[HN Gopher] 'Less than half' fresh produce sold globally makes a...
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'Less than half' fresh produce sold globally makes any profit
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 220 points
Date : 2023-09-20 07:15 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fruitnet.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fruitnet.com)
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes, food is ridiculously cheap. Capitalism: it gets the job
| done. Among American households, food costs as a fraction of
| household disposable income fell by more than half in the last 50
| years. Produce is commodities and the nature of commodities is
| for all the profit to be removed from the system. A related fact
| is agriculture as a fraction of GDP/GSP is close to zero in every
| state. Only in Iowa is it even worth mentioning, and in that
| state it's still not even 5% of the economy.
|
| Any time you meet someone who wants to "decommodify food" you
| know you're dealing with an idiot.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Capitalism: it gets the job done.
|
| So you just ignore the billions in subsidies to keep food
| cheap? That's capitalism now?
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Wasn't this a whole plot point in the Grapes of Wrath? People
| starving while the farmers let the crops rot to keep the price
| up?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Sounds like all industries, the longer they have gone on the less
| profitable they are. I'm not excusing ripping off farmers but it
| seems to be a pattern in all industries i.e. textiles,
| newspapers, building, car manufacturing, even most engineering...
| unless there is constant technological innovation (or market
| capture like the music industry) their profitability tends to
| zero.
| abigail95 wrote:
| i'm not sure agricultural profit is tending towards zero, it
| says half of it is profitable.
|
| if i took a random assortment of companies, how many would be
| profitable in a given year? half? two thirds?
| lasermike026 wrote:
| I eat some of my vegetables from a garden. We should eat what is
| in season and not eat food that travels very far. Perhaps fruits
| and vegetables are to expensive or unprofitable because we are
| asking too much.
| zosima wrote:
| This has been in the cards for some time. It's also worth seeing
| what the price hikes are:
|
| "Those increases, the report says, were driven by costs of
| fertilizer (up 60 per cent worldwide), construction (+48 per
| cent), fuel and gas (+41 per cent), shipping rates (+40 per
| cent), and electricity (+40 percent)."
|
| A few of these may find their cause in the supply chain problems
| during Covid, but most of them are driven by political factors:
| 1. The transition to renewable energy and increased regulation
| and taxation on fertilizer usage. 2. The war in Ukraine
|
| Right now I see it as more and more likely that the starvation
| and calamities that global warming was claimed to soon cause,
| will instead be caused by the entirely misdirected attempts to
| reduce CO2-emissions.
| martin_a wrote:
| You missed: 3. Greedflation
| politelemon wrote:
| > The war in Ukraine
|
| I often see this used as a reason for affected things but I've
| not seen it explained, so it must be self evident to many. What
| about it is causing the price hikes? Do our goods flow through
| it, is it affecting shipping routes? Is it a major provider of
| most good or just some kinds?
| willyt wrote:
| It cut off the supply of cheap gas to Europe from Russia,
| making the demand for gas from elsewhere spike which caused
| global price rises. As well as gas being used for domestic
| heating and cooking it's also used for industrial processes
| that require cheap heat. Burning gas to power steam turbines
| was one of the cheaper ways of making electricity.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is it a major provider of most good or just some kinds?_
|
| Ukraine had a 10% export share in wheat between 2017 and 2021
| [1]. They're also a particularly low-cost provider, which is
| why they supply 40% of the World Food Programme's wheat [2].
|
| [1] https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/02/revisiting-
| ukraine...
|
| [2] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/forty-percent-
| world-f...
| ralferoo wrote:
| Ukraine was known as "the breadbasket of Europe" and the
| majority of the crops grown there were exported. In
| particular, grains such as wheat, corn and barley provide
| approximately 10% of the world's supply.
|
| From what I understood of the news, the exports weren't
| massively affected in the first year or so of the war due to
| a treaty with Russia that protected ships transporting grain
| from attack. In the last couple of months, Russia announced
| they weren't renewing that (yearly) treaty and would treat
| foreign ships transporting as if they were warships, and so
| viable military targets. As Russia has long had a massive sea
| base at Sevastopol in the south-west of Ukraine (when it gave
| Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, this base was kept as Russian
| territory due its significant influence over the Black Sea),
| this base is now a choke point for all sea vessels in and out
| of Ukraine, which is probably why Ukraine is now stepping up
| attacks here - because with the ending of the treaty, they
| need that export route to stay open.
|
| That last paragraph was a long winded way of saying that
| actually, until recently, the war in Ukraine shouldn't have
| affected the price of grain all that much, because it was
| largely continuing as before, so any prior price increases
| being blamed on the war were possibly just opportunistic.
| With the ending of the treaty, it's not unlikely that there
| will be significantly less grain exported, or more exported
| over land, and so the price could increase. Obviously in the
| situation where demand exceeds supply, price increases aren't
| proportional to the reduction in supply, but based on the
| willingness of buyers to pay more than someone else to secure
| their supply, so the increases will probably be more
| dramatic.
| zosima wrote:
| The war in Ukraine has majorly affected the prices of natural
| gas.
|
| Due to the european energy policy attempting to rely as much
| as possible on renewable energy, gas is absolutely essential
| for electricity production. It's the only energy source which
| is reliable and can be turned on and off quickly in
| situations where the renewable energy sources are not
| producing energy, due to lack of sun, water or wind.
|
| Furthermore natural gas is an essential ingredient in the
| production of artificial fertilizer. It's estimated that
| without artificial fertilizer, global agricultural production
| will only be able to feed approximately 4 billion people.
| eecc wrote:
| Can't we not always turn anything into an attack against
| climate action?
| brutusborn wrote:
| You may see it as an attack, but I see such comments as
| essential to address.
|
| If you want more climate action, you need to reduce political
| opposition to it. Rising food prices due to rising energy
| costs _will_ cause lots of people to stop caring about the
| climate.
|
| Activists trying to pretend issues such as this don't exist
| is one of the reasons why people distrust climate activists.
| myshpa wrote:
| I think the structure of subsidies makes the problem worse.
|
| The price of meat and healthy whole foods in the US is heavily
| distorted by lobying [0] and by subsidies ($38 billion each year
| to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent
| of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and
| vegetables) [1].
|
| [0] https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-
| expensive...
|
| [1] https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...
| gdubs wrote:
| We purchased a farm many years ago that had become eroded after
| many years of conventional farming. In our quest to transition to
| regenerative practices, and things like organic, we've definitely
| had the realization that most people have no idea where their
| food comes from, or why it costs what it does.
|
| The margins in most farming are razor thin. Our neighbors who
| grow conventionally spend tons on inputs like fertilizer, for a
| shockingly small amount of money [in return per acre]. A year of
| extreme weather - more and more common - throws the whole thing
| out the window.
|
| People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price
| without realizing how much labor goes into it when you're not
| just spraying to control weeds (or, more shockingly, to stop
| growth on your food crop at just the right time).
|
| All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward anyone
| who has the dream of growing their own food is often coming from
| a conventional mindset. There are alternative approaches. A few
| great books are "Permaculture" by Mollison, "One Straw
| Revolution" by Fukuoka, "Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard.
|
| As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it doesn't have to be
| all-or-nothing - you can start with some perennial herbs on your
| balcony. Larger scale, I'm an advocate for things like
| agroforestry practices, becoming more and more interested in
| agrivoltaics. You can go a very long way with a few dwarf fruit
| and nut trees, an understory of berries, and a few raised beds
| managed with no-dig methods.
|
| If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and joys)
| of growing food, become more connected to the world that sustains
| us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the people who work
| really hard for very thin margins to keep us all fed.
| tuatoru wrote:
| > People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price
|
| Yes; it's just virtue signaling. I tune out people who say this
| stuff. If I'm sufficiently motivated I point out:-
|
| It's not a value unless you're prepared for it to cost you
| money.
| fragmede wrote:
| Who am I signaling to when I buy organic cucumbers and bring
| them home and eat them by myself? The clerk at the checkout
| counter?
| coldpie wrote:
| Eh, I don't think that's it. I think it's just good old
| misinformation caused by skillful marketing. People think
| organic is healthier or better for the environment, so they
| prefer it, even though it's actually neither[1]. But it's
| real tough to get past the huge marketing push conveying that
| message for the past couple decades.
|
| [1] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-
| evidence-...
| pastage wrote:
| If you believe it it is not virtue signaling, and if you balk
| at the price it is not virtue signaling. So not sure where
| that idea comes from.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| To your point, you're talking about processes that while
| impressive in many respects are HIGHLY labor intensive. The
| benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required
| human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most
| people to do other things and to spend far less on food. In the
| not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on
| food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to.
| bbojan wrote:
| > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their
| income on food
|
| And now they spend 30% of their income on medical costs.
| Kerrick wrote:
| 2022 median household income after taxes [0] was $64,240, or
| $5,353/mo. According to the USDA [1], a moderate cost of food
| prepared at home for a family of four (with, say, a 16 year
| old daughter and 14 year old son) is $1,378.90/mo.
|
| So, the median family on a moderate food plan (never eating
| from restaurants) ALREADY spends 25% on food.
|
| People who make less money, dine out, have more children, eat
| more food, buy fancier food, or have food waste spend
| proportionally even more. A lot of people who read and
| comment here don't realize that there's no "return to" that
| world -- lots of the U.S. already lives there.
|
| [0]: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/median-
| househ...
|
| [1]: https://fns-
| prod.azureedge.us/sites/default/files/media/file... via
| https://www.fns.usda.gov/cnpp/usda-food-plans-cost-food-
| mont...
| gbear605 wrote:
| > a moderate cost of food prepared at home for a family of
| four (with, say, a 16 year old daughter and 14 year old
| son) is $1,378.90/mo
|
| I'm not sure how they calculate that (and the page they
| link to with information is down), but that really doesn't
| make sense. For my five person household - five adults - we
| spend about $800-1000/month on groceries. According to that
| document, we'd be spending about $1400 on their low-cost
| plan or $1750 on their moderate-cost plan. But we're not
| low-cost: that's our costs shopping at a fairly upscale
| grocery store (not Whole Foods, but above average on price)
| and buying pretty fancy food. Maybe the costs assume no
| bulk purchases split between multiple members of the
| household?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| The USDA[1] shows Americans spending 11.3% of disposable
| income on food.
|
| To quote them:
|
| >U.S. consumers spent an average of 11.3 percent of their
| disposable personal income on food in 2022
|
| [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-
| statistic...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The median income is a lot lower than the average income.
|
| Not even sure how food falls under disposable income.
| Sounds like a cute way of saying "after-tax income" as if
| "things to buy otherwise you die" is a luxury"?
|
| From the chart after the one you quoted:
|
| "In 2021, households in the lowest income quintile spent
| an average of $4,875 on food (representing 30.6 percent
| of income), while households in the highest income
| quintile spent an average of $13,973 on food
| (representing 7.6 percent of income)."
|
| Pretty cool/sad to see the top 20% spending almost
| 3x/household on food.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| I think spending 30+% of income on food is perfectly
| sensible, while spending more than 10% on shelter is complete
| madness. A house is built and stays there for decades without
| any extra work to speak of, yet even the most primitive house
| in industrialized nations is more expensive than an extremely
| advanced motorcycle that can go 200mph without breaking
| apart. Anybody can build a house by himself with primitive
| tools, trees and stones, given some time. Almost nobody can
| build a motorcycle by himself, even with advanced precision
| tools and all instructions given. Not to mention computers,
| cars and cell phones, which are tremendously advanced.
|
| Considering the labour and resources needed to grow food,
| compared to the labour and resources needed to build houses,
| food should be much more of our expenses while housing should
| be much less.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or
| required human labor and the low prices, both of which free
| up most people to do other things and to spend far less on
| food.
|
| I feel like it should be possible to have it both ways.
|
| Right now we have a dichotomy with on one hand industrial
| methods that overuse chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and
| the other hand organic methods that are excessively labor-
| intensive.
|
| Why is it not possible to use the organic methods, but
| automate the labor-intensive parts? I understand that we
| don't currently have the technology to do this, but is there
| some reason it isn't _possible_? Wouldn 't it be a productive
| thing to fund the development of?
| m463 wrote:
| What if cheap food gets you sick in some way, or gives you
| cancer?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is.
| m463 wrote:
| My point is that labor saving efficiency may take a hit
| producing healthy food.
|
| For example, if instead of fighting insects directly,
| everything is soaked in glyphosate, it might be too much
| of a compromise.
|
| In fact there are lots of these compromises that end up
| killing fiber, or favoring starches or processing away
| nutrients that makes eating a faustian bargain.
|
| I would think labor-saving solutions should try to get
| whole foods to the table quickly and cheaply, rather than
| say maximizing shelf life or storage convenience.
| dmoy wrote:
| > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their
| income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to
| return to.
|
| Not only that, but as recently as like 100 years ago, 30% of
| _people_ in the US were farmers (ish).
| RangerScience wrote:
| > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their
| income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to
| return to.
|
| I mean - I think I understand the motivation behind that
| _but_
|
| I am pretty convinced that the value of "low-carb" / "no-
| carb" diets has less to do with the impact of carbs (after
| all, wheat _literally_ was the symbol of European
| civilization for a really long time) and more to do with how
| they 're used as cheap caloric filler (looking at you, Panda
| Express). Pretty much a "get what you pay for" kind of
| situation, in my eyes - so maybe spending that much on food
| isn't as bad as was thought.
|
| also, on the gripping hand, _looks at cost of housing_ - so
| maybe if it 's not one thing it's another.
| ilyt wrote:
| I think it's mostly that this kind of food is also easily
| and quickly digestible which just means getting hungry
| earlier.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Even high quality food is far cheaper than it was only a
| generation or two ago.
| bbojan wrote:
| What quality are you talking about? In my 8 years in
| Canada I wasn't able to by decent blackberries or
| tomatoes. At any price.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| 30 years ago (within that generation-or-two span), at
| least here in the parts of the US I was in around that
| time, blackberries and lots of other stuff were both
| expensive, and only available seasonally. You could get
| canned year-round, not fresh.
| [deleted]
| Aerroon wrote:
| But were those Europeans healthy? We can see a life
| expectancy and height increase in most European countries
| these days. And this is with us having subpar diets where
| most people get insufficient amounts of some pretty
| important stuff like magnesium and vitamin D.
| gdubs wrote:
| I think modern agriculture is miraculous, don't get me wrong.
| But we ignore the negative externalities - the cost to our
| health, and to ecosystems, and to the sustainability of
| civilization long-term. Even conventionally-minded farmers
| know that things like soil loss are a huge looming problem.
| And the labor issue is also complex - while big corn fields
| may be farmable via GPS-enabled, air-conditioned tractors,
| there's still a ton of migrant labor without which the system
| would cease to function.
|
| The idea behind a lot of the regenerative methods is to work
| with nature to reduce the need for inputs. I am a pragmatist
| and will tell you that, it's really hard! On this I agree.
| But a lot of the ideas from more fringe communities like
| permaculturists are becoming more and more integrated into
| the mainstream. I just think we need to accelerate that, and
| put a lot more research into alternative methods like
| agroforestry - because I think we all rely on a food system
| that's way more brittle and tenuous than people realize. One
| with a lot of negative externalities that we can't paper over
| forever.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > the cost to our health
|
| This seems highly debatable. Sure cheap calories and cheap
| corn based sugars make it easy to develop so called
| lifestyle diseases, but on the other hand we've essentially
| eliminated famine and in most parts of the world
| malnutrition.
|
| In terms of ecosystem loss, it seems to me that
| concentrating most calorie production onto the smallest
| amount of land makes sense.
|
| > And the labor issue is also complex
|
| You're right of course, but I don't see how the manually
| intense process of regenerative and/or organic ag makes
| this better. Every small farm like this that I'm aware of
| makes heavy use of children, unpaid interns, and extremely
| low wage workers. It's not exactly comparable to migrant
| workers picking strawberries en-masse, but that's more of
| an issue of sacle and where these boutique farms find their
| labor IMO. I say this as someone whose parents and
| grandparents were all farmers, and my sister-in-law worked
| for a few years on a regenerative/organic farm.
|
| > But a lot of the ideas from more fringe communities like
| permaculturists are becoming more and more integrated into
| the mainstream
|
| This is the part that's actually really interesting to me.
| Finding ways to scale up and integrate ideas about soil
| health, water use, etc into mechanized, large scale
| agriculture is really great. People seem to be doing cool
| things with no-till and drip irrigation right now.
|
| > alternative methods like agroforestry
|
| My concern with this is that it definitely require LOADS of
| labor, and isn't likely to produce that much food. It also
| may put pressure on forest land may not be sustainable long
| term. On a small scale on you your own farm, it's probably
| great. But I have trouble imagining how it could ever make
| up a significant portion of overall fruit and nut
| consumption.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| > In terms of ecosystem loss, it seems to me that
| concentrating most calorie production onto the smallest
| amount of land makes sense.
|
| Incorrect. Agroforestry is the practice of integrating
| livestock and orchards. The orchard is designed to serve
| as the basis for an extended ecosystem. Trees provide
| shade for fowl, sheep and small cows and help limit swale
| evaporation. Fallen fruits attract a wide variety of
| animals and birds, providing prey for cats, hawks and
| owls. Systems like this sustainably produce a high
| quantity and quality of food per acre while encouraging
| diversity and natural beauty, at the cost of being less
| accessible to automated farm machinery. The best case
| scenario for sustainability and diversity would be if
| everyone lived in small communities with shared food
| forests, eating mostly locally grown food.
| wayfinder wrote:
| Truthfully, as someone who has done a lot small scale
| growing between over the last few years, using everything
| from soil to hydroponics, I find it hard to believe that
| natural techniques will ever come close to mechanization
| and artificial means. Pesticides and chemical
| fertilization are so extremely effective. You get hand
| over fist yield with them.
|
| A world with shared food forests and locally grown food
| is probably a world with far fewer people.
|
| I think high population and natural farming are mutually
| exclusive.
| switchbak wrote:
| Well in the western world, we're going to have a pretty
| marked decrease in population pretty soon. That also
| means fewer people to work the land (among other serious
| challenges), but it appears overpopulation will not be
| one of those problems to the same degree.
|
| And the state of industrial AG isn't static, robotic
| micro pesticides are interesting for example. Not that
| I'm a fan of them, but it would be great to see us move
| away from showering everything in loads of agent orange
| and have more targeted application.
| petsfed wrote:
| >Sure cheap calories and cheap corn based sugars make it
| easy to develop so called lifestyle diseases, but on the
| other hand we've essentially eliminated famine and in
| most parts of the world malnutrition.
|
| I think this is letting the good be the enemy of the
| perfect (a rare construction, to be sure). Yes, we've
| solved a very bad 1st order problem. That frees us up to
| work on 2nd order problems that we've never had to deal
| with before. This is a thalidomide-style problem in that
| the side-effects of the "cure" are a disease in their own
| right.
|
| I'd rather have diabetes than be dead, certainly, but
| wouldn't it better to not risk diabetes just to stay
| alive?
|
| I'm substantially in agreement with you though. The less
| land we use on food production, the better. The less
| labor we can expend growing and harvesting that food, the
| better.
|
| All of that said, the parameter space of agriculture has
| a complicated shape, so optimizing for any one parameter
| will be at the expense of other parameters.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > wouldn't it better to not risk diabetes just to stay
| alive?
|
| This is a mischaracterisation. If you have any choice in
| what you eat, you risk diabetes just to stay alive.
|
| There is so much food that far fewer people are dying of
| malnutrition than in the past. As part of there being
| lots of food available, it's also possible to eat
| yourself into heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Great
| availability requires some responsibility.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| Type 2 diabetes is solved with low carb and you can use
| the cheap food. See virtahealth.com if you want
| professional help.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > I think this is letting the good be the enemy of the
| perfect (a rare construction, to be sure). Yes, we've
| solved a very bad 1st order problem. That frees us up to
| work on 2nd order problems that we've never had to deal
| with before. This is a thalidomide-style problem in that
| the side-effects of the "cure" are a disease in their own
| right.
|
| I actually agree with you.
|
| > I'd rather have diabetes than be dead, certainly, but
| wouldn't it better to not risk diabetes just to stay
| alive?
|
| Again I agree, but I also think there's a huge cultural
| component to food/eating that is often missed in these
| discussions.
| myshpa wrote:
| > But we ignore the negative externalities - the cost to
| our health, and to ecosystems, and to the sustainability of
| civilization long-term
|
| Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth
| system exceeding planetary boundaries
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320356605_Agricult
| u...
|
| Our global food system is the primary driver of
| biodiversity loss
|
| https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/our-
| glob...
|
| Biodiversity conservation: The key is reducing meat
| consumption
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26231772/
|
| Humans are driving one million species to extinction -
| United Nations-backed report finds that agriculture is one
| of the biggest threats to Earth's ecosystems
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01448-4
| jampekka wrote:
| Quite obvious solution to these would be to transition to
| plant based diet which would reduce agricultural land use
| by 75%.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
| hattmall wrote:
| But what do we need the land for? There's tons of empty
| land, grazing animals are beneficial for the land. Why
| would we need 75% more empty land?
| digging wrote:
| > There's tons of empty land
|
| Your premise is flawed... outside of Antarctica, there's
| not really much empty land on earth.
| myshpa wrote:
| > But what do we need the land for
|
| We should reforest most of that land. It was previously
| mostly forested anyway, and doing so, together with a
| rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, would enable us to store
| enough carbon to halt global warming, restore
| biodiversity, and repair the water cycle to prevent
| droughts.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/deforestation#the-world-has-
| lost-...
|
| > grazing animals are beneficial for the land
|
| Not really.
|
| https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/grazed-
| and-co...
|
| https://newrepublic.com/article/163735/myth-regenerative-
| ran...
|
| https://grist.org/climate-energy/cattle-grazing-is-a-
| climate...
| bartwe wrote:
| Farming for an ever growing population.
| ilyt wrote:
| Developed countries have dwindling population (well, at
| least exclusing immigration). And I think it's safe to
| assume when other countries catch up similar thing will
| happen, at the very least to the point of levelling up.
| Hell even India, the biggest country by number of people,
| is already at 2.0
|
| We don't need to feed more, we just need to bring the
| education and standard of living if the world up. And
| maybe figure out how to make the people in developed
| countries to have sustainable birth rate...
| PKop wrote:
| Why is endless growth desirable? Why not quality over
| quantity, allowing for higher quality food supply instead
| of mass production of with unhealthy trade-offs?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| To steel man a bit here, grazing isn't necessarily a win
| for biodiversity and then there is all of the land that
| used to produce supplemental feed. Its a set of problems
| worth considering, even as I disagree with the myopia of
| the link riddled comment above.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| You could boil all of this down to the fact that our
| current best effort at feeding 9 billion people has a lot
| of unfortunate externalities. If your proposal is to
| revert back to high land and labor input methods, then
| maybe it would make a difference insofar as a few billion
| people would probably starve. For my part, I'd prefer we
| try innovating our way through it.
| Loic wrote:
| No. Just reduce your meat consumption to about 1kg per
| month or less. You can still enjoy a really good steak
| from times to times and you reduce your load on the
| ecosystem massively.
|
| This is orthogonal to the way you produce food.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's quite the presumption about MY consumption.
| Moreover the word "just" is doing a lot of work here.
|
| I'm responding primarily to the overall land use picture
| here. Agriculture even as efficiently as we're doing it
| now takes a lot of space, even removing most meat from
| the equation.
| myshpa wrote:
| > You could boil all of this down to the fact that our
| current best effort at feeding 9 billion people has a lot
| of unfortunate externalities.
|
| Feeding 10 billion people by 2050 within planetary limits
| may be achievable
|
| https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/917471
|
| _A global shift towards healthy and more plant-based
| diets, halving food loss and waste, and improving farming
| practices and technologies are required to feed 10
| billion people sustainably by 2050, a new study finds._
|
| > If your proposal is to revert back to high land and
| labor input methods, then maybe it would make a
| difference insofar as a few billion people would probably
| starve.
|
| Not necessarily. The crop lands we already have would be
| sufficient to feed the whole population.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/land-use-diets
|
| Sustainable and regenerative agriculture is entirely
| possible. You may want to explore practices such as
| natural, syntropic, permaculture, and agroforestry
| farming, to name just a few. While it may require more
| knowledge and labor, advancements in technology and
| automation could potentially mean only a slight increase
| in the workforce, from around 2% to maybe upto 4%.
|
| The benefits would be enormous. And with 40-70% of jobs
| being bullshit jobs I'm not even afraid we would fill
| those positions. It's just a matter of regulation and
| preferences.
|
| > For my part, I'd prefer we try innovating our way
| through it.
|
| Plant-based diets are an innovation. Restorative
| agriculture would require new machinery, agroforestry,
| smaller fields instead of vast monocultures, the
| incorporation of companion/nitrogen-fixing plants and
| compost instead of artificial fertilizers, among other
| changes. Many things would need to change.
|
| > I'm responding primarily to the overall land use
| picture here. Agriculture even as efficiently as we're
| doing it now takes a lot of space, even removing most
| meat from the equation.
|
| This is a very illustrative picture.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2013/10/World-Map-by-
| Land...
|
| Animal ag. brings just 18% of calories and 36% of
| proteins, while destroying and polluting so much. We
| should dedicate the land to forests (carbon
| sequestration) and to the restoration of biodiversity.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| My whole point and I discussed this up thread is that
| things like restorative agriculture and agroforestry
| require a fuck-ton more human labor.
|
| > The benefits would be enormous. And with 40-70% of jobs
| being bullshit jobs I'm not even afraid we would fill
| those positions. It's just a matter of regulation and
| preferences.
|
| This is total nonsense. When most people worked on farms,
| food comprised more than 30% of peoples' budgets. The
| idea that we could have a modern society with 40-70% of
| people shifting to agricultural labor is on its face
| ridiculous. You're making a utopian argument here and
| hand waving away the real problems involved in sending so
| many people back to agriculture.
|
| > Plant-based diets are an innovation
|
| Nowhere am I arguing against plant-based diets. You're
| arguing against a straw man. I'm also not anywhere here
| or at any point saying that the status quo of human
| calorie composition is ideal. I said that as it stands,
| our best effort to date to feed 8+ billion people has AT
| PRESENT negative externalities. I agree that problems are
| worth addressing, and you seem to be dead set on having
| an argument with me about something I'm not saying.
| myshpa wrote:
| > the idea that we could have a modern society with
| 40-70% of people shifting to agricultural labor is on its
| face ridiculous
|
| I never said we'd need 40-70% of people in the
| agriculture. I've talked about the possibility of the
| increase upto aproximately 4% , with a pool of 40-70%
| people to choose from. Is it clearer now?
|
| > you seem to be dead set on having an argument with me
| about something I'm not saying
|
| Ditto :)
|
| > If your proposal is to revert back to high land and
| labor input methods, then maybe it would make a
| difference insofar as a few billion people would probably
| starve. For my part, I'd prefer we try innovating our way
| through it.
|
| This has triggered my response. I can't agree with that
| at all.
|
| There's no need to revert to high land and labor input
| methods. I'll simplify a lot. We could grow more veggies
| and fruit, plant more nut orchards to replace milk, grow
| more legumes to replace meat, on smaller fields separated
| with rows of productive and nitrogen fixing trees
| (agroforesty) and reforest more lands to let biodiversity
| rebound and work with it, not against it ... nothing that
| is particulary hard and nothing of that means that
| billions would have to die. It would need new (smaller)
| electric machines and more workers, but maybe 1-2 times
| more, not 20 times more.
| jononomo wrote:
| I only eat steak. It is simply the best food for human
| flourishing.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| I wouldn't mind spending a couple of hours a day doing
| physical labor instead of working in the office to guarantee
| that my food was made in a sustainable and safe way, heck I
| even think it would be good for my health.
| digging wrote:
| My dream: we give up on bullshit jobs. We implement UBI. We
| localize the majority of our agriculture. Humans, largely
| freed from fake labor, work communally on their local
| farms, splitting up the labor so nobody has to wreck their
| health and finances gambling on a lettuce crop.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| That is a lot harder to say after the age of 35 or 40. My
| social circle includes many alternative people in organic
| farming where I have occasionally pitched in to help, and I
| have also volunteered with WWOOF for food and accommodation
| when traveling. This kind of work, even if a mere couple of
| hours a day, really, really starts to suck after your knees
| and back begin to age. And it is not that I have given up
| and settled into a sedentary lifestyle - nowadays my
| travels are bikepacking/bicycle-touring where I do 100 km+
| day after day, but that exercise is a lot easier on one's
| body than the repetitive motions of farming.
| ilyt wrote:
| Then why they are still getting subsidies ? We're essentially
| taking a part of the tax, give it to farmers, so instead of
| paying less tax we pay less for foods, except wasting a ton
| of it along the way for bureaucracy
| WalterBright wrote:
| A friend of mine in the apple business says you get 4 bad years
| in a row and then one great year to cover the 4 bad ones and
| make an overall profit. The weather is the main variable that
| can't be controlled.
| ilyt wrote:
| > A friend of mine in the apple business says you get 4 bad
| years in a row and then one great year to cover the 4 bad
| ones and make an overall profit. The weather is the main
| variable that can't be controlled.
|
| From my memory the years where crops were unusually high were
| also ones where price was shit... because everyone else
| nearby also had a good crop
| selectodude wrote:
| Apples are unusual insofar as they can be stored for 12+
| months. Most produce isn't so resilient.
| ilyt wrote:
| Yeah it's crazy. My late dad's old farm just had basically
| a big room that had concrete crating above a hole in soil
| (I believe it was to just keep it cool in the warmer
| months) and they could be stored from autumn to spring. No
| AC of any sort, just a small furnace to give off a bit of
| heat when winter gets really cold and some big fans for
| forced ventilation.
| kolanos wrote:
| This is very true, a late frost can wipe you out for the
| year.
| digging wrote:
| > The weather is the main variable that can't be controlled.
|
| This is what's extremely concerning - weather is getting less
| predictable every year. In a decade, who's going to want to
| start a farm when they have no idea what their local climate
| is?
| matwood wrote:
| People may like/not like Jeremy Clarkson, but his show on
| Amazon about him buying a farm was fun and informative. He's
| rich (so has a lot of startup capital) and struggled the whole
| show trying to make the economics work. He also spoke with
| other local farmers so you got to hear their struggles with the
| economics.
| robohoe wrote:
| Check out Harry Metcalfe's Harry's Farm on Youtube for more
| insight into British farming. It's a serious version of
| Clarkson's Farm. It's eye opening how much bureaucracy comes
| from politicians towards farmers.
| [deleted]
| gdubs wrote:
| I actually really loved his show. It does a good job of
| showing how hard it is. He farms a bit conventionally, but
| he's also keen to try things that are regenerative - from his
| hedge rows and pollinator crops, to his second season quest
| to create a locavore restaurant that would support the
| farmers in his area. He's constantly playing up his persona
| of petrol-powered gear head to set up a joke at his expense
| that says, "actually, maybe this sustainable approach _isn't_
| so bad." Say what you will about Clarkson the person, but the
| show seems to have done a lot of good in raising awareness
| around the issues that farmers are facing, particularly in a
| post-brexit UK.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Jeremy Clarkson plays an arsehole in the media (or is he
| really such an arsehole?) but I agree about his farming show.
| It's funny, instructive and touching at times. However, I
| also found him funny on Top Gear - maybe it's because I
| assume he was being ironic.
| notatoad wrote:
| He got fired from Top Gear because he punched a waiter for
| bringing him a steak that wasn't hot enough.
|
| The asshole thing is probably not just an act.
| solumunus wrote:
| You're exaggerating a bit. He punched a producer for the
| show who was responsible for organising catering, it
| wasn't a random waiter. A random waiter would be much
| worse. Who knows what relationship he had with that
| producer previous to the incident... He is (probably) an
| arsehole but let's be accurate.
| boringg wrote:
| I appreciate this -- I come to HN for accuracy.
| AmVess wrote:
| Not to defend his actions, but his mom died and he went
| through a divorce when this happened. Stress and a bit
| deep in the cup made him lose his composure.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| Indeed. I don't think his actions were called for either,
| but I appreciated that he apologized profusely
| afterwards, and pointed said - repeatedly - that the
| producer hadn't done anything wrong and that his fans
| needed to leave the producer alone. I appreciated that he
| seriously tried to make amends and didn't try to shove
| blame on the other guy.
| ilyt wrote:
| Where you're getting your "facts" from, Daily Vomit ?
| TylerE wrote:
| History suggests it's never _just_ an act.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Trust the history! It _suggests_. What more do you want?
| skilled wrote:
| Going to have to correct you. Life is a grand theater and
| everything is an act. History has never suggested
| otherwise.
| ckozlowski wrote:
| He often was. Like any challenge or segment with his
| tagline "I mean, _really_? How hard can it be? " where he'd
| leverage his critical person to point out "Yes, it's
| actually really hard."
| ilyt wrote:
| He's definitely at least a bit of an arsehole looking at
| his co-worker interviews.
|
| But the the big dumb ass getting himself into trouble is
| funny.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Is the cost mostly driven by labor? How much can autonomous
| pickers and "sharp shooting" spray robots/weeders help here?
|
| I personally don't find gardening that attractive and don't see
| how that is a scalable solution anyway, but have been curious
| what larger farms can do to become more efficiently organic.
| moralestapia wrote:
| >"Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard
|
| +1 to that book.
|
| I don't have a farm (wish to, but life is very busy atm) and is
| still a book I enjoyed quite a lot. Anyone could get a lot of
| knowledge out of it.
