where lots of nurses actually have more experience and knowledge than doctors) and cleaners. The idea that creating robots that mimic certain mechanic function is easier than creating something that replaces a person that…

Nurses need how many years of school? Lawyers need how many years of school? The harder to replace one is the one who spends more time in school.

As much as we like to think software doesn't need an education, for the overwhelming majority, they spend at least 4 years in University before working in industry. Bootcampers/self-tahght are a small minority of workers.

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

#34

Post by toohotatopic »

Funny that they don't explicitly mention the analogy to corona but I guess that's still their point. I am wondering if this is an intended jab at Italy. They could have prevented the spread if they had locked down the region where it was occurring first.

This would have been a perfect moment for the EU to shine and to actually resolve an issue. If they had removed all olive trees within hundred kilometers of the original area, the loss of trees would have been huge, but the impact would have stayed small. Like corona, the original areas didn't profit from the loss of their trees so they had no incentive to cut them down. With EU funding, the incentive could have been provided.

Similarly, it would have been relatively easy to contain the box tree moth [1] if the first areas had cut down all box trees. They haven't, and now it is a global problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cydalima_perspectalis

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

#36

Post by emmelaich »

ggm wrote: post #17

Australia has an olive industry. Its small, far smaller than the scale of this problem, but we do, and we make some really good robust EVO. I don't wish this disease on the countries exposed to it, but I do hope we can negotiate better prices for our olive oil and related products selling into Europe and the world. We're also (at least in principle, but there are holes) builders of strong biosecurity boundaries. I'd…

Sort of related; Australia has the oldest grape vines.

France's (and California's?) were wiped out by a pest.

https://www.foodandwine.com/lifestyle/how-drink-wine-worlds-...

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

#37

Post by mikekchar »

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 distribution service. Put tarifs on imports. Remove all subsidies for food exports (and stop trying to bomb the world food prices in order to offer loans to countries to buy your food exports when they can't afford to compete with their own home grown products).

Ha ha. But seriously, automation and robotics will be much easier to implement.

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

#38

Post by mikorym »

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 100k hectares of merlot.

Yes, people can do more to handle these diseases, but often the simplest way is with a lot of poison, which many people also don't like. Tuta absoluta wiped out 1/2 of the yearly Egyptian tomato crop few years ago and yet it's pretty similar to what we call aartappelmot and unfortunately the way to handle it is with a lot of poison.

By the way, this is why I emphasise that policy is not the main issue in agriculture. The issue is efficiency and efficacy. For example, I am working on building a system that improves time of application of pesticides. (Before getting there, there are some lower hanging fruit to pick.) It's a major problem for farmers of all sizes as the people selling the pesticides actually have an incentive to get you to buy more and more. But the key is to apply at the right stage of the particular pest's life cycle. And as someone who likes mathematics, it's satisfying work due to the inherent complexity of agriculture.

[1] I think this is the one we're looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight

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

#39

Post by mschuster91 »

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…

The biggest problem why extremely cheap food prices are needed is that there is a ton of people that are on minimum wage or below who would not be able to survive otherwise.

If that is to change and ag products be priced in a way that allows fair wages to farm employees and proper treatment to animals, then wages have to be raised across the board and wealth taken from the rich elites and redistributed to the poor.

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

#40

Post by batushka3 »

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…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN