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From Spain to Germany, farmers warn of fresh food shortages

464 points by montalbano 7y ago

Zenst 7y ago
Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient. Gardens that you grow your own, allotments - the mentality of that has been driven away over decades and now people are starting to smell the roses and realize they can't eat them. So in many avenues - complacency gets highlighted more and I'm sure many and much will change on the back of this period in time. Overall I'd say for the better. Certainly the environment is doing better, so not all side-effects that bad, but even the bad ones, may well get exacerbated and become fear/panic driven. Equally many manual aspects of farming have long been on the verge of better automation and with that, robots. However that drive will only see less people working and the knock-on effects of any change has ripples. But let's not overlook the whole import/export aspects and SPain for example exports a huge amount of fruit and veg, how that pans out over this period will be of note. But for some perspective: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20171016-1?inheritRedirect=true https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E... Shows the export and import of food in EUrope as a whole is somewhat balanced. How that balance plays out this year and for few years after will be interesting. Though I don't see any fear of food shortages, sure may be case of some food items being more expensive. But such articles, whilst are a caution warning, they themselves can drive fear and panic and they as always do more damage as any toilet roll can attest. [EDIT spellings and grams]
- alexandernst 7y ago
  Where (physically) do you expect 500.000 (a small town example) people garden their own food? They'd need to travel outside town, garden, then get back (and all this while also commuting to work on a daily basis). Also, the amount of tools every single person would need to buy. "Decentralisation" is a goof idea, but not feasible in the real world, IMHO. And this is a small town example, leave alone a huge capital like Madrid or Barcelona.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    Surrounding farmland, greenhouses if necessary. Can't scale now, but this is the result of fragile ag supply chains. Lessons for the future. Not just ag, manufacturing capacity and black swan preparedness in general. Fragile systems break more easily. Make sturdy systems humans rely on, even if more costly and less efficient.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening) In Britain and Germany, allotment gardening was promoted as a social measure and by all accounts it was successful.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      It's successful at giving people the option to occasionally put some fresh produce on their plates. It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round, let alone your family or everyone else who doesn't have an allotment. If an acute food shortage hit right during harvest season I might be able to hold out for a few weeks, but any other time of year would be pretty bad.
      - pvaldes 7y ago
        > It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round In 2019 I produced almost 300 Kg of my own food at home without really trying hard, so maybe not all year round, but is possible to notice a difference. The garden had provided me with at least a piece of fresh fruit each day of 2020 and this point is covered until june-2020 at least. The problem is trying to obtain your food without space, without feeding your plants, and relying in magical products. This never works as intended. People needs to understand also that producing food at home is more expensive (but the quality is better).
    - pjc50 7y ago
      Possibly too successful. The waiting lists are usually very long: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/edinburgh-allotment-shortfall-means-plot-waiting-list-12-years-256061 https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/edinburgh-allotm...
- groby_b 7y ago
  This is a very naive take on the world. You'll need at the very least half an acre to feed yourself sustainably, and that's if you're highly optimized. It's also backbreaking work, and you won't be able to do much else except subsistence farming. In short, it's not practical for the vast majority of the population. The closest we can probably get to this model is instead CSA memberships, supporting farms right outside the dense urban areas which can leverage economies of scale to feed several hundred people. I mean, sure, grow your spring onions, your herbs, and a tomato plant. It's nice. It keeps you connected to where food comes from. It's a yummy addition to your plate. It won't feed you in an emergency, though.
  - makomk 7y ago
    Note that it's fine to leave the supply of staples like wheat to large farmers with economies of scale, since that's heavily mechanized and doesn't require many workers, plus the workers it does rely on can be fairly effectively distanced. It's mostly the stuff like fresh fruit and vegetables which is the problem. Those are less reliant on economies of scale and more on cheap imported labour.
    - Zenst 7y ago
      Exactly, I grew tomatoes in my flat few years back, was so choice picking a ripe tomato on christmas day grown indoors on a window ledge and no additional lighting needed. Sure can't grow it all, but certainly makes a positive dent in my needs.
      - GordonS 7y ago
        Yikes, you grew tomatoes indoors? How did you stand the smell?
        Zenst 7y ago
        Was not an issue at all.
  - Zenst 7y ago
- pascalxus 7y ago
  It's sad, but here in CA, most people don't have yards and there's nowhere to grow food. It's especially dumb because there's miles and miles of undeveloped land everywhere (at least in the east bay suberbs), not being used for anything in particular except maybe some farms with cows on it: I'm sure they're taking advantage of huge tax wholes because they're sitting on land that would cost 10s of millions of dollars in property taxes were it taxed at the same rate that people need to pay. Also, there's no community compost which means people need to buy all of it at stores like home depot, making it expensive because they have to bag it and warehouse it, etc. The nearest compost I have to my house where I can get compost is nearly 35 miles away.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    I live in a flat, it has windows and window ledges and I grow things - sure not enough to sustain, but makes a dent in the right direction, also helps flats air quality. As for compost, i'm supprised as I live in London and can easily get it. But appreciate that it may be a case of supply/demand and if no demand, the supply moves away. Seems like an opportunity business wise in the times ahead as if you have that issue - many others will.
  - sologoub 7y ago
    SF Bay Area is not really representative of California as a whole. Most people outside of the dense cores have a place for a small garden. State is large and diverse. Los Angeles is a lot less dense and most people have at least a balcony on which you can grow stuff in pots. Won’t sustain you as the only source, but will provide greens and some variety. Yards are pretty common and usually green. Water shortages have led to some converting to hardscape, but that can be reversed. Prop 13 is an issue, but the level of development opposition in Bay Area is another matter all together compared to the rest of the state. Where little you can build developers end up cramming every last inch with profit-producing structures. Couple with crappy commuting infrastructure and you have what we are living.
    - pascalxus 7y ago
      You can drive out as far as fairfield, about 70 miles outside of the bay area and still see housing communities packed together like slums with nothing but yellow and green for miles in every direction.
- downshun 7y ago
  > incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient The drawback to this is the opportunity cost. Comparative advantage is the benefit of the current set-up. Although 'self-sufficient' may sound warm and nice.
- mellow2020 7y ago
  > Certainly the environment is doing better, I wouldn't be so sure (yet) about the overall outcome. For example, the EPA just suspends enforcement of all environmental laws "because corona". https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-suspends-enforcement-of-environmental-laws-amid-coronavirus https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-sus... > The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws Thursday, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak. > The temporary policy, for which the EPA has set no end date, would allow any number of industries to skirt environmental laws, with the agency saying it will not “seek penalties for noncompliance with routine monitoring and reporting obligations.”
  - abootstrapper 7y ago
    I really don’t get this. How is this helpful against the pandemic?
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      What? No more illegal pangolin for dinner?.
      - abootstrapper 7y ago
        Honest question. How is the EPA suspending enforcement aid in the fight against Covid-19?
        tlb 7y ago
        The EPA says not only that your new chemical plant can't dump waste in the river, but also that before you even start your factory you have to file elaborate plans explaining all the measures you're going to take to make sure it never happens. If we want companies to quickly spin up new factories for ventilators and masks, it's a good idea to let them start the factory now and file the plans next year.
- 2ion 7y ago
  > Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient This has nothing to do with "people". Securing the food supply is a matter of national security, which is why such a shortage of labour should have never been allowed to even happen. The correct way to go about this would have been subsidized pay for local farmhands, a directive that a given / high percentage of food crop must be preserved at any cost and regulation that subsidies that already go to agriculture do not go into profits but actually trickle down.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
Tangentially related, NPR aired an interview the other day with undocumented migrant workers (in the US) living very close together when traveling (sleeping sitting up together in a van) and having very limited access to water for bathing and hygiene when lodging at farms where they were working picking produce; it's likely this causes grave loss of life in the migrant community, and decimates produce farms economically this season. Edit: This is not intended as a political comment, only an observation of a component of the pandemic macro. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/816644358/covid-19-threatens-food-supply-chain-as-farms-worry-about-workers-falling-ill https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/816644358/covid-19-threatens-...
- lone_post 7y ago
  Tangentially related: Yet another reason why illegal aliens must be expelled from the country and not allowed to return unless through legal means. Of course Republicans love illegal labor because it's cheap and Democrats love it because they don't believe in borders anymore. Thus the American people and the American worker must wage a two front war against two selfish and entrenched political classes.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't use HN for political battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys what this site exists for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - lone_post 7y ago
      I'm sorry, I'll hold back next time.
- Zenst 7y ago
  Undocumented migrants have for all effect become the modern day equivalent of slavery without the associated compasion. Many happy to lambast such people and yet, be first to complain if their avocados go up in price or out of stock. Hopefully, some level of amnisty and clean slate is driven here as currently without that, will only shoot themselves in the foot on many levels. After all, many live day by day, kinda hard to carry on if that is removed from them and more so, kinda hard to isolate if they have no other choice. That is sadly one area that politics needs to agree upon and deal with, otherwise the impact will be wide upon many fronts.
partingshots 7y ago
Doesn’t the Netherlands export the majority of Europe’s fresh food? As long as the supply chain doesn’t break down, I don’t see how it would be possible for Spain and Germany to run out of food. Especially since they’re all in the EU, even if the Netherlands wanted to close off their borders, there’s no way they really could.
- isaacgreyed 7y ago
  A drop in supply in food all at once could raise the price causing considerable issues.
- llampx 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by countries in the EU not being able to close their borders, they can.
  - muro 7y ago
    They can and recently did.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- the8472 7y ago
  Based on the greenhouses I could identify on google maps spain's part seems much larger. Netherlands - https://www.google.com/maps/@52.021357,4.5405597,46292m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.021357,4.5405597,46292m/data... Spain - https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7995257,-2.4654344,60237m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7995257,-2.4654344,60237m/da...