| talkingtab wrote:
| Food prices seem irrational. And I mean that - they are not
| reasonable. People buy bags of potato chips for almost $5.00.
| How much does the potato cost? It seems like the potato has
| nothing to do with the cost - especially if we reflect on the
| idea that "less than have of the produce ... makes a profit".
|
| What that means or appears to mean is that the cost of food
| goods is now driven by cost of production. And we may be
| underestimating that cost. Perhaps most cost of the potato cost
| is in the gas, fertilizer, equipment that go into growing the
| potato.
|
| My question is, of the $5.00 for a bag of potato chips, where
| does that money go? Cui bono?
| ilyt wrote:
| The making of a potato is subsidized from taxes so it can be
| sold for "cheap".
|
| There is no subsidies for making chips, and it is "a treat"
| so there is not _all_ that much reason to make it cheap aside
| from competition
| SL61 wrote:
| Chips, along with cereal, are an interesting case where the
| normal price is crazy high but then they go on sale for a
| fraction of that with extreme frequency.
|
| There's a store near me that has had a particular $5 chip
| brand on sale for $2 for well over a year. For cereal, I just
| go to the cereal aisle and take my pick from the substantial
| range of cereals that are 50% off at any given time. You're
| only paying full price if you're picky and insist on one
| specific item, which to be fair maybe a lot of people are
| like that.
|
| I'm sure the sales are loss leaders to get people in the
| store, but I have to wonder if the people who pay $5 are to
| some extent subsidizing the people who buy them for $2. Most
| other categories of goods don't seem to go on sale with such
| frequency or with such deep discounts.
| sokoloff wrote:
| People buy hot water poured over roasted and ground up beans
| for $5+.
|
| People buy tap water in plastic bottles at a ballgame for
| $5+.
|
| I do not conclude from those facts that "that means or
| appears to mean is that the cost of food goods is now driven
| by cost of production".
|
| People are willing to pay for convenience and comfort. A bag
| of chips, a cup of Starbucks, or a bottle of cold water at a
| ballgame represents comfort and convenience.
| Tycho wrote:
| Food is the one thing on which the average citizen regularly
| spends 10x or even 100x more than they need to spend.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This is what surprised and humbled me about farming.
|
| Imagine if my software dev laptop at home cost $5M and every
| year if my compiled code crop doesn't come in I have to deal
| with a ton of insurance paperwork to hopefully not go bankrupt.
|
| It's like a high stakes career for low stakes payouts.
| spelunker wrote:
| I have a vegetable garden at home, and there is nothing quite
| like eating food you have grown yourself! And as an extra
| benefit, it usually tastes better than the stuff you get at the
| grocery store anyway.
|
| Even a small garden takes work, though, not to mention if you
| keep it "organic" like I do, you have to deal with pests,
| weeds, etc. So many weeds.
| mortureb wrote:
| I tried organic just for the family. It's next to impossible to
| keep plants alive and weeds out. How did people do it before
| NPK and glyphosate? It's probably climate dependent and
| contingent on not having cross continental pests. The first
| year Japanese beetles pretty much ate my whole crop over the
| span of 3 weeks.
| nightfly wrote:
| > How did people do it before NPK and glyphosate
|
| Compost/manure and lots of manual labor
| mortureb wrote:
| Yeah, I still think not having every pest and weed from
| Asia helped as well. Most of the weeds and pests on my
| property are some combination of Japanese/Chinese/Asian
| ____.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _we 've definitely had the realization that most people have
| no idea where their food comes from, or why it costs what it
| does._
|
| I think most people think it comes from big factory farms?
|
| And that it costs what it does because of supply and demand
| like any industry, but that subsidies make certain things like
| corn cheaper, and there's tremendous fluctuations in certain
| prices (like berries) because there are wildly different levels
| of supply coming from different countries at different times.
|
| Are you suggesting it's not that?
| alex_lav wrote:
| I appreciate the sentiment of your post, but I feel like we're
| living in the wrong time to be shaming the common person for
| A.) Wanting food that won't kill them, and B.) They can afford.
|
| > People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price
|
| Everything in life is getting more expensive and wages stay
| mostly the same.
| jononomo wrote:
| Doesn't it make more sense just to ditch plant-based calories
| altogether and just focus on animal-based calories, which are
| so much more nutrient dense while also being dramatically
| better for the environment?
| hfsh wrote:
| > while also being dramatically better for the environment?
|
| [citation very fucking much needed]
| ilyt wrote:
| > All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward
| anyone who has the dream of growing their own food is often
| coming from a conventional mindset.
|
| The most I saw was mostly "well fuck you mister rich guy that
| can not only afford a house but enough space to do so and have
| the job to pay for that hobby"... not anything related to
| farming methods
|
| > If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and
| joys) of growing food, become more connected to the world that
| sustains us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the
| people who work really hard for very thin margins to keep us
| all fed.
|
| I've lived on a "farm" (it had a bit of everything, grain,
| fruit trees, cucumbers etc) that was around 10 hectares. It
| went from "good living" (actually affordin new-if-cheap car
| etc.) to "going by" to my father basically selling land for
| development and getting "normal" job because it just wasn't
| paying.
|
| Frankly I think current subsidies structure just made it worse
| and worse because farming on low scale is near-impossible to
| make profitable and even bigger ones live on small profit
| margins as stuff from subsidies just immediately gets burn on
| fertilizer and other stuff.
|
| But yeah if average person did a year of farming and a year of
| designing and making something difficult we'd live in far less
| annoying stuf
| WatchDog wrote:
| Tangent: Is there such a thing as "organic" for people that
| don't mind GMO, or fertilizer, but don't want their food
| sprayed with pesticides?
| belinder wrote:
| Farmers market?
| vkou wrote:
| Nearly all of whom use pesticides.
| ilyt wrote:
| Well if you want your fruits without worms in it, you
| have to.
|
| I remember from my life at farm that even just spraying
| it few days too late basically "ruined" a lot of fruit
| atdrummond wrote:
| Most organic certification programs allow (or even require)
| the use of pesticides; they simply use those which are
| considered "natural".
|
| Some of these allowed pesticides, like copper sulfate, are
| far more carcinogenic than even the compounds (glyphosate,
| for example) that are considered dangerous enough to warrant
| public concern campaigns.[1]
|
| [1] https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2020/07/23/organic-
| fungic...
| mrob wrote:
| It's possible that copper sulfate is more dangerous than
| the alternatives, but there's no evidence that it's
| carcinogenic. Your linked article claims copper sulfate
| "has not been associated with cancer".
| atdrummond wrote:
| Thanks for catching; I was doing some changing of my
| wording and forgot to finish it before submitting my
| comment. I had meant to type "far more deleterious to
| health, if not specifically oncogenic/carcinogenic [...]"
|
| I did not mean to state copper sulfate (or any of the
| organic farming compounds) is cancer causing and I would
| f have fixed the typo if I was still within the edit
| window.
| kornhole wrote:
| Pesticide free
| slothtrop wrote:
| The advantages of organic for produce are anywhere between
| dubious or marginal. I would have said there's it's better
| with animal products, but that's largely owing to the overlap
| with free range / grass-fed. I don't really care if the grain
| they happen to eat is also "organic".
|
| In conventional farming conditions are so bad for pork that a
| large percentage of them die of disease, despite all the
| anti-biotics, before even heading to the butcher. I feel less
| inclined to touch that stuff unless it's from a local farm I
| know. Poultry and beef have their own set of problems.
| tennisflyi wrote:
| People balk at "organic" furniture, too. The cost of things has
| just been abstracted too much.
| hmmokidk wrote:
| What do you think of hydroponic? Like simple kratky + grow
| light, indoors you generally don't have to worry about pests.
| gdubs wrote:
| I think it's fascinating and looks like something an engineer
| / designer could have a lot of fun with. And on a larger
| scale, it seems like a really interesting idea that could
| bring food production closer to where people are - like
| cities. That said, I haven't had time to personally mess
| around with it much yet.
|
| I do think after watching how unpredictable the weather is
| getting, that greenhouses and indoor growing will be a very
| important part of the puzzle in the mid to later parts of
| this century. I worry about the grain crops and things that
| are still very much an outdoor proposition. Genetic
| modification and experiments with different perennials may
| get us to a place of resiliency, but we're not there yet.
|
| FWIW, I'm not anti-GMO. But I think an issue with GMOs is
| that a lot of what it gets used for is making crops tolerant
| of tons of chemical spraying.
| ilyt wrote:
| It's land efficient. And only land efficient.
|
| If we get a lot of cheap energy it might make sense if it
| would allow to basically free up the land for farming.
|
| But as long as land is not "expensive", it's just too
| expensive in comparison.
|
| Sun is free and land is cheap, tons of plastic, bulbs and
| infrastructure is not.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| That's the trouble with capitalism: basic needs are
| underpriced, because income rates have no floor.
|
| If people are allowed to be too poor to afford food, then the
| system has failed. Our solution is not to pay people enough to
| live: our solution is to make food cheap enough for the
| desperately poor to continue living in squalor.
|
| It's no wonder to me that the very people invested in
| perpetuating this system are constantly struggling to "solve"
| homelessness and healthcare by "creating more jobs".
| fallingknife wrote:
| In the USSR they ran Grapes of Wrath, which focuses on the
| plight of the poor in America, in theaters as an attempt at
| anti US propaganda. It backfired spectacularly because the
| mostly poor audience mainly came out of it saying "in America
| even poor people have cars!"
|
| The Soviet bureaucrats who came up with the plan were of
| course all from the upper class, and they cared so little for
| the poor in their anti-capitalist command economy that they
| didn't even realize how much poorer they were than the poor
| people in the movie.
|
| In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people can
| get fat. If we put anti-capitalists like you in charge they
| will starve.
| digging wrote:
| > In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people
| can get fat
|
| My dude, this is not a good thing.
| fallingknife wrote:
| For almost all of human history almost all humans spent
| almost all of their income/labor on feeding themselves.
| Not only is cheap food a good thing, it's one of the
| best.
| XTHK wrote:
| Where is your data for these claims?
|
| Here is something you mind find enlightening:
| https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-food/
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| > In capitalism we make food so cheap that even poor people
| can get fat.
|
| That's entirely my point. You can get fat, then get prices
| out of the insulin you need to treat the diabetes you got
| from getting fat on a high-energy low-nutrition diet.
|
| It turns out that being in poverty is always harmful, so
| why don't we just eliminate poverty? Because the USSR
| "tried" and failed 60 years ago? That's not a good enough
| reason. Like you said, it wasn't even an honest try to
| begin with.
| ilyt wrote:
| Sure but I don't think current subsidy structure is all
| that great.
|
| It makes food cheap to _everything_. Not _every person_ ,
| _everything_. Including corporations making "bad" foods
|
| It also subsidizes per area of crop, or volume of that crop
| which means any "sustainable" practices get by percentage
| less of them per kg.
|
| I think it would be far better if the subsidies were just
| directly to the people - drop food tax completely (maybe
| aside "truly unhealthy food") and subsidize the poorest so
| still everyone can eat, instead of subsidizing essentially
| John Deeres and fertilizer manufacturers
| fuzztester wrote:
| Watch "Treating the Farm as an Ecosystem with Gabe Brown Part
| 1, The 5 Tenets of Soil Health" on YouTube
|
| https://youtu.be/uUmIdq0D6-A?feature=shared
| benj111 wrote:
| How normal is this?
|
| I assume there are gluts fairly regularly so producers would to
| some extent be used to this?
|
| Further what does the future look like. Input costs going down,
| or food price rises?
| H8crilA wrote:
| Completely normal? I don't see how you could expect anything
| else in a competitive market for any commodity.
| eecc wrote:
| The way I understood it is that producers get paid a pittance
| (thus they turn around to squeezing farmland workers even more)
| by the distributors that act as a monopsony and impose ever lower
| prices and production standards optimizing for process rather
| than quality.
|
| This is especially egregious in the Netherlands for example,
| where you will regularly find moldy products shipped from across
| the world (Chile, New Zealand) sold at a discount (down from eye
| watering starting prices.)
| lucumo wrote:
| > monopsony
|
| This really doesn't pass the smell test. There are multiple
| very large supermarket chains here. They aren't monopsonies, by
| the simple fact that there are multiple. They are also large
| and very good at negotiating and optimising their supply
| chains. If any of their suppliers were to have absurdly high
| margins they would fuck them out of existence. Especially for
| commodities like farm produce which you can get almost
| anywhere.
|
| The supermarkets make enormous profits, but it's nearly all due
| to scale. Their margins on products are in the low single
| digits. (In the Netherlands. The largest chain, Ahold Delhaize,
| does make higher margins in the US.)
| LightHugger wrote:
| It's good to be careful with this logic, because it's now
| common practice for one large holding group to own all of the
| differently branded stores to create illusion of choice.
| lucumo wrote:
| That's a good point in general, but it is not true of the
| largest Dutch supermarket chains.
|
| The four largest chains (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Aldi, Lidl)
| are all independent of each other. A bunch of smaller
| chains have bundled their buying power into Superunie,
| which in turn is part of EMD. Superunie would end up
| somewhere in the middle of the top 5 in the Dutch market.
| EMD has about 10% of the European market. There's really no
| monopsony here.
| barrkel wrote:
| Finding a lot of moldy "fresh" products on supermarket shelves
| was one of the big changes I experienced moving from UK to
| Switzerland. Food prices in Switzerland are generally 2x or 3x
| EU prices, but the most aggravating thing was that quality was
| lower than the UK (Coop/Migros vs Waitrose/Sainsburys).
| birdstheword5 wrote:
| I haven't noticed that myself but it's been 5 years since
| I've been there (Zurich) - how recently did you move there
| and which canton are you in?
|
| I do agree that most UK shops (Waitrose/ Sainsbury's like you
| mention) are really good compared with most stuff in
| Switzerland
| barrkel wrote:
| Moved here two years ago. Spent three months in Zurich
| (more local, smaller shops were worse) and now live in
| Baden, Aargau.
| londons_explore wrote:
| In an efficient market, everything is sold at breakr even.
|
| Produce is a competitive market, so there is no surprise that
| it's a market that is efficient.
| [deleted]
| sambazi wrote:
| interesting take
|
| so, is the reverse, huge margins indicate an inefficient
| market, also true?
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Food production should be strictly regulated and prices
| protected. If food is treated like a generic commodity, the
| capitalist incentives end up destroying flavor, nutrition,
| variety, and the environment (read: your soil, your water,
| anything that lives in or near soil or water). People will always
| buy the cheapest possible thing, even if it's the worst thing for
| them and everything around them. We shouldn't give people and
| corporations the choice to slowly destroy everything. Not if we
| want to survive long term.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| Dole makes $1.2 billion a year EBITDA.
|
| https://www.doleplc.com/investor-relations/news/ir-news-deta...
| rightbyte wrote:
| It is probably hard to compete with old investments that are
| payed off already? Prices should rise as maintenance takes its
| toll.
|
| Fundamentally, farmers are valeuing their work way to low and our
| work way to high. How many loc of C# do I need for a bottle of
| milk?
|
| The countryside need to squeeze us the city dwellers abit more.
| The income disparity allows for it and the countryside need to be
| able to flourish too.
| delfinom wrote:
| The big problem for farmers is they have to sell to
| distributors/processors. Supermarkets don't want to deal with
| 100 different farmers per produce item.
|
| In the last few decades, those entities have merged into
| megacorp regional and national monopolies. They are effectively
| fucking the farmer and the consumer.
|
| https://time.com/6171326/meat-beef-industry-congress/
|
| >Over the past three decades, as the largest four beef-packing
| firms have amassed control of 82% of the U.S. beef market
|
| >Since 1980, an average of nearly 17,000 cattle ranchers have
| gone out of business each year, the report said.
|
| >Meanwhile, some of the biggest meat-processing companies--
| Tyson, JBS, Marfrig, and Seaboard--have seen their gross
| profits increase by more than 120% collectively since before
| the pandemic, and their net income skyrocket 500%,
|
| This also goes beyond the meat industry of course and extends
| into everything farming.
| mrpopo wrote:
| High food prices make for angry voters, though.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| People here in Norway have complained about the price of food
| for ages. Farmers likewise have complained a lot about their
| low pay relative to workload.
|
| Some years ago I met some french folks who had recently
| landed a job here in Norway. They invited me for dinner which
| we prepared together, and I noticed they had gone to one of
| the food markets and gotten some quality ingredients. So we
| ended up talking about the price of food.
|
| They mentioned that when they moved here they were shocked at
| how expensive food was. However, after a little while they
| realized that they spent way less in terms of percentage of
| their income on food compared to what they used to do in
| France.
|
| In France they had spent around 15% on food, and if they did
| the same here then all of a sudden food here didn't seem more
| expensive than in France.
|
| In comparison, most Norwegians spend around 5% of their
| income on food.
|
| Farmers generally have the prices they get set by the
| government. From what I can tell what has happened is that
| we've gotten used to not spend a lot on food (relative to the
| french say), the government hasn't given the farmers a lot,
| meanwhile the "middle-men" has grown a lot and take a lot
| more of the pie compared to before.
|
| For example, a while ago the government reduced the VAT on
| food from 25% to 12%, and while food prices in the shops
| dropped right away, it didn't take long before they had crept
| back up...
| Martinussen wrote:
| I believe the SSB (Statistics Norway) numbers are more like
| ~10% for food and non-alcoholic drinks [1], it depends a
| lot on what you look at. Culturally the Mediterraneans have
| a very different relationship to food - but looking at
| Eurostat, we're basically on the low end of average [2]?
|
| (Also, the VAT reduction in light of the recent govt-
| assembled expert panel arguing for the exact opposite as
| one of the best ways of taxing high-income high-consumption
| households without hurting lower income groups is... fun.)
|
| --
|
| [1] https://www.ssb.no/nasjonalregnskap-og-
| konjunkturer/nasjonal...
|
| [2] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-
| news/w/D...
| rmah wrote:
| This graph will make things a bit clearer...
