[HN Gopher] How Saffron, a precious import, became an American c...
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How Saffron, a precious import, became an American cash crop
Author : Thevet
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-01-03 04:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| https://webcf.waybackmachine.org/web/20250103061402/https://...
|
| Pesky paywall begone.
| yial wrote:
| That link didn't work for me, a few paragraphs down it just
| shows a swirling "please wait why we verify access".
|
| In case anyone else has the same issue;
|
| https://archive.is/2025.01.02-101341/https://www.nytimes.com...
| berkai wrote:
| For those who don't know it yet, "bypass paywall" extensions
| are an alternative for a smooth browsing experience. I just
| can't bother with archive links.
|
| see. (https://github.com/bpc-clone/bypass-paywalls-firefox-
| clean)
| wolfgangK wrote:
| How do we know that this extension can be trusted ?
| jhdias wrote:
| We read the source code.
| Filligree wrote:
| Then it auto-updates.
| NinoScript wrote:
| Then we blindly trust that someone else is still reading
| the new version's code and will raise the alarm if
| something bad happens.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I highly recommend turning off auto updates on browser
| extensions.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I suggest looking into the Obfusicated C contest before
| relying on your own reading of code to verify lack of
| malicious intent.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| There's no source provided in the repo? It seems to just
| be a discussion of how to download the xpi from somewhere
| else.
| pjmlp wrote:
| "Why can't we nowadays find any quality content?"
|
| Hence why.
| cf100clunk wrote:
| Saffron was also introduced to BC's lush Fraser Valley through
| years of effort by Avtar Dhillon:
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/abbotsford-f...
| cf100clunk wrote:
| An essential ingredient of authentic bouillabaisse.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It's also tasty in chai, though rarely present in store-bought
| mixes (but you can just toss in a couple of threads when
| brewing).
| ginko wrote:
| My understanding is that saffron grows almost anywhere (there's
| people growing it up here in Norway). It's mainly the labor to
| harvest the threads that makes it economically unviable.
|
| I guess you can sell American produced saffron at a premium but
| I'd still love to see the labor cost / profit calculation on
| those.
|
| >In 2021, Peace and Plenty harvested 700,000 flowers, which
| yielded about 3.5 kilograms of saffron. Ms. Price sold it to home
| cooks, and to chefs.
|
| >I was doing one flower per five seconds at my fastest, which
| sounds good
|
| So with 5 seconds per flowers 700,000 flowers are about 1000 man
| hours to harvest. With the Californian $16.5 minimum wage that'd
| mean about $4.50 per gram just in harvesting labor cost.
| geraneum wrote:
| > My understanding is that saffron grows almost anywhere
|
| As in it grows in a farm, outside, under the sun, in Norway?
|
| Otherwise, Banana, coffee and Mango can also be cultivated
| anywhere in a controlled/enclosed environment.
| ginko wrote:
| Grows outside in people's front/back yards. People grow them
| for fun. Farming wouldn't make sense.
| malfist wrote:
| Saffron comes from crocus flowers. Crocus is an extremely
| common plant, you can probably find bulbs for sale for it in
| ever big box home improvement store in the US during the
| spring
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, and they're well suited to northern climes. Here in
| the upper Midwest, they're one of the first things up in
| the spring, often poking up through the snow.
| Ichthypresbyter wrote:
| In the Netherlands and Flanders the week-long school
| break in late February/early March is called the
| Krokusvakantie (crocus vacation).
| rwmj wrote:
| It's growing in our back garden which freezes solid every
| winter. In fact the crocus is very hardy - it grows on a path
| which we walk over every day.
|
| (I still buy saffron in the shops.)
| geraneum wrote:
| People commonly mistake other Crocus family flowers with
| Saffron's. Are you sure it's Crocus Sativus? Crocus is
| common and the flower looks very similar to Saffron's but
| it is not that. When do they bloom? If they bloom in Spring
| (which I suspect they do, they are also common here in
| Germany) they are not exactly the same plant and they have
| different requirements.
| underseacables wrote:
| I'm surprised that, as the price increased, there has not been
| a mechanical automation found that would remove the labor
| requirement. Terrible for developing countries where labor is
| cheap and depends on that laborious task of harvesting threads.
| Animats wrote:
| It's been done, by the iSaffron unit of Solbar Food
| Technologies in Israel.[1] Or so says a hype site from
| iSaffron in 2021.[2] No current mention. Solbar is the
| largest soybean processor in Israel, and saffron would be a
| rounding error for them.
|
| A Swedish company which produces saffron uses some
| robotics.[3] There's a German student group doing something.
| Nobody has video of anything working.
|
| It's probably do-able, but too niche to justify the effort.
|
| This 2018 "automatic saffron processing machine" looks
| fake.[4]
|
| [1] https://www.solbartech.com/about/
|
| [2] https://www.isaffron.life/
|
| [3] https://osterlensaffran.io/
|
| [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQMwknN8wQY
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I was about to say that $4.50 in labor cost doesn't seem
| outrageous, given the high retail prices but according to my
| low effort internet search in the US cheap saffron goes
| wholesale for about $0.81 / gram and expensive saffron does for
| about $1.68 / gram. The retail markup on this is quite high!
|
| You could potentially make it work selling direct to consumer,
| which might not be so bad given the very low quantities we're
| talking about here.
| HPsquared wrote:
| "A nation of shopkeepers" applies here. Intermediate steps
| and distribution, all the steps along the way extract their
| little bit here and there. The economy is built like a
| bloated JavaScript framework with a call stack 100 layers
| deep.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| "American cash crop" is a little misleading (implies that its a
| substantial amount) when the article cites 3.5kg and 360g of
| harvests of saffron from American farms. Iran produced 174
| tonnes, for comparison.
| stearns wrote:
| The term "cash crop" refers to a crop that is grown for sale
| rather than use. So NYT is using it correctly, but I agree they
| could have chosen a better term for the headline, since "cash
| crop" doesn't really help to explain the article.
|
| Also, to be pedantic, 3.5kg was from one American farm, not
| "from American farms".
| j45 wrote:
| Maybe this article is trying to seed it for American
| consideration.
| Morizero wrote:
| I noticed not long ago that nootropic users were talking about it
| a lot. I wonder how much demand comes from that?
| OutOfHere wrote:
| For what it's worth, it is studied to have a variety of related
| benefits: nootropic, hedonic, antidepressant, retinal, macular,
| anti-glaucoma, and more. Its dose range is quite tight.
| fmajid wrote:
| It doesn't make sense to grow it with US labor, on the other
| hand, in desperately poor countries like Afghanistan it provides
| a living for women like this project:
| https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7267488...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _doesn't make sense to grow it with US labor, on the other
| hand, in desperately poor countries like Afghanistan it
| provides a living for women like this project_
|
| Between adulteration risk, transport costs and concerns around
| financing the Taliban, I can absolutely see the American
| product competing with Afghan exports.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| These people are selling it at 10x the market rate which is
| senseless for the consumer. It is strange that they even have any
| market at all at this rate. It is a completely unscalable price.
| lupire wrote:
| It pairs well with a $25 (plus tax and shipping) single,
| frozen, partially-cooked hamburger that you gave to finish
| preparing yourself..
| https://www.goldbelly.com/restaurants/gramercy-tavern/the-gr...
|
| They are rich retired people selling miniscule quantities to
| other rich people. It's just for fun. The excess cost of the
| saffron is lower than the transaction cost of fulfilling the
| order.
| snypher wrote:
| >Homemade Sesame Seed Buns
|
| Let me guess, Homemade is the company name?
| underseacables wrote:
| This is good! Price of saffron got really high there for a while
| and it really impacted specific dishes. I noticed this about 12
| years ago, popular rice brands removed the word Saffron from the
| front of the packaging. It was replaced by "saffron seasoning"
| which was a blend of things. The taste changed because I felt it
| had less saffron, which I thought was due to higher prices.
| exhilaration wrote:
| The article mentions sanctions on Iranian exports, that might
| have played a role in higher prices.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42585112
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(page generated 2025-01-04 23:01 UTC)