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/food-expenditure-vs-
| gdp
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I used the numbers I recalled being quoted in the news at
| the time, which also matched my own food expenses. I
| assumed it was just food, while the SSB number includes
| non-alcoholic drinks as you say, and we're quite fond of
| sodas over here[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-
| the-highe...
| gottorf wrote:
| Romania is a clear outlier in that Eurostat source. I
| wonder why that is?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| French farmers get a lot of subsidies form the state and
| the EU, and start violent protests when their standards get
| threatened.
| Ekaros wrote:
| High prices is acceptable reality. Unaffordable prices is
| when you get the problems. And there is quite a bit
| difference between those.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Right. Then import more slave labor to keep costs down. /s
| Paul_S wrote:
| That is literally what we've been doing in the UK for
| decades. It works!
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| So has Germany and any other wealthy nation. Locals don't
| want to work for poverty wages but there's a virtually
| unlimited number of desperate people worldwide willing
| to. That was my point.
| boringg wrote:
| It's the farming industry thats squeezing the farmer. The
| hardware, seeds and fertilizer.
|
| My feeling is that farmers are similar to employees they have
| no collective power to control prices where the John Deere's
| and Monsantos of the world push prices onto farmers. The buyers
| of product have pricing power (similar to how wal-mart
| squeeze's supplier with their buying power).
| Dudester230602 wrote:
| Let's redistribute the farm land equally first though. And stop
| the farming subsidies.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| Cheap food prices are a very good thing. The farmers who are
| struggling are the ones with unsustainable business models. The
| answer for them is to join forces. Small time farming is a not
| viable anymore and it benefits nobody to try to keep it going.
| Most of these small timers are also way outdated in their
| knowledge and methods.
| jfk13 wrote:
| This sounds uncomfortably like a call for more of the
| consolidation and industrialisation of farming, in the name
| of efficiency, that has been devastating to our environment.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that has been devastating to our environment_
|
| Nothing inherent to economies of scale is devastating our
| environment. Companion planting, soil stewardship and water
| management each _benefit_ from scale.
| rikketikm wrote:
| If they are applied, yes.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| True. It's just that so far in agriculture, economies of
| scale have been let loose without much governing for
| ecology.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _so far in agriculture, economies of scale have been
| let loose without much governing for ecology_
|
| Sure. But scale isn't the problem. (Focussing on its is
| counterproductive. Amidst falling efficiency, no
| population will choose long-term ecological impact over
| short-term food availability.)
|
| Solve the problem directly: incentivize land owners to
| steward their land. Regulate where needed. Improve
| agricultural education.
| Timshel wrote:
| Nothing is quite optimistic, issues such as are linked to
| scale (Just 5min of some random though) :
|
| - http://encyclopedia.uia.org/en/problem/destruction-
| hedges-an...
|
| - https://crops.extension.iastate.edu/encyclopedia/soil-
| erosio...
|
| - https://sentientmedia.org/how-does-agriculture-cause-
| defores...
|
| - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_p
| ig_fa...
|
| - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/11/glo
| bal-s...
|
| Edit: and if you think not just on the ecological side.
| The core benefice of scale is to produce more while
| requiring less people. Which mean lower density of people
| which has so many societal impacts ...
| thriftwy wrote:
| Yup, because we are dying to have more of these huge
| latifundia bathing the world in pesticides and being so large
| they can buy politicians by a dozen.
|
| Are you writing from 1970?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > The farmers who are struggling are the ones with
| unsustainable business models.
|
| Or the ones who don't use pesticides that kill our planet
|
| Or the ones which treat their animals decently
|
| Or the small scale farms
|
| Or ...
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| There is less oversight when it comes to pesticide usage
| within smaller operations. I grew up in that environment so
| I can tell you from first hand experience that the
| grandfatherly figure selling you pumpkins on the side of
| the road is does not shy away from using pesticides, and
| unlike the big operations he is not very precise with this
| dosage either.
| rightbyte wrote:
| My grandfather used mercury as a pestiside on seeds. The
| joke was that it made the hens abit cracy when they ate
| spillovers on the court yard. So ye ...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Small-scale farming is more resource intensive than farming
| at scale. (Effects of pesticides are mixed.)
|
| I like small-farm produce. But it's obviously a luxury. If
| you're concerned about the environment, buying small-scale
| organic produce is counterproductive.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Maybe what's unsustainable isn't their business model but
| our way of life, that's all I'm saying, and so far
| everything points that way
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what 's unsustainable isn't their business model but
| our way of life_
|
| What does that actually mean? (I can point to any
| sociecoonomic problem and solve it by accusing someone's
| way of life.)
| trilbyglens wrote:
| "joining forces" means selling out to a corporate farm, and
| becoming a minimum wage laborer.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Farmer cooperatives for distribution are quite common.
|
| But ye consolidation will make things worse for the
| farmers.
|
| I don't understand how anyone who not inherit a farm would
| ever consider fighting the interest rate buying one. The
| amount of work per dollar is insane compared to other
| sectors.
| pcl wrote:
| Where do you think the line is between small scale and what
| becomes sustainable? 10 acres? 100? 1000? Bigger?
| noteflakes wrote:
| > Cheap food prices are a very good thing.
|
| If anything, food should be more expensive. Current prices do
| not represent the cost of production, hence subsidies. The
| consequences are nefarious: farmers spending their entire
| career paying off debt, half of produce ending up in the
| trash, underpayed immigrants working in agriculture, cheap
| imports (subsidized by the origin country) putting pressure
| on local producers...
|
| Food is literally something we cannot live without. It should
| be valued accordingly.
| [deleted]
| Martinussen wrote:
| Are subsidies _not_ inherently valuing something highly?
| Except with some safeguards to prevent "Well you're poor
| so why are you worth keeping alive". Maybe it's better to
| shift ag subsidies to things like food stamps/some form of
| UBI, but that would definitively be a _pre_ requisite.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| If that is the economist's conclusion than I'd rather kick
| the economist than take his advice.
| NotSuspicious wrote:
| Cheap food stabilizes the entire system. Expensive food is
| how you get riots.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| I think you're spot on and it honestly amazes me how we
| have so much evidence of this throughout history and yet
| people can will still end up thinking about this purely
| in terms of "the free market".
| [deleted]
| nly wrote:
| Maybe food production shouldn't be highly profitable anyway,
| seeing as food is a basic need?
| sambazi wrote:
| could be argued that most produce in a supermarket is not there
| to satisfy 'basic needs'
| abigail95 wrote:
| At a glance if I look at a map, the areas with large and
| profitable food companies tend to be more well fed.
|
| I would dare to say that's causal. The more money you can make
| selling food, the more people will do it.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| we should have a decentralized agriculture system based on local
| farms and communities, then we wouldn't have this problem.
| ryan93 wrote:
| animals and agriculture span the entire country.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| *owned mostly by ~3 companies. if not owned, then controlled
| via their non-competitive contracts they have with the very
| small number of farmers who span the entire country.
| krunck wrote:
| "Agriculture" does not always equate to fruits and vegetables
| for humans. Corn and soy for export is agriculture. So is
| lettuce and tomatoes for local consumption. The point is we
| need locally grown food for local consumption.
|
| I live in a northern US state that is capable of growing
| loads of produce in the summer, yet in the summer grocery
| stores sell veggies and fruit grown in California, Mexico and
| Florida. Stores sell garlic from China when we can grow great
| garlic right here.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Yes, essentially, we need to get rid of corporate communism as
| it destroyed every industry it touched. Farming is now
| centralised and controled by a handful of corporate politburos,
| software, media, everything else. So called capitalism is dead,
| this is not capitalism we are experiencing. Otherwise you'd
| have many small farms and businesses in general that freely
| move capital and products around.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| yes, we should go to a decentralized system where the
| community or workers own the farm.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Yes, we used to call them: "small business" or "family
| owned business" or "family owned farm". A distant concept
| these days. Sometimes these would have their interests
| represented by the people they elect in local councils or
| governments, as opposed to these forms of governance taking
| orders directly from national central planning bureous,
| known as boards, by means of lobbying.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| "Decentralized farming" is such an HN thing to say.
|
| I get it and fully agree, but man, that got a good laugh
| out of me, haha.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i was trying to appeal to a certain audience with the
| "decentralized" word. tech ppl love that word, especially
| when describing any sort of enterprise system. know ur
| audience!
| ainiriand wrote:
| In capitalism, capital de tend to concentrate.
| gumballindie wrote:
| At extreme ends capitalism manifests itself like communism:
| oversight, concentration of power and capital in the hands
| of few, and so on. Proper capitalism means that capital
| flows freeley around all layers of society. In corporate
| communism and communist socialism capital clogs. Doesn't
| flow naturaly, it's slowed down, stored, accessible to and
| managed by those few.
| gatvol wrote:
| From TA: "Those increases, the report says, were driven by costs
| of fertiliser (up 60 per cent worldwide), construction (+48 per
| cent), fuel and gas (+41 per cent), shipping rates (+40 per
| cent), and electricity (+40 percent)." All of the drivers are
| energy related - I'd hypothesise this is the result of climate
| policies impacting energy costs.
| juancb wrote:
| Amidst the inefficiencies plaguing the fresh produce sector, the
| astute capitalist sees ripe opportunity. By harnessing the
| superior capabilities of AI and large language models, one can
| exploit supply chain vulnerabilities and leverage arbitrage
| opportunities.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Bananas are among the most popular fruit, as they are available
| year-round and travel well. They are also often used as a loss-
| leader. When I was at UCLA, the Whole Foods sold bananas at a
| very low price (39C/ a pound?), as a loss leader. Since I was a
| budget-conscious student, I would frequently just go in to buy
| bananas (it was 2 blocks from my apt, and on my walk home). But
| most shoppers who brave LA traffic to go to the grocery store
| would buy many other items, making the whole trip profitable for
| the store.
| jzwinck wrote:
| Bananas also serve another important function which ensures
| their continued success as an export product:
| https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/65-t...
| pers0n wrote:
| Also keep in mind that they destroy crops before they ever go to
| market, if they produce too much. This is how capitalism works,
| you have to waste resources to keep the prices stable.
| miguelazo wrote:
| I wonder if this is what helped kill AppHarvest.
|
| There are a lot of middlemen in produce, especially when it is
| produced abroad. I don't think they're the ones hurting, and are
| a big part of the problem.
| voisin wrote:
| In British Columbia, Canada, there is a system called Loop
| Resources (https://loopresource.ca/) whereby grocers and farmers
| can connect and expired food can be set aside and picked up by
| farmers to feed to their animals.
|
| The one farmer I know who participates collects a pickup truck
| full 3x per week, and he is only one of several farmers
| collecting from that grocer.
| scythe wrote:
| Commenters seem to be analyzing this as though it were a steady-
| state phenomenon. But it isn't. The article clearly states that
| this is a result of increased costs along the supply chain that
| appeared due to disruption during the COVID pandemic.
| aszantu wrote:
| Everybody should have a pig, or maybe 2-3 houses should share a
| pig for food waste, just so it doesn't get wasted and everyone
| gets good protein by the end of the year. Been thinking about
| this for a while, don't know how to promote this idea more
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| micro-farming is actually more environmentally destructive and
| wasteful than factory farming. It's a lot harder to regulate
| and control 10000 peasant farms than 1 large factory farm that
| has proper processes in place.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Everybody should have a pig_
|
| You're describing peasants. Playing peasant doesn't work at
| scale. Imagine the environmental impact and economic
| destruction giving everyone in Tokyo and New York farm animals
| would entail.
|
| > _maybe 2-3 houses should share a pig_
|
| But sometimes some people don't want to eat pork. No worries,
| we have the law of large numbers. A thousand people can share a
| pool of pigs.
|
| Someone is vegetarian? What if those who want to participate
| share a pig?
|
| Some people are tired of pork? People are moving in and out?
| What if we have a pool of pigs that are slaughtered from time
| to time, and you can take what you want when you want it?
|
| Oh right. That's a store. We circled back to a butcher.
|
| If you care about this, 4-H has a program where kids raise a
| farm animal to sell at auction.
|
| > _just so it doesn 't get wasted_
|
| Hunters I know are close to zero waste. Farmers? No clear link
| between raising a chicken and _e.g._ eating its gizzard.
| gigel82 wrote:
| I think the point they were making was that pigs eat food
| scraps of all kinds, and produce organic fertilizer (in
| addition to meat). It's an interesting idea, but it
| definitely doesn't work in the cities and I bet most folks in
| the suburbs wouldn't tolerate the smell either.
|
| But maybe if we force supermarkets to give out expired food
| to coop farmers for animal feed instead of just throwing it
| out in the dumpster, we could be on to something.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if we force supermarkets to give out expired food to
| coop farmers for animal feed instead of just throwing it
| out in the dumpster_
|
| Getting fresh produce from farms to shoppers involves
| enough waste. You need to transform the waste into
| something non-perishable, so transport can be done lazily.
| Composting, perhaps?
| rs_rs_rs_rs_rs wrote:
| You should have the pig first for couple of months until you
| promote it.
| dauertewigkeit wrote:
| Once you see the amount of food waste you start feeling cheated.
| Like, you pay top dollar for some greens and then you see tons of
| the same exact greens being dumped in a dumpster at the end of
| the day. The food itself is not worth the price you are paying
| for it. It's the service and the logistics that you are paying
| for. If everybody paid the dumpster price the supermarket would
| fail. It would be cool if there were business models where this
| was made more explicit.
| Projectiboga wrote:
| Here in Manhattan, NYC, we have tiers of produce. I can pay $5
| for strawberries that could last for some days. Or I can go to
| one of the fruit stands which has better than average
| strawberries for $1 and eat half that evening and most of the
| rest for breakfast and lunch. I might not get 100% good ones
| but the value is there. I've seen places w tired but very cheep
| produce out in Brooklyn. I've read about a cohort here called
| 'freegans' who stake out places at the time the expired
| prepared stuff is put out on the street, that isn't scalable
| but a few w mental disabilities, addictions or just starving
| nonconformists do it.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| NYC is a bit of a special case. Regulation makes it hard to
| operate a larger supermarket, regulation generally makes it
| so all produce coming into NYC has to spend time coming
| through Hunts Point.
|
| Go to any supermarket across the river in New Jersey and
| you'll have vastly higher quality produce.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _food itself is not worth the price you are paying for
| it...the service and the logistics that you are paying for_
|
| It's the mass production and constant availability. (Also
| logistics.) Subsistence farming works great until a drought.
|
| Put another way, the waste lets the fresh produce be cheap.
| (That doesn't mean we can't do something better with it than
| drop it in a dumpster.)
|
| > _If everybody paid the dumpster price the supermarket would
| fail. It would be cool if there were business models where this
| was made more explicit._
|
| If everyone paid the dumpster price, there wouldn't be any food
| in the dumpster.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Exactly. There is an optimal amount of spoilage to maximize
| the amount of actually consumed produce and minimize the
| cost.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| > Subsistence farming works great until a drought.
|
| Maybe we should do this by default and fall back onto the
| global supply chain when there is a drought.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| It's still not an excuse to throw the food away. Some
| supermarkets donate all of their excess food to pantries.
| Supermarkets have trouble paying their employees a decent
| wage, why can't they let employees take X amount of leftover
| items?
|
| Some people don't get enough food, many more do but would
| rather spend less and not be picky. They would be happy to
| take the remaining leftovers before they spoil, especially
| food like produce (whereas junk food, fortunately in this
| case, tends to last much longer so it doesn't get wasted).
|
| A lot of places actually do this, which shows that it's a
| real solution; I don't really see why all can't.
| coding123 wrote:
| It's the same with software - the electronics in use when we
| create a Jira ticket, or all of the electrons in use for all
| the Jira activity for an entire year of you building your
| product probably costs $0.15. Maybe storage and history and
| uptime - but Jira (cloud) that cost is shared.
|
| What you're really paying for is the ongoing development of
| Jira.
|
| (Not looking for hate on Jira - just an example).
| turing_complete wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. Of course you're paying for the
| logistics and service to get the food. Otherwise you would not
| get the food. The food wouldn't even exist.
| ygjb wrote:
| That's the point. As consumers we pay the cost of logistics
| and service, but we also pay for the waste. We aren't paying
| the cost of a head of lettuce, we are paying the cost of a
| head of lettuce, plus a fractional cost of waste produce.
| From an economic perspective we are paying for the risk the
| retailer takes in bringing a product with a short shelf life
| to market.
|
| Grocers offset some of this risk by processing some of the
| food onsite, selling precooked meals, premade salads, etc.
|
| If it was more profitable to further reduce costs, then they
| would, but there are diminishing returns on end of the line
| food processing, since the kitchens and packaging required
| are generalized for a broad range of foods instead of being a
| specialized operation that is more efficient.
|
| It sucks, but it's the system that capital built, and pretty
| much the only thing we can do if we don't like it is to focus
| on buying local, or electing politicians who will target food
| waste as a policy.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think it's the system that biology built.
|
| Fresh food spoils. Always has. Happens less now with
| readily available refrigeration, salt, and fast long-
| distance logistics. Those supply chain improvements make it
| more feasible to produce a lot of it and have a wide
| variety available almost without regard to season.
|
| Ever since people farmed, they put in all the labor and got
| out only the portion of product that they could use without
| spoiling. That's how we got canning, bread, cheese,
| beer/wine, and other means to preserve the caloric content
| of agricultural products.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| But there is no biological reason people in the north
| eastern United States should be able eat fresh oranges
| and pineapples in December. That is not natural. It is
| because of financial incentives that it is possible, and
| it also creates a lot of waste as a byproduct.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| This is an appeal to nature which is a logical fallacy.
| You PERCEIVE something as natural and therefore reason
| that the inverse is immoral. But there's nothing logical
| about this, and even the moral reasoning is highly
| suspect.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| I don't think you understand what I am saying. I am
| responding to the use of the word 'biology' in the parent
| post.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _But there is no biological reason people in the north
| eastern United States should be able eat fresh oranges
| and pineapples in December._
|
| If the goal is to be pedantic, then technically the
| "biological reason" is that nature gave humans the
| ability to alter their environment in ways that allows
| the north eastern United States to eat fresh oranges and
| pineapples in December.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| If you go down the road of 'ultimate cause and effect'
| and 'what is a thing really' then you end up debating
| whether hot dogs are sandwiches.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Yes there's a biological reason that should be true. Just
| as there is a biological reason people migrated to live
| in places like where pineapples grow and the northeastern
| United States.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| But those same financial incentives are why people aren't
| staving all over the place. Every attempt to move too far
| from capitalism just results in mass starvation.
| sokoloff wrote:
| There's no thermodynamic reason that my house (in the
| north east US) should be 68degF/20degC in December
| either. It's not natural, is because of financial
| incentives that it's possible, and creates a lot of waste
| as a by-product.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Yes, that is my point.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Do only people in capitalist economic systems have heat
| in their homes in the winter? If so, is that _really_ a
| scathing indictment of capitalism?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Who is indicting capitalism? Does pointing out cause and
| effect make an attack?
| Spivak wrote:
| I think the idea is that the cost of the goods themselves is
| pointless and we're effectively rationing in a world where
| there's no need for it. I would much rather pay directly for
| the logistics in exchange for "take however much you want"
| and see if we can drive the waste to 0.
|
| If you're just gonna throw em out I'll take a whole sack of
| potatoes and put them to use.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _Like, you pay top dollar for some greens_
|
| When people say things like this, or about how expensive it is
| to eat healthy, I feel like I'm in a twilight zone episode
| where the grocery stores I walk into exist in an alternate
| universe from their own.
|
| Buying produce is the cheapest way you can eat, it's the
| cheapest food in the grocery store. Cheaper than anything in
| the frozen / processed foods aisles. Fresh produce is one of
| the cheapest things you can possibly buy period. For the price
| of one bag of chips you can buy enough potatoes to feed you for
| a week.
| c22 wrote:
| At a Fedex copy center it costs over $2 a page to send a fax
| but only 20 cents a page to make a copy. Same machine, same
| amount of time spent monopolizing said machine, but at the end
| of the photocopying you walk away with a physical piece of
| paper they will have to restock -\\_(tsu)_/-
| hammock wrote:
| The fax machine prints out a confirmation page, though
| doesn't it?
| c22 wrote:
| You can send the confirmation to email.
| wincy wrote:
| Hah yes I needed to send a fax to the government for my
| disabled daughter's medical benefits and it would have been
| $70 at UPS. I couldn't believe it. I sent it certified mail
| for $6 instead.
| c22 wrote:
| Turns out the library here will send faxes for free.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Consider https://www.phaxio.com/ for future fax needs. Like
| Twilio for faxes. No association besides using it when a
| fax is required for a use case.
|
| A few cents per page and can use curl:
| https://www.phaxio.com/features/
| popcalc wrote:
| voip.ms is great if you need virtual fax.
| Ekaros wrote:
| You are paying also for that wasted food. Availability is a
| part of the price. The excess to be there so you can buy the
| quantity you need.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The food isn't worth as much at the end of the day I guess...
| limited shelf life. There's always frozen / processed food I
| guess!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _frozen / processed food_
|
| Fresh produce was historically a delicacy. Most agrarian
| diets consisted of preserved food. The modern phenomenon of
| year-round fresh produce is a luxury. (Albeit a welcome one.)
| ip26 wrote:
| By this angle, clean water, indoor plumbing, vaccines and
| hospitals are also a luxury.
| [deleted]
| lbotos wrote:
| Uh, they are? Clearly, you are taking them for granted,
| but these things _are_ absolutely a luxury.
|
| There is a website that I cannot remember off-hand that
| shows you if you make more than like $5 a day you are in
| some top echelon.
|
| There is another that shows you what different material
| objects (plates, toothbrushes etc) look like across the
| world at different income levels. If anyone knows do
| share.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > There is another that shows you what different material
| objects (plates, toothbrushes etc) look like across the
| world at different income levels.
|
| Could that be Dollar Street? [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.gapminder.org/dollar-street
| HPsquared wrote:
| Meat every day as well... We do have it pretty good.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Economy issues aside. I'm more concerned about the ecology of
| it. What happens to the dumpster food? Before agriculture food
| that wasn't used just ended up on the forest floor and got
| reused. I wonder what happens to all the food waste in terms of
| numbers. I guess most of it either gets burnt or rot away on a
| dump site?
| brutusborn wrote:
| Straight to landfill where it decomposes to methane. If
| you're lucky your landfill has a fancy new methane harvesting
| system; if not, straight to atmosphere.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > If you're lucky your landfill
|
| luck has nothing to do with it at all.. There are many
| kinds of landfills and many jurisdictions. Every person in
| every part of the world reading these words has services
| related to that. Methane release, and the economics of the
| waste services, deserve, no _demand_ , intelligent insight
| right now, despite low-economic incentives.
| smileysteve wrote:
| And in either case, the water and acid content combines
| with other waste to create leachate that eats the plastic
| barrier, so that the toxic waste then ruins the aquifer.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Plus all fossil fertiliser used to produce the food.
| elzbardico wrote:
| We have made a trade-off here. In exchange for the scale gains
| of living in big cities we have to accept the fact that food
| distribution is going to always have some degree of waste and
| the logistic costs themselves are going to be dominant.
| jameshart wrote:
| You're paying for the logistics and service that ensures that
| at least as much of that food as people might want to buy, is
| available at the time they want to buy it.
|
| You paid for the food you bought, plus the convenience of it
| being there when you wanted it.
|
| Which means you also paid for the cost of the stuff that was
| left on the shelf at the end of the day too.
|
| If you want to be able to walk into a supermarket at closing
| time and still have a choice of things to buy, then you want
| supermarkets to have waste.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Most things are not worth what you pay for it. That is the
| definition of profit. If something is sold exactly at the cost
| to make it, there would be no profit. If you realized how high
| profits are on things like cars and cell phones, you'd have the
| same opinion of those
| datavirtue wrote:
| Last I heard it cost ~$5000 to make a Toyota Camry.
| hammock wrote:
| >Once you see the amount of food waste you start feeling
| cheated. Like, you pay top dollar for some greens and then you
| see tons of the same exact greens being dumped in a dumpster at
| the end of the day. The food itself is not worth the price you
| are paying for it. It's the service and the logistics that you
| are paying for.
|
| That's true. It's also true that growing your own greens at
| home could probably cost even more, all things considered.
| Weird paradox.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Access to healthy greens is a utility, like water: not much
| profit but scale is important.
| brightball wrote:
| I've always wanted to see a grocery store where the prices
| decrease the closer the item is to its expiration date.
| hoorayimhelping wrote:
| If you've ever seen fruit on sale, you've seen a coarse
| version of this.
| mc32 wrote:
| There are specialty outlets -so called salvage grocery- that
| do just this -usually in cheap strip malls as otherwise the
| RE would be too expensive to be viable. They sell items close
| to their expiry and they are at a significant discount.
|
| Many people don't know about them because they are not their
| target market.
| specialp wrote:
| The problem is that your profits are made on the fresher
| items. The marked down items are being sold at cost or at a
| loss. That conditions customers to shop for marked down items
| and cannibalizes the fresh sales. I myself used to buy the
| "Manager Meat Special" leg of lamb when it came up. But the
| stores near me stopped doing it. They find it more profitable
| to dispose of it at a 100% loss than discount.
| barrysteve wrote:
| Raise prices on fresh food and let the near-expired food go
| at regular prices?
| Larrikin wrote:
| Japanese grocery stores do this with meat and packaged meals.
| It's not always the best strategy as nearly all the good
| stuff is gone by the time they start discounting and you will
| consistently be getting food well after a reasonable dinner
| time.
| hammock wrote:
| These exist. Or grocery stores have outlets ("day-old" etc)
| where you can buy the near-expiry or expired goods.
| JackFr wrote:
| A place I used to go to had a 'Meat priced for quick sale'
| bin. Kind of a crap shoot, but I've got a bit of an iron gut
| and the steaks were like 2/3 off.
| vel0city wrote:
| In college the grocer near me had NY strip steaks for like
| $2/lb one day. Tons of it. I thought I hit the jackpot, and
| decided to throw a big grill out party with a lot of
| friends. I probably had a dozen people waiting for some
| awesome steaks. They were all absolutely terrible, some of
| the worst cuts of meat I think I ever had. Quite a
| disaster. Fun times though.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| In university my roommate found an unthinkable deal on
| craigslist; a beer distributor was giving away a pallet
| of beer for free for anybody that would come and get it.
| We obviously got it and threw a party, but the beer was
| so awful nobody could drink enough of it to even get
| drunk.
| mhink wrote:
| I had something very similar happen back when I was in
| college- I stopped off at a convenience store and they
| were selling a particular beer (by Shiner) at $2 per six-
| pack. I only bought one and opened it later that evening,
| only to find out it was priced so cheap because it had
| this awful "smoked" flavor. I couldn't get through the
| second _sip_. Bleh.
| pcl wrote:
| This is common in grocery stores in Oslo. It's a great
| place to go when you're ready for some serendipitous dinner
| planning.
| ericpauley wrote:
| My local grocery store (Some Kroger-brand) does this with a
| variety of products, but only by discounting one time. I
| imagine they do something similar nationwide. Products are
| very close to, but of course still before, their sell-by
| date.
| c22 wrote:
| The grocer I frequent has bright orange 'manager special'
| discount stickers that go on things nearing their expiry.
| jameshart wrote:
| Is 'reduced to clear' not a thing where you live?
| vel0city wrote:
| Several of the grocery stores I frequent absolutely do this
| with a lot of things. They'll usually have something like a
| clearance section with things on their last few days. Its
| usually a good place to find a cheap loaf of bread or some
| kind of desert that's about to go past its sell by date to
| eat that night. The tricky part is those sections usually
| aren't refrigerated so its only shelf-stable stuff.
|
| But they do often have "sales" for fresh goods even as good
| as buy one get two free which if you look at the goods on
| "sale" its sell by dates are all within a day or two. But
| hey, buy a big thing of berries and invite some friends over.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| In the US there are some discount grocery stores (also called
| 'outlet' or 'salvage' grocery stores) that sell product other
| grocery stores took off the shelves for being too close to
| expired. Sometimes the food is expired, but still perfectly
| edible because those "best by" dates are very conservative.
| ghostDancer wrote:
| You forget the middlemen and I don't mean the trucker, I mean
| the one that gets all the markup paying low to the producer and
| selling high to the shopkeeper.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| >'Less than half' fresh produce sold globally makes any profit
|
| None at all, or none for the producer?
| ravenstine wrote:
| If we want to reduce produce waste, then we should be buying more
| of our produce frozen rather than fresh.
| cosinetau wrote:
| Yes. Let's burn fossil fuels to make sure we don't waste
| anything.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Freezing food takes a fraction of the energy it costs to ship
| fresh foods before they rot.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Sorry but nobody in these comments understands the food
| value chain. Most foods require very specific temperatures
| and handling. Even if you transport them right, the actual
| storage and routing of food varies widely. There is often
| no location to store food properly intermediately, so
| diesel trucks are kept idling to keep the food in a place
| with the right environment. But it varies greatly depending
| on where it's being sold and what their logistics chain is,
| _in addition_ to what market they 're serving and thus
| where they're sourcing their food and how they're picking
| it.
|
| HN sure does love to oversimplify...
| deelowe wrote:
| I'm fairly certain shipping and warehousing frozen food in
| bulk would be more efficient than shipping containers with
| fresh produce going to each and every grocery store several
| days a week.
| haroldship wrote:
| This seems like the experience of Jeremy Clarkson in Clarkson's
| Farm. Many things against being a successful farmer resulting in
| practically zero profit.
| JackFr wrote:
| But in the US at least your land is taxed at an agricultural
| rate rather than single family residential rate. There can be
| an enormous financial benefit to being a 'farmer'. Even if you
| ostensibly lose money at it.
| hcfman wrote:
| Well, if the food is actually being eaten, then that's actually a
| win situation for people eating fresh food and hence overall
| "good" from a benefit to the people perspective.
|
| So long as this situation continues, which is where the problem
| is I expect. Boots on the ground people should be able to grow
| and create savings as well.
| klondike_klive wrote:
| Relevant: British farmer Guy Singh-Watson is urging the big 6
| supermarket chains to Get Fair about Farming.
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farmers-supe...
| amitprayal wrote:
| Thankfully this does not apply for India
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this does not apply for India_
|
| India has a horribly inefficient agricultural sector [1]. It's
| run as a jobs program for surplus unskilled labor. Its cost is
| in land and water waste, together with excess emissions and
| diet-related premature deaths.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00157-w
| amitprayal wrote:
| Having been in US for a while and having coming back now I
| can definitely confirm that quality of fresh produce in US
| very bad compared to India, If you have only grown up on a
| meat based and processed foods diet you may not be able to
| relate. We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as
| compared to the western world, don't always believe in biased
| articles.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to
| India_
|
| I agree. (Though you can access similar quality at American
| farmers' markets and upscale grocers in rich communities.)
| I never remarked on quality. Just efficiency.
|
| Indian agriculture is small scale, labour wasteful, land
| and water inefficient and carbon intensive. Relative to
| median income, produce is high cost, which causes a lot of
| the population to over-rely on processed cereals.
|
| High-income Americans and Indians consume a lot of good,
| fresh produce. (I've seen fresh Indian mangoes in New York,
| flown in overnight, though I'm doubtful they had their
| paperwork in order. That obviously isn't scalable.) The
| absolute threshold is lower in India. But relatively
| speaking it's higher.
|
| > _We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared
| to the western world_
|
| At a high relative income level, yes. (Lower in cities,
| because logistics.) There are good reasons Indian life
| expectancy is 15% lower than America's at birth, 2 to 5%
| lower at 30 (males, reverse death probability) and then 20%
| lower again at 40 again.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Perhaps produce in the U.S. is generally more homogenous in
| the name of efficiency, and as a result, lower quality.
| sss111 wrote:
| +1 fully agree, as someone who has to travel often between
| the two countries.
| mihaic wrote:
| Farmers seem underrepresented in general economic planning,
| except when handing out subsidies to keep their votes.
|
| I've for instance thought that UBI would be unavoidable in a few
| decades, but how would we keep farmers to grow food? The only
| answer I have is that their income has to be at leat 3-5x that of
| the UBI.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Farmers seem underrepresented in general economic planning_
|
| Wat. The USDA is a $181 to 500bn agency [1][2]. Every state has
| an agricultural agency. Alongside defence, another must-pass
| recurring bill is the farm bill [3][4].
|
| > _except when handing out subsidies to keep their votes_
|
| This is democracy. If you're getting subsidies to buy your
| votes, you are by definition well represented.
|
| [1]
| https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-usda...
| _page 1_
|
| [4] https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-
| agriculture...
|
| [3] https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/farm-bill
|
| [4] https://www.farmaid.org/issues/farm-policy/whats-going-on-
| wi...
| Iulioh wrote:
| And to add, 33% of the European budget is farn subsidies (and
| that's one big reason why ukraine is unlikely to enter the
| EU)
| mihaic wrote:
| I wasn't denying that a lot of money is being spent, it's how
| it's spent.
|
| What I meant was that subsidies for producing various
| crops/animal products dwarf all the other spending on rural
| programs, and not a lot of effort is put into actually
| figuring out how to improve those communities, many of which
| are bleeding young people.
|
| There is no plan to maintain agricultural communities, and
| what's worse, that doesn't seem to be a desire for such a
| plan.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _not a lot of effort is put into actually figuring out
| how to improve those communities_
|
| Fair enough. We focus on farmers' production, not their
| communities. If the farmers don't care about their
| communities, they deteriorate. Maybe we're betting on
| automation.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| The people in the concentrated urban areas call farming areas
| "fly-over country," and love to point out that the urban areas
| contribute 70% to the national GDP. In the past 10-20 years
| they started making noises about eliminating the Electoral
| College system.
|
| The fact that farmers have a say in anything is astonishing,
| and people are hard at work trying to prevent them from having
| any voice at all on a national stage.
|
| I find it all very short-sighted, but that's politics for you.
| cushpush wrote:
| How can we make food free for all and also delicious
| glitchc wrote:
| A fresh batch of basil at the grocery store is essentially a
| luxury item, exclusive to those who can afford it. What doesn't
| sell is waste. Perhaps it's time to consider community kitchens
| residing alongside grocery stores. This would be a place where a
| meal is always available, all hours of the day, for free, to
| anyone who walks in. These kitchens can consume food waste while
| providing a useful benefit to the population.
|
| It's surprising we don't have this already in North America given
| how much surplus food is produced.
| lusus_naturae wrote:
| Be the change you want in the world. Start your own community
| kitchen :)
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| > It's surprising we don't have this already in North America
| given how much surplus food is produced.
|
| You're describing a social function without a lucrative profit
| motive.
|
| One man's desire to improve their community is another's worst
| nightmare.
| RileyJames wrote:
| I went to exactly this a few weeks ago in Ocean Grove, Vic,
| Australia.
|
| A cafe and 'market' that was entirely sustained by 'expired'
| goods from the local super markets that was otherwise destined
| for the garbage bin. Trucks kept rolling in as we are.
|
| The cafe was only open weekend (volunteers) but the market was
| open everyday.
|
| It was a 'pay what ever you can system', and $0 was fine. There
| was a 2 bag maximum on goods you could take away from the
| market.
|
| And any payment made was a tax deductible donation.
|
| The market had an obviously limited selection of goods,
| dependent on what came from the supermarkets.
|
| But when I was there,
|
| - unlimited breads of all kinds (like shelves and shelves and
| shelves, including very nice sourdoughs)
|
| - capsicums (green)
|
| - milk
|
| - yogurt
|
| - lettuce
|
| - carrots
|
| - few other misc veg
|
| - a lot of soy and protein powders
|
| - juices
|
| - and frozen goods, which I didn't explore.
|
| You couldn't survive off it alone (unless you had to). But it
| was a cool option to have. Love the concept.
| Kalium wrote:
| The market approach is different from the soup kitchen model.
| The opportunity to pay, the ability to make your own choices
| in produce, and the experience of using something like a
| grocery store are things that help people feel dignified.
| That sense of human dignity can matter a great deal,
| especially to those clinging to it by their fingernails.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| CoffeeOnWrite wrote:
| Love this idea.
|
| To add food for thought, could the basil be dried in a
| dehydrator immediately after being taken off the shelves after
| minor wilting but while the taste and nutrition are still
| there? The resulting product might be better quality than what
| is sold in the dried spices aisle that is much less fresh..
| User23 wrote:
| Better yet is a freeze dryer if you can afford one.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I vacuum seal and freeze my basil. (You can get away
| without the vaccuum sealing, but it'll get freezer burn
| after a few months).
|
| Honestly indistinguishable from fresh basil once you cook
| it, and I say this as an Italian food snob.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Labor is much more expensive than food waste in the US.
|
| So this only works at a very high cost or donated labor (which
| probably won't scale).
| diogenes4 wrote:
| What I'm taking with is that the US isn't responsible enough
| to distribute its own food.
| addaon wrote:
| It sounds like the third missing component, on the other side
| of the cafeteria from the grocery store, is a culinary
| school. Give (low-paid) students an opportunity to hone their
| skills, face daily challenges (what ingredients are available
| today?), and give back to the community.
| mc32 wrote:
| Isn't this the idea behind soup kitchens?
|
| They're not next to expensive grocery stores real estate but
| they do receive donated food and labor.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Food waste is a super-weird thing for people to worry about,
| IMO, because it's directly related to food being very cheap
| relative to labor. As you point out, the labor-cost of saving
| this food really doesn't make sense.
|
| You fix it by making food expensive. I doubt anyone's too
| keen to do that.
| Jill_the_Pill wrote:
| It's a climate and biodiversity concern: overproduction
| wastes farmland that could be, or used to be, wild. The
| energy put into food transport and storage was used for
| nothing. Wasted produce rots, giving off methane, and
| wasted meat or dairy represents double waste, as the
| animals were raised on crops.
|
| https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2022/01/24/food-waste-and-
| it...
|
| You fix it by making people aware and asking them to act
| responsibly.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| The "acting responsibly" part costs money in labor, if
| you apply it to the parts of the supply chain that really
| matter. This is just another way of arriving at "raise
| food prices".
| Jill_the_Pill wrote:
| How does "don't buy more than you know you can use" and
| "don't produce more than you know you can sell" cost more
| labor?
| hotnfresh wrote:
| It has to have _some_ cost or we'd already do it. Right?
|
| Recovering waste in production and transportation is
| labor costs. If it were cost-effective, they'd already do
| it. Recovering waste at the grocery stores costs labor
| and/or loss of sales in excess of the cost of the risk of
| waste. Same at restaurants. Again, if it wouldn't cost
| them more to avoid that waste, they already would.
|
| Admittedly, at home, it's mostly a time cost, but good
| luck convincing people to spend even a couple more hours
| a week in the kitchen and meal planning and pantry
| organizing to save small amounts of money (and _really_
| cutting home food waste takes a lot more than a couple
| hours a week)
| jeffbee wrote:
| > I doubt anyone's too keen to do that.
|
| Unfortunately you'll find this goal is extremely widespread
| among American academics who call themselves "socialists",
| who grew up on trust funds, went to Little Ivy colleges,
| and who supplement their inheritances with careers as
| magazine editors, and who have zero personal experience
| with either food production or poverty. There are some
| dangerously stupid people out there who regularly advocate
| for more expensive food.
| one_level_deep2 wrote:
| Sounds like it's not very widespread at all. How many
| magazine editors are there in the US?
|
| Maybe don't call others "stupid" when your entire post is
| creating fictional villains.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| There's like 3 magazines left in the USA this seems like
| the strawiest of men.
|
| Thoughtless, pointless rants add nothing to discourse.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Making food expensive is how governments fall.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Right--it's not gonna happen, so food waste isn't gonna
| get meaningfully better, which makes the constant
| worrying about it kinda a silly distraction. Unless we
| _do_ want to talk about increasing the price of food.
| ilyt wrote:
| > You fix it by making food expensive. I doubt anyone's too
| keen to do that.
|
| Here is an idea: Move food subsidies from farming industry
| to people needing it.
|
| Now people needing it most can afford non-crappy food. And
| industry have to care about wasting now-not-so-cheap food.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| The problem isn't that food is cheap.
|
| The problem is that ~20% of the population has food &
| housing insecurity when we're supposedly ridiculously rich.
|
| I'd argue that the problem is labor is artificially
| expensive - which prevents all types of things like this
| from happening - because you can't buy labor for less than
| $15 an hour after taxes in most cities.
|
| So you can't serve people that make less than a certain
| amount of money effectively.
|
| People could be employed, making money working in these
| places - rather than people donating labor - and these same
| people working jobs like these would have access to these
| cheaper prepared meals, too.
|
| But, we'll never get that. Nor will we get boarding houses
| back, because instead of having "slums" we'd rather have a
| homeless problem and high housing "costs".
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Reducing the price of labor isn't gonna bring that food
| insecurity rate down.
|
| And food being very cheap is definitely why there's so
| much waste. There wasn't, within living memory, and it's
| because food cost a _way_ bigger share of the median wage
| than it does today. Talk to some folks who grew up poor
| in the 40s and 50s about their cuisine, and they'll tell
| you about what low-food-waste living looks like.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Reducing the price of labor isn't gonna bring that food
| insecurity rate down.
|
| The goal isn't to reduce the cost of labor.
|
| The goal is to unlock low-cost labor that is currently
| priced out.
|
| We only have ~60% workforce participation.
|
| The ultra-poor community could be served BY the ultra-
| poor community - and then a large percentage of them
| could go from ultra-poor to regular-poor, having a place
| to live and struggling to make ends meet instead of being
| homeless & hungry.
|
| But that's not possible. Because we decided if you're not
| worth $15 an hour - you're worth nothing.
| decremental wrote:
| [dead]
| richiebful1 wrote:
| I highly doubt the minimum wage is the cause of these
| issues. In places like urban Pennsylvania, where the
| minimum wage is still 7.25 USD, there's hardly any jobs
| that start at $7.25. The real issue with labor
| participation is no one can survive on $7.25/hr, so it
| becomes more realistic to sit at home and collect
| disability. The government should be subsidizing labor at
| the low end -- maybe paying workers an additional $5/hr
| under a certain wage -- to incentivize work
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| You don't tend to have high amounts of ultra-poor people
| in low-cost-of-living areas (which also have lower
| minimum wages than the high-cost areas with the higher
| minimum wages).
|
| Montgomery, Al is known as a "poor" area - and yet there
| are only ~330 homeless people in a city of ~200k people
| (0.165%). In SF you have about ~8800 homeless people in a
| city of ~880k (1%).
|
| If you're looking at somewhere like Rural PA - you're
| already not going to be able to employ people at low
| wages - because you're going to need to pay them almost
| $4 per hour just to get to and from work.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Montgomery, Al is known as a "poor" area - and yet
| there are only ~330 homeless people in a city of ~200k
| people (0.165%). In SF you have about ~8800 homeless
| people in a city of ~880k (1%).
|
| I'd have to imagine that police in Alabama are probably a
| lot more aggressive in "running off" homeless people.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Have you... lived in those kind of places? One side of my
| family's from _not even that bad_ of one, and there are
| tons of the ultra-poor. They're the ones living in a
| house with a blue tarp on part of the roof, three broken
| cars in the yard, overgrown weeds right up to the
| foundation, et c. The land's owned by some family member
| (all three crappy acres are worth $2,000 total--the house
| is worth negative dollars--so it's not like they're
| giving up a fortune to let them stay there) or is an
| illegal rental. They often have one or two even-worse-off
| buddies living with them. Income and hand-me-downs
| (clothes, anppliances, old cars they'll break and not be
| able to repair within a year which'll join the front yard
| scrap pile) are from family and churches. Income, if any,
| is government assistance (lots of vets) and odd jobs.
| They have a bunch of health problems and are probably
| addicted to something. If they don't have family to get
| them to the hospital 90 minutes away, they do without.
| They die decades younger than they might.
|
| These are my people, and it gets _worse_ than that. Rural
| America is shockingly poor. The cost of living's low
| because nobody there can afford to pay more, and because
| they have no local public services to speak of.
|
| [edit] the reason, specifically, there aren't more
| homeless those places isn't because it's better, but
| because 1) nobody moves in, so 100% of people have family
| ties of some kind, at least some background that gets
| them access to a hovel or something, and 2) if you're
| actually homeless there, you get picked up and shipped
| somewhere they can actually serve homeless people (or
| just go to prison), or _you die_.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > These are my people, and it gets worse than that. Rural
| America is shockingly poor.
|
| And yet unemployment is lower than in places like SF, and
| homelessness is also lower, so is hunger.
|
| I think you're forgetting how shockingly poor the entire
| world is.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > I'd argue that the problem is labor is artificially
| expensive - which prevents all types of things like this
| from happening - because you can't buy labor for less
| than $15 an hour after taxes in most cities.
|
| You can barely buy labour for $18 an hour. If there were
| a ton of surplus labour with the limiting factor being
| the law, labour would be priced at $15 an hour and
| unemployment would be high. But it seems to be priced
| well above that at the moment and unemployment is low.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| Farm labor (in the USA) has much lower minimum wage and
| safety protections compared to most other work, enforced
| by federal law, though I don't know how consequential the
| farm cost part of the equation is by the time the food
| gets to the restaurant or dinner table.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Farm labor in the US is largely divorced from the minimum
| wage because it largely uses undocumented and illegal
| immigrants, with threat of deportation for any back chat.
| This was true even in Northern Maine, 2000 miles from the
| border. These people do NOT make $15 an hour. I don't
| think they even make $7.25 an hour.
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Even _legal_ immigrant farm labor can be paid under
| minimum wage.
|
| Child labor laws are also fudged a bit for that specific
| category. Like, by law, they are, not just by convention.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Even legal immigrant farm labor can be paid under
| minimum wage.
|
| _Certain_ farm laborers have a lower minimum wage, and
| _all_ farm laborers are federally exempt from overtime
| pay.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That cure seems far worse than the disease.
|
| If food is inexpensive compared to labor and, therefore
| subject to be wasted, that seems like a good thing overall
| (at least as compared to the alternatives) rather than a
| thing that "must be fixed".
| giantg2 wrote:
| Some stores do donate soon to expire food to food banks.
| pif wrote:
| > These kitchens can consume food waste
|
| The risk of customers becoming community kitchen dwellers could
| be too high for the store. Stores need people buying the
| produce from the shelf, rather than helping themselves from the
| bin.
| ketzo wrote:
| This could happen in theory, yeah, but in reality (especially
| in America) I think there's zero chance of that happening at
| meaningful levels
|
| The audience who buys high-margin grocery items is almost
| entirely separate from the audience who would even semi-
| regularly eat at a community kitchen.
| tivert wrote:
| > The audience who buys high-margin grocery items is almost
| entirely separate from the audience who would even semi-
| regularly eat at a community kitchen.
|
| Also many of the people who buy "high-margin grocery items"
| won't want to be _physically near_ anyone who would "even
| semi-regularly eat at a community kitchen." Any store that
| ran a community kitchen to consume food waste would likely
| attract a homeless encampment. Even extremely
| liberal/progressive upscale shoppers would angrily
| complain.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| silly question, but wouldn't that be called a restaurant or a
| cafe?
| bdcravens wrote:
| I don't have statistics on how many, but I know that some
| grocery stores donate end of shelf-life produce to food banks.
| boplicity wrote:
| RE: Basil. If you have a window that gets a lot of light, it
| can be very easy for a basil plant to thrive in it. We spent
| around $15 setting this up in June -- including the cost of a
| pot, soil, and basil starts. We've been eating basil since, in
| many meals. That's not free, but it's resulted in very low cast
| basil for us, always on hand. We also have rosemary and thyme
| growing in the window. A window with good light and space for
| plants can result in low cost, high quality herbs, with
| relatively low effort.
| dunham wrote:
| I usually put grocery store basil in a glass of water on the
| window sill until it gets roots, and then transplant it.
| Basil has a tough time in the winter (not enough light). It
| works with sage, rosemary, thyme, and mint. I've even done
| this with the thai basil that came with take out Pho.
|
| Carrot family plants like parsley and cilantro will not get
| roots.
|
| I also have rosemary, thyme, and sage outdoors - they survive
| year-round in Seattle. Not everybody has the space or climate
| for it, but they're low maintenance and it's nice to just go
| out and grab some fresh herbs.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What sort of soil do you use? We regularly buy and kill basil
| plants at TJ's, and I think I've narrowed down the issue to
| the fact that they give you junky soil that won't sustain the
| plant long (regardless of watering or sunlight).
| asimpletune wrote:
| You need to break apart the basil and distribute it evenly
| in a larger pot. Supermarket basil has fertilizer that
| makes them grow super fast and look good on the shelves,
| but what you're buying is actually a bunch of little plants
| that will exhaust the nutrients unless they're broken up.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Interesting -- how do you break the plant apart? It
| appears to have one "trunk" where it goes into the soil,
| so do you just pull off "branches"?
| asimpletune wrote:
| If there is really one trunk then you can't break it
| apart further. However, most basil plants sold at the
| grocery store are just a bunch of small ones grown
| closely together. To break it up, just prepare a bigger
| pot, with potting soil, and then remove the basil from
| its store-bought container and split it apart with your
| hands. You want to create a few even groups to go in the
| new, bigger pot. Ideally, there would be one plant per
| group, but you don't want to break them up too much and
| risk tearing the roots too much. I just did four quarters
| and it's worked fine. I have a huge basil thing now and I
| did it in a long, skinny rectangular pot.
| [deleted]
| neves wrote:
| The key here is the "high quality". There is nothing like
| fresh herbs with no pesticides.
| pradn wrote:
| It took me a little while to realize this. In Manhattan, I can
| get a pound of fresh pasta from Citarella for $6, their jarred
| tomato sauce for another $6 (quite enough for a pound of
| pasta), a lovely block of sufficient Parmesan for $3, enough
| onion and garlic for like $1 or something - but the garnish,
| basil, is $5 a bunch. And you can't get a tiny, garnish-
| sufficient amount either. It also works in the pasta itself,
| and you might as well throw it in there because you surely
| aren't going to use the whole bunch if you don't.
|
| So $16/4 ~= $4 per portion for absolutely delicious pasta. And
| about $5 per portion with basil. Of course, it'll be even
| better if you make your own tomato sauce and all.
|
| The bare-bones option is: $3 for Barilla pasta, $4 for jarred
| tomato sauce, and like $1 for onion and garlic. You'll skip the
| block of Parmesan and basil, of course. But then it's ~$2 per
| portion. Saving $2 for such a drop in taste is not really worth
| it. You may skip the cheese, just to avoid eating such a rich
| meal.
| pcl wrote:
| Sounds a bit like the deli counter.
| zie wrote:
| Like others have mentioned the big problem with your idea is
| grocery chains already do this to varying degrees, except the
| food goes to local food banks, homeless shelters(that offer hot
| meals), etc.
|
| Food Banks actually have a whole interesting economy they
| handle within themselves with "fake" money. It's pretty neat.
|
| Grocery Outlet is the big chain that takes "waste" food and
| other smaller retail stores do the same thing(s).
|
| It's not exactly the same as what you are talking about, as
| it's generally on the other side of the equation, it's all the
| "left over" food that never makes it to the grocery store,
| because the manufacturers over-produced, essentially.
|
| Not all of the items are strictly near expiration, but a very
| large portion of them are near or past expiration in practice.
| ballenf wrote:
| In the US, food banks I've volunteered at had very strict
| food expiration policies and wouldn't (couldn't?) offer any
| food very near expiration. They threw out huge quantities of
| food. Also turned away even more donations for same reason.
|
| They were operating under federal funding, which the workers
| seemed to imply required the policy.
| zie wrote:
| That must be new (I haven't volunteered since Covid) or
| just not implemented at the ones I've worked with. The ones
| I worked with totally didn't care about things like that,
| and let the customers make their own decisions around
| taking an item or not. We would occasionally pick out
| totally rotten or fuzzy stuff. None of them had federal
| funding though.
|
| I regularly see past-expiration stuff at Grocery Outlet
| stores and other discount grocery stores like that still
| being sold.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| > It's surprising we don't have this already in North America
| given how much surplus food is produced.
|
| If that would work and people would use it then it isn't
| surprising. Supply and demand. More supply, less demand for the
| produce that costs money
| civilitty wrote:
| As far as I know, most chain grocery stores in urban areas
| already donate their expiring food. My local Trader Joes and
| Ralphs have each donated hundreds of thousands of dollars of
| food so far this year - they both have signs advertising their
| donations that they update weekly with the new figures.
|
| The problem in my city is labor - there simply isn't enough
| manpower to convert all that produce into healthy food so they
| end up dispensing mostly the less healthy processed stuff,
| which also tends to have lower spoilage and higher
| "utilization" at the supermarket so there's never enough to go
| around based on peoples preferences. Whenever I volunteer at
| the local shelter, anyone who wants fresh produce can just ask
| for it but most people wanted (needed) hot prepared meals that
| tasted familiar and comforting.
| Kalium wrote:
| As a rule, offering a service that people feel low-status when
| using is a sub-optimal approach. Eating "expired" or "old" or
| even "didn't sell" produce doesn't feel dignified to most
| people. It feels like being a charity case, like being pitied.
| This can be acceptable in private, but having to take action in
| public and be visible is humiliating. People care about feeling
| dignified and will make personal sacrifices to maintain that
| feeling.
|
| What you're describing is a soup kitchen rebranded. Plus some
| extra logistical issues from the 24/7 model.
|
| With that in mind, you may want to investigate how your local
| soup kitchens get their materials. Your idea may be closer to
| reality than you think.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Reminds me of when I was young I did a volunteer session at
| soup kitchen for the needy. After dinner was served we went
| around and collected the used dinnerware from the patrons
| there.
|
| I went to one lady and took her plate, upon which she angrily
| scoffed at me "I can take my own plate up! I am not one of
| the guests here!".
|
| She was in fact one of the guests.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Maybe if our society didn't tie so much of your self worth
| and value to an job, people without jobs wouldn't feel so
| garbage on top of having a difficult life.
| [deleted]
| datavirtue wrote:
| Hmmm....that's basically what most people eat. Old ground up
| produce in processed foods. 70% of calorie consumption in the
| US.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Just spin it right and you will be fine. Market it as a way
| to offset your carbon footprint and call it something hippy-
| ish, and instead of charging money make people plant
| something or bring in a battery or an old piece of tech to
| recycle. Whatever works for the type of community it is in.
| jeffbee wrote:
| In addition to the food surplus you're going to need a labor
| surplus and that doesn't exist in America.
| euroderf wrote:
| > This would be a place where a meal is always available, all
| hours of the day, for free, to anyone who walks in.
|
| How about vending machines that scan an ID and dispense
| nutritious (but bland) biscuits ?
| Spivak wrote:
| It's my literal lifetime dream to open one of these. If anyone
| has any tips on how to get the right connections to make it
| feasible I'm all ears.
|
| All the trappings for a commercial kitchen and getting a space
| to work out of is fine but it's the nonprofit fundraising and
| grocery store food-pantry connections that seem impossible.
| I've basically resigned to starting at micro scale to get
| around the first one but actually getting a steady stream of
| food without pissing off the powers that be is an uphill
| battle.
| toast0 wrote:
| Work/volunteer/consult at grocery stores and food banks and
| you'll make connections with people at grocery stores and
| food banks.
|
| Ask questions like "hey, who are those guys taking the stuff
| we pulled off the shelves cause it was expiring?" or "where
| does all this food that's right around the expiration date
| come from?"
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| >A fresh batch of basil at the grocery store is essentially a
| luxury item
|
| Not in Vietnam, and not in the Chinese (Great Wall)/Korean
| (Hmart, Lotte) grocery chains in the US. Eating a whole sprig
| of basil is common in various Vietnamese meals. My point is
| that basil doesn't have to be a luxury item. It grows very well
| without much effort.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| > A fresh batch of basil at the grocery store is essentially a
| luxury item, exclusive to those who can afford it
|
| I grow a fair amount my food on my allotment, and one of the
| interesting things I've noticed is how little the grocery store
| prices are related to the effort it takes to grow it myself.
|
| For example, I no longer grow potatoes except for rotation
| purposes, because the time and inputs (fertilizer, etc.) aren't
| worth it compared to PS0.5 per 1kg of potatoes from the
| supermarket.
|
| On the other hand, basil is extremely fast growing and doesn't
| need any fertilizer, other than a bit of manure/compost at the
| start of the season. From my basil bed, I get about 50kg in a
| season, which has an ASDA street value of about PS1000.
|
| This obviously comes down to things like the ease of mechanical
| harvesting, the complexity of cold chain logistics, etc. Still,
| if you have a free windowsill and find supermarket basil
| ludicrously expensive, it's worth sticking a few Sweet Genovese
| on there.
| jxcl wrote:
| What is the size of your basil bed? 50 kg of basil per season
| seems wonderful!
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I think it's about 4 metres by 2 metres. I plant quite
| densely compared to what you'll normally see recommended on
| the back of a seed packet, and to save on space between
| rows, I built a wooden frame that I can use to walk over
| and harvest from the top. Probably not very safe, but
| luckily I don't have to report to the HSE!
|
| I also start them off indoors and plant out early since
| London has a rather mild climate.
|
| Also: it smells bloody amazing.
| thefcpk wrote:
| but what do you do with 50kg of basil... I love pesto and
| it's a great addon to many things, but I don't see myself
| using more than a couple hundred g per week.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Once you have an abundance of it, you can really just put
| it in everything. Anything with tomato is better with
| basil, plus any sandwiches, salads, pizzas, pasta dishes.
| I have rabbits, so they get through a lot of fresh herbs
| (especially the stems) and give me fertilizer back in the
| form of... little round spheres.
|
| Besides that, I preserve it by making it into pesto,
| chutneys and other basil-based sauces, oils, jars of
| dried flakes and freezing it.
|
| Anything I have left over, I give away to friends and
| family.
| ilyt wrote:
| pre-seasoning your rabbit I see...
| orbit7 wrote:
| I keep thinking about doing this, do you have any good
| sources of info you have followed or do you write about it
| anywhere?
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Honestly it's one of those things you just have to try and
| figure out a bit through trial and error, especially as a
| lot can depend on your local climate, soil type, etc. If
| you have any local gardening or allotment groups, the
| wisdom of the elders can be invaluable, but sometimes you
| have to go your own way to find out what works for you. My
| advice would always be start small with easy things like
| herbs, then work your way up.
|
| Besides that, there are a lot of great resources on
| YouTube. _Personally_ , I mostly watch the British videos
| because - bluntly - Americans are very wealthy and always
| have loads of land, power tools, cheap resources, pick up
| trucks, backhoes, etc. and I don't have any of that. They
| also seem to be a lot more _serious_ about it, with
| homesteading or even borderline industrial setups. The
| British videos tend to be much more about bodging things on
| a budget in a small back garden for fun, which is much
| closer to what I 'm doing! Also I don't have to worry about
| climactic differences that way.
|
| With that being said, some of my favourite channels are
| alexgrowsfood, GrowVeg, Charles Dowding, homegrown.garden,
| My Family Garden, Down to Earth with Jim, Castle Hill
| Garden, and of course, BBC Gardeners World. I also love
| (and am a member of) the Royal Horticultural Society.
| Cerium wrote:
| I always grow basil. About 4 square feet is enough to have
| pesto sauce once a week.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I make a lot of pesto also and freeze it to use it
| throughout the winter. Garlic is one of my favourite crops.
| It's not as cost beneficial to grow as basil, but being
| able to pick the cultivar is amazing.
|
| It's unfortunate that pine nuts are so expensive. We base
| most of our pesto on other nuts to save money, but you just
| can't beat the taste of a pine nut pesto IMO.
| Cerium wrote:
| In my opinion cashews are acceptable, but pine nuts
| definitely the best.
|
| I make a vegan pesto using the following ingredients:
| basil, pine nuts, garlic, miso, olive oil. The miso adds
| the fermented and creamy flavor of the parmesan.
|
| Remove stems from basil, wash and tap to dry, don't spin
| (a little water is good). Add ingredients to the food
| processor and blend until desired consistency. Scrape
| down sides and add oil as needed.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I've noticed this as well.
|
| I really think there's a market for a grocery store "herb
| bar." A self-service bed where herbs grow and customers just
| take what they want. I would think this could greatly lower
| the expense of selling fresh herbs, since it's probably a
| easy thing to set and forget with a little automation.
|
| I maintain my own herb garden. $10 of plants and some regular
| watering keeps me very well stocked with everything I need
| from spring until fall. I haven't refreshed the soil in five
| years and everything still grows to fill the entire pot by
| summer.
| ilyt wrote:
| People would fuck the plants over within a day. It would at
| least have someone at the site doing the cutting.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I tried growing basil in my windowsill. The problem was that
| I don't use basil at a constant rate; I use it in big bursts
| or not at all.
|
| Which just doesn't work. I needed to use a bunch of basil,
| and it was either cut off _all_ the leaves or buy it at the
| store. So I cut off all the leaves and that was the end of
| it...
| ska wrote:
| The "big burst" problem is usually solved by a few (say 4)
| plants, not one.
|
| But another thing about growing _anything_ is that it works
| better if you work around it 's schedule rather than the
| other way around. Hothousing and international shipping
| have got us out of the habit of thinking seasonally or by
| growth cycle of a plant, but it's not hard to adapt to.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Add 2 more basil plants and prune 1/3 the leaves when you
| use it.
|
| Pruning the basil will also cause it to grow bigger and
| better
| mlinhares wrote:
| The reality is that farming only works in medium to large
| scale, people that try to grow food for themselves do it
| either because they have no other option and will die
| otherwise or they have too much money and time in their
| hands.
|
| My grandpa was a medium scale farmer for most of his life and
| when he retired he kept a couple dozen cows for milk and he
| paid every single month to keep it going. It was his hobby
| and he knew that, he said he'd need a couple hundred again to
| make it at least pay for itself.
|
| It's one of the reasons I LOL hard whenever I hear tech
| people saying they will "retire and become farmers", these
| people have no idea what it is like to work on a farm for
| real.
|
| Farm to Taber is a great listen on farming in general, eye
| opening for those that have had little to no contact to real
| world farming: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/farm-to-
| taber/id166958...
| kozikow wrote:
| Tech saying "I'll become farmer" to escape tech is very
| amusing, especially how data-driven the large scale farming
| is, and how small scale farming is getting priced out by
| large scale farming.
|
| I'm not a farmer, but I did some tech for farming and you
| would be surprised how tech driven it is. Agriculture was
| probably the first industry that used satellite imagery
| outside of military on the large scale.
|
| If someone is Silicon Valley web app developer and went
| farming, they actually could be going deeper into tech than
| escape it.
| ilyt wrote:
| Yeah I have feeling most of that is "I will live off my
| savings and have a hobby", rather than actually trying to
| live off that.
| awavering wrote:
| I think most people expressing this sentiment are
| referring to small scale homesteads or hobby farms, which
| I have found to be a great break from desk time.
| [deleted]
| cameronh90 wrote:
| I broadly agree, and certainly for staples and root crops,
| it blows my mind how cheap supermarkets can be. The amount
| of work, land, pesticides, fertilizers, seeds, etc. it
| takes to grow a few kilogram of carrots manually is insane
| compared to being able to buy at 50p/kg at the supermarket.
| That really shows the level of industrialisation and
| automation involved in large scale farming.
|
| Which is why I focus on specific crops that I've identified
| as being valuable or useful to me.
|
| Basil, of course, I already mentioned, and similar to basil
| is other green and leafy veg, such as spinach, mint,
| coriander, rocket, spring onions and cress. They grow so
| quickly and easily that I guess the majority of the cost in
| a supermarket is the packaging and logistics. I also grow a
| lot of soft fruits such as strawberries because supermarket
| fruits are expensive and bland tasting compared to a
| freshly picked ripe strawberry. Squashes are good to grow
| as they're quite prolific producers without much effort,
| yet fairly expensive to buy in the supermarket. Garlic,
| chilli, tomato, runner beans and leeks I grow mainly
| because I can choose the cultivars I like, and find they're
| tastier than the ones I can get in the supermarket.
|
| Of course, the biggest input I'm obviously not accounting
| for is my time, but as it's an enjoyable hobby that's good
| for my physical and mental health, that doesn't factor in
| for me. Plus, I think it's a good life skill to know how to
| grow food, and it's interesting to try and do it in a
| sustainable way, e.g. permaculture, supporting pollinators,
| producing your own compost, propagating your own seeds,
| capturing and storing water onsite, etc.
|
| I certainly wouldn't quit my job and become a farmer, but I
| do think growing some of your own food is something
| everyone should at least try once if they have the space.
| Also as a general rule, animals require a larger scale to
| make a profit than do vegetables.
| o0banky0o wrote:
| It sounds like tech folks want to do like your grandpa
| wanted, even though they're paying to sustain it
| datavirtue wrote:
| This dynamic changes if they are growing produce to
| manufacture value added,preserves items.
|
| If you are producing cheese, or tomato sauce, or pesto, for
| example, the farming activity makes a lot more sense
| financially. Trying to grow and sell produce is a non-
| starter. If you can turn it into a shelvable, in-demand,
| item you can diversify and greatly increase or even just
| capture profit that you would normally lose.
|
| As I mentioned, diversity is key. You can just deal in one
| or a few crops. You have to have a range of crops and value
| added products distributed to a variety of markets and you
| need to be selling directly.
|
| We have some ultra small farms working here in Ohio doing
| very well and many have been for generations. It's damn
| near foolish to shop Kroger for produce here. I know I
| don't. Not until the ice hits.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Even producing value-added items is a lot of work and
| mostly a labour of love than of business and this is
| assuming you have all the stuff you need available around
| you. These farms in Ohio are the outliers, even here in
| Florida, where you can technically grow almost the whole
| year, small farms are rare and usually pretty close to
| the big cities, most of the time serving as tourist
| destinations.
|
| If you're going to make cheese, you'll need a lot of cows
| (even for cheap cheese you'd need at least 10 liters of
| milk to get to a kilo of cheese) or someone near you that
| produces enough milk for you to buy and make cheese out
| of it.
|
| Food production is a heavily specialized, mechanized and
| complicated job, you need a lot of support and resources
| around you even for basic canning and dairy products. And
| then you also have to figure out a way to sell these
| products to someone at a price they're willing to pay.
|
| It's not by accident you'll see areas heavily focused on
| specific products (like Winsconsin and cheese) because
| everyone is, intentionally or not, pooling resources and
| creating the infrastructure to make it all possible.
|
| There's a traditional soft cheese that is a staple where
| I'm from in Brazil that is made like queso fresco, but we
| mix in clarified butter at the end of the cook (it's
| called butter cheese/queijo de manteiga) that is at risk
| of disappearing because it's getting harder and harder to
| produce it locally due to the lack of milk producers and
| other infrastructure as most milk production has moved
| elsewhere.
| ilyt wrote:
| > There's a traditional soft cheese that is a staple
| where I'm from in Brazil that is made like queso fresco,
| but we mix in clarified butter at the end of the cook
| (it's called butter cheese/queijo de manteiga) that is at
| risk of disappearing because it's getting harder and
| harder to produce it locally due to the lack of milk
| producers and other infrastructure as most milk
| production has moved elsewhere.
|
| are there no vertically integrated cheese production
| there ? If there is demand for milk why cow farmers are
| moving away?
| hattmall wrote:
| Yeah, if your granddad kept 24+ cows just for his own milk
| needs then that's surely a loss, but that's atypical and
| extremely inefficient. My family is similar, and my
| grandfather was a dairy farmer, but that was the first
| thing to go. A dairy is one of the things that scales very
| well and is just cheaper and easier to buy mass produced
| milk, but we still garden and raise animals for meat and
| produce an abundance on a few acres. Grazing animals take
| up a lot of space so I'm referring to just the garden.
| Cows, goats, chickens, geese, hogs to root out nutgrass.
| Deer and rabbits are so plentiful they are a problem. Our
| main external input that we can't really self source is
| fuel for the tractor. It's not a massive operation by any
| means and not a major source of income as everyone has
| normal non-farming jobs. But it's not a loss, produces far
| more than we need with not an extreme amount of labor. It's
| a 100+ year old farm and is mostly forest and timberland
| now but used to be cotton fields.
|
| It's really not that crazy of an idea to be a mostly self
| sufficient farm. I would say that including non-grazed
| pasture we have under 8 acres for crops. Probably an
| additional 30 for grazing. Of course we buy groceries of
| things we don't grow but if that wasn't an option we would
| still eat plenty just less varied.
|
| The important thing is to just have good land I think. Most
| of Americas farmland isn't great land for farming, it's
| just flat or ideal for a specific crop, which is great for
| mass production. The downside is that it's less productive
| and requires a ton of inputs with a limited and very time
| sensitive growing season.
| awavering wrote:
| I largely agree, but I think there's room for small-scale
| operations to grow hard-to-transport food (mulberries!)
| while preserving local varieties and serving as a genetic
| repository. In a sense, it's insurance against failures and
| shortcomings of the global food system - it'd be more
| efficient to go without, but it's nice to maintain a backup
| system of plants, systems, and knowledge.
| gdubs wrote:
| I own a farm and while I agree that people generally have
| no idea what goes into farming, I feel like the "tech
| workers would cry if they ever had to actually farm"
| statement that is so common on these types of threads is
| usually coming from someone with experience on a
| conventional farm.
|
| There are alternative methods of farming like permaculture,
| and people all over the world use them to grow an abundance
| of food in an area not much bigger than a large backyard.
| They are specifically geared towards better utilization of
| space, and creating natural systems that replace the need
| for traditional inputs and labor.
|
| Growing someone's entire diet is no small challenge, this
| is true. But it's also not an all-or-nothing proposition.
| Someone with zero experience farming could plant some
| perennial herbs on their balcony, and discover the joy of
| cooking with them (and replacing a $5 plastic clamshell of
| Thai basil.) From there, year-by-year, people can get more
| ambitious with what they grow.
| ilyt wrote:
| > I own a farm and while I agree that people generally
| have no idea what goes into farming, I feel like the
| "tech workers would cry if they ever had to actually
| farm" statement that is so common on these types of
| threads is usually coming from someone with experience on
| a conventional farm.
|
| But it's comparison of "job in IT vs job in farming"
| (i.e. actually making money in both cases), and not "just
| farming enough for your food needs"
|
| "making enough for your needs" is few crates of apples,
| not working whole day with a bunch of temporary workers
| gathering it while tractors are going around gathering
| the crates, often in burning sun.
|
| Turning it around it would be like saying "job in IT is
| SUPER easy" but meaning just setting up a home router
| once a week (because that's what "farming for yourself"
| is compared to running profitable farm)
| jmbwell wrote:
| > It's one of the reasons I LOL hard whenever I hear tech
| people saying they will "retire and become farmers", these
| people have no idea what it is like to work on a farm for
| real.
|
| When I hear this sentiment expressed and/or express this
| sentiment myself, it generally has nothing to do with the
| farming, but is rather meant to convey an interest in a
| life as far removed as possible from the stresses and
| bullshit and growing moral conflicts of working in tech.
|
| Of course, there is probably no industry that is immune
| from any of these things, or even immune from tech itself.
|
| But consider all of the posturing of the "farmer" being of-
| the-land and small-town and away from the chaos of city
| life and away from Silicon Valley ivory towers. All the
| folksy hokey drawl and front-porch iced-tea that people
| like to put up, especially politicians and entertainment
| performers in the country music industry. All the idyllic
| glorification of the people who "feed the world." It's all
| beautiful sunrises over fields of grain, people in work
| clothes who don't have much but still have it all.
| Obviously, none of that reflects reality any more than a
| tech worker jumping into that world. It overlooks the
| backbreaking, bank-breaking labor involved at the lowest
| levels, and the exploitation of an entire sector of the
| economy from top to bottom, beginning with government
| subsidies handed out to a rapidly growing corporate
| oligarchy swallowing up family farms that have produced our
| food for generations and converting them to nightmarish
| factory farming operations of unspeakable horrors. But if
| golden sunrises is what people want to pretend it is, then
| that's as good as anything for a tech worker to pretend to
| want when they fantasize about standing up from their seat
| at a row of workstations in a FAANG labor facility and
| walking out.
|
| Of course "these people have no idea what it is like to
| work on a farm for real." Nobody who hasn't done it does.
| Just like nobody who hasn't worked in tech knows what it is
| like working in tech for real.
|
| The point isn't to sincerely go into farming. The point is
| to imagine getting out of an industry that mills
| "intellectual labor" into advertising revenue for
| billionaires. If people like to imagine "flyover country"
| being some unspoiled unappreciated paradise, then people
| who genuinely want to get off of the "elitist coasts" are
| going to imagine going there. If it happens to call the
| cultural bluff on farming being some quaint, pastoral life
| of simple but rewarding hard work, that's hardly the tech
| worker's fault. The blame for that most likely lies with
| the people in power who stand to benefit from sustaining
| that fantasy -- who are often among the same people who
| benefit from the fantasy that tech work is all pinball
| machines and free sodas for typing on computers.
|
| LOL, if that's your coping mechanism. But while one might
| laugh at a worker wanting to jump from one bleak industry
| to another bleak industry, the people who profit from all
| of this bleakness go on profiting. If we have a problem
| with the fantasies, then maybe we should do something about
| the realities first.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| Do you think people who say they will retire and become
| farmers think they're going to become like legit, money
| making farmers? Or do you think they know they want a
| constructive hobby close to the earth to do while they wait
| to die, and "farming" (almost always meaning hobby farming)
| sounds like a constructive hobby to wait out the end?
|
| It's a meme at this point to make fun of people who want to
| do some form of labor that doesn't make a good career when
| they retire. Of course farming is a worse job than being a
| developer, that's why this person is a developer! But many
| things that make hard or even terrible jobs make great
| hobbies when you're not doing it to make a career. And
| people who like to get things done still often don't want
| their last accomplishment before they die to be "delivered
| corporate value in Q3 by..."
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > people that try to grow food for themselves do it either
| because they have no other option and will die otherwise or
| they have too much money and time in their hands.
|
| Most people that I know that have backyard gardens aren't
| doing it for the majority of their calories (I don't know
| people growing wheat in their backyard), but lots of people
| grow in their backyard because it is more convenient and
| the vegetables are always fresh and flavorful.
|
| I grow an herb garden with stuff like basil, chives,
| parsley, oregano, etc. plus some smaller vegetables like
| peppers and tomatoes. I grow the herbs because many times
| they don't even have fresh herbs available at the
| supermarket or are inconvenient (e.g. a giant thing of
| parsley when I just want a few snips), and the vegetables
| taste better.
| wizerdrobe wrote:
| Herbs should be anyone's starter for a garden and
| absolutely makes for an easy break-even.
|
| We had a great run with heirloom (Cherokee Purple)
| tomatoes this year, purchased for $5.99 per plant at
| Lowe's. Our raised bed cost about $100 to build and fill
| with soil. I spent $100 to build a deer fence. I also
| bought a $20 jug of Miracle Grow feed. Let's just
| cocktail-napkin the water at $10 for the season, and say
| I have $250 in input to start my garden this year.
|
| I got, at most, $15 dollars worth of tomatoes for the two
| plants. I could increase that and get into canning to
| reap some more value, but it's a hobby to produce neat
| exotics I can't even buy if I wanted to. Hopefully I can
| amortize the upstart costs over the years and achieve a
| break even on a long enough timescale :)
| ilyt wrote:
| No offense but that seems like most expensive way to farm
| it. I mean I get it, you want something that looks nice
| _and_ works, and not is just an old bucket filled with
| dirt (which is perfectly fine way to recycle broken
| bucket, just ugly one), but if you just want tomatoes you
| don 't need to spend all that much so that cost is a bit
| overcalculated imo.
|
| But still, yeah, at that scale its not much more than a
| hobby, certainly not a way to save any actual money.
|
| > Hopefully I can amortize the upstart costs over the
| years and achieve a break even on a long enough timescale
| :)
|
| Or some disease or insect will destroy it. The _wonders_
| of farming...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > $5.99 per plant
|
| Buy seeds, plant some in a beer cup of potting soil
| ~30-45d before the last frost. Don't need to worry with
| seed starting mix. Don't worry about how tall they get,
| just plant it almost all sideways.
|
| > I got, at most, $15 dollars worth of tomatoes for the
| two plants
|
| What were your lbs of yield per plant?
|
| I do cherry tomatoes in 5gal buckets and get ~1.5-2 lbs
| per bucket. Soil mix is leftovers from contractors mixed
| with composter stuff and peat moss. Actual garden does
| better. Retail price for that qty is $7. I have too many
| buckets set up...
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'd love to grow tomatoes, but I live where it's too hot
| and they'll stop flowering sometime in June.
|
| But I'm wondering if you're not growing your tomatoes
| right, or the cultivars you have are not great? One of
| the biggest issues I run into when I lived somewhere I
| could grow is the plants getting so large they uproot the
| posts I have them staked up with if it gets windy.
|
| Good soil goes a long way, you'll want it to be mostly a
| decomposed manure. Then you'll really want to get the
| biggest plant you can find at the store as early as
| weather allows, then bury most of the plant you buy. If
| you're just planting it like a normal plant, you've
| wasted a ton of its potential.
|
| In one of the best years I've had my plants grew nearly 8
| feet tall and with only 4 bushes I had to have the kids
| load up a wagon with tomatoes and give away them to the
| neighbors I had so many.
| zargon wrote:
| Cherokee Purple and Black Krim are two of my favorites,
| but they admittedly don't always grow quite as vigorously
| as some other (less tasty) varieties. Still, they grow 5
| to 6 feet high and produce 40+ pounds of fruit per plant.
| And the tomato growing season here is only mid-May
| through mid-September.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Can verify, and of the two, Krim has the better flavor in
| my opinion. But they do not produce like the hybrids and
| the Krims tend to crack.
|
| Another (cherry) that is really tasty is Rosella (a dark
| purplish variety like the other two). So tasty.
| ilyt wrote:
| >then bury most of the plant you buy. If you're just
| planting it like a normal plant, you've wasted a ton of
| its potential.
|
| Elaborate ?
| mythrwy wrote:
| Check this stuff out for growing tomatoes where it is
| hot.
|
| https://shadeclothstore.com/product-category/aluminet-
| shade-...
|
| I've had great success with the 40% setting tomatoes all
| season and my temps push 110F in the summer. One thing I
| learned the hard way, in addition to this, leave the
| plants bushy so it shades internally.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Eh, this year we had over 60 days of 100F+ weather, with
| temps not going below 85 at night for a considerable
| portion of that. Even if I grow them in the shade of the
| porch they won't get flowers for a month at a time.
| ilyt wrote:
| My dad pretty much went from "doing well" to "dropping it
| and getting different job while selling land to
| development" within the span of my childhood and teenage
| years.
|
| Small farming was viable few decades ago, now you'd have to
| make some speciality fancy food there to be profitable, not
| anything mass market.
|
| Small vinery? Sure you might have _some_ chance. Potatoes
| and wheat ? Good fucking luck.
|
| > It's one of the reasons I LOL hard whenever I hear tech
| people saying they will "retire and become farmers", these
| people have no idea what it is like to work on a farm for
| real.
|
| Clarkson's farm is essentially a documentary about that
| lmao. Rich man invests a lot and with ton of help earns
| less than a thousand a year from quite a lot of land.
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| I don't think thats entirely true depending on what
| definition of farm is being used and where its located.
|
| My grandparents live in Ukraine and do just fine growing
| most of their food on a small plot of land and their
| pension.
|
| Tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, watermelon, cucumbers, some
| other stuff I've forgotten and bees for honey.
|
| They definitely do not have too much money on their hands.
| Time yes but thats no different then for anyone retiring?
| swader999 wrote:
| I think this is a smart way to go. I'll grow my own things
| for better taste too.
| callalex wrote:
| The subsidy/grant/handout system for food production and
| distribution is very nuanced and piecemeal so the individual
| price of foods ends up seemingly random.
| gs17 wrote:
| I noticed the same thing, a few stores have basil plants for
| sale at prices which always confuse me. Buying a $6 plant
| (not sure what Trader Joe's has them for these days), even if
| I was immediately stripping all the leaves off it is
| sometimes a better deal by itself.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I was taught by a couple of friends from Italy about how to
| harvest the seeds and re-grow them, very easy to do. Probably
| my favorite plant to cultivate now considering how simple it
| is to grow it, it's always nicer to have fresh herbs than
| store-bought (often going bad) or dry (no flavour). There is
| a key time to harvest but I think it depends on the climate
| you're in so I can't really advise on that unless you live in
| koppen zone AF.
|
| Mint is about the same and I think even more easy.
|
| One of the things about herbs is that alot of them are great
| chelating agents for soil. It's something to be aware of
| because if for example your soil is rich in arsenic, cadmium
| or lead, you can remediate some of it out with oregano or
| thyme but since these things absorb enough of that to become
| a potential hazard to health it's actually fairly prudent to
| grow your own as consumer reports has pointed out that all
| brands they have tested in stores have this crap in them [1],
| especially if you're gardening in an urban setting [2]
|
| [1] https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/your-
| herb...
|
| [2] https://clf.jhsph.edu/sites/default/files/2019-03/suh-
| soil-t...
| civilitty wrote:
| If you're growing the herbs in planters, it pays to use a
| custom potting mix that is 1 part peat moss, 1 part
| compost, and 1 part vermiculite. It eliminates most risk of
| heavy metals and provides a very light and fluffy medium
| with lots of aeration and water retention.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Honestly the water retention alone is more than worth the
| soil costs with the potting mix. Many herbs can be very
| sensitive to water/heat and good control here allows the
| plants to grow much larger and more resilient.
| cameronh90 wrote:
| As fantastic as peat moss is, I have to recommend
| considering an alternative. Peat moss isn't sustainable,
| and at least in Europe, we don't have too many peat bogs
| left now. Coco coir is my favourite peat moss
| alternative, but as it's sterile, you do need to use a
| bit more organic matter or add some leachate/"compost
| tea".
| james_pm wrote:
| Our grocery store literally sells live, potted basil plants for
| less than a little package of fresh basil. And people still by
| the packaged basil.
| grecy wrote:
| > _It 's surprising we don't have this already in North America
| given how much surplus food is produced_
|
| If you genuinely want to know why, I highly recommend the book
| Ishmael by Daniel Quinn.
|
| It does a fantastic job of explaining how our society got
| _really_ messed up the day food was put under lock and key.
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