  - danieldk 7y ago
    I am not sure about fresh food, but The Netherlands is world's second largest agricultural exporter (and no, it's not only flowers): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-... Also, it's not only about size, also efficiency. Scroll down the article and look at the insane yields per square mile for tomatoes, chilies + green peppers, and cucumbers. No other country comes even close.
411111111111111 7y ago
Nobody forced the farmers to become reliant on migrant workers though. It was just a simple decision for them: cheap labor that's available today or expensive labor... They mostly went with cheap, and now they don't have anyone available. Tough luck I guess, but it always was just a question of time until this happened.
- makomk 7y ago
  At least in the UK, the countryside has basically turned into a vacation and retirement area for wealthy Londoners. It's pretty much impossible for people to afford to live where the labour is needed on any sort of pay that would make farming actually viable, which restricts it to workers from lower cost-of-living countries that cram into cramped accommodation for the length of the season and then return home. Not sure about countries like Spain and Germany.
  - maelito 7y ago
    The countryside everywhere in UK ? Or just around London ?
    - makomk 7y ago
      Everywhere in England at the very least. Wales and especially Scotland might be a little better. The south and around London is probably worse, but even rural Yorkshire is pretty bad.
      - GordonS 7y ago
        Scot here. The countryside is open to everyone, and the "right to roam" makes it even moreso. But I haven't seen much different in the rest of the UK - honestly, to claim the countryside is a giant retirement home seems absolutely absurd to me.
    - gambiting 7y ago
      Around London and a lot of the "south". But come out to Yorkshire or Northumberland and you can buy a farm and some land for very little. Living outside of the city in Northumberland(say within 30 minute driving distance to Newcastle) can be stupidly cheap.
MrKitai 7y ago
This is false, at least in Spain. Farms are working normally except that they increased prices a bit. But that's normal due to the situation.
- asien 7y ago
  Where did you get that info ? The news in France reported strictly the same situation. Polish Worker ( which are majority in field work in rural area ) are sent home due to quarantaine, thus there is not enough workforce to harvest fruits and vegetables. More than half of the production of small farmer is at risk of being lost , and theirs salary with it. Societies are at risk of much bigger collapse.
ojagodzinski 7y ago
paywall
- dheera 7y ago
  Paste this into the console: document.body.dataset.paywallOverlayStatus="hide";document.querySelector("#graphics-paywall-overlay").remove();
  - evv 7y ago
    Easier to use a browser that has your back, like Brave or Cliqz
dheera 7y ago
To get past the paywall, paste this into the console: document.body.dataset.paywallOverlayStatus="hide";document.querySelector("#graphics-paywall-overlay").remove(); I think it is unethical to put information regarding an epidemic behind a paywall.
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  We want information about the pandemic, don't we? If we do not pay for it, all we will get is what people figure out in their spare time while confined to their homes. Without paywalls, we would just have Kickstarters like "If everyone who wants to know whether farmers are able to produce fresh fruit gives me $5, I will go and ask them!" You can always get the information by word of mouth or waiting. The amount you're not willing to do that is the amount you should pay to see it now. (I don't pay and just read the reaction in the comments for free.)
  - dheera 7y ago
    I disagree, I think when it comes to a pandemic or any other public safety issue, immediate access to information should be free. FWIW NYT has disabled the paywall on all their articles about coronavirus (although there's still a loginwall). We shouldn't be putting prices on human lives.
    - Noumenon72 7y ago
      If the NYT gives it for free, that means you should read the NYT, not steal from people who don't give it for free. Putting prices on human lives is a good idea. We do it for food, we do it for car safety, we do it for relative risk analysis. Putting a price on groceries means the government can subsidize food fairly, rather than having individuals break the locks on the grocery stores and say "food should be free".
ur-whale 7y ago
https://archive.is/hczJN https://archive.is/hczJN
writejournal 7y ago
not sure if this will help the situation...
k__ 7y ago
I also read, the nurses that were commuting from other EU countries to work in Germany are now going back to help their home countries.
- odshoifsdhfs 7y ago
  mind sharing a source? Would be interested to know abou this since I have been defending the reason some countries are at a better position than others Healthcare wise is due to brain-drain in those segments.
- hocuspocus 7y ago
  That sounds a bit hard to believe. Walk away now and you'll probably never be employed in the country ever again. If they were OK with wages in their home country they would not be cross border commuters to begin with.
  - rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
    Perhaps they wanted to be closer to their families and the communities they grew up with.
  - Izkata 7y ago
    May have something to do with Germany closing their borders: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51905129 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51905129
chewz 7y ago
So we have labour shortages in countryside and unemployed people in urban centers. Problem?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gutnor 7y ago
  The only reason people are unemployed is that they are confined in their homes. Once they can head to the countryside to pick strawberries, chances are they can just head back to their regular job too.
  - pm90 7y ago
    Not if a lot of small businesses shut down. In which case it will take a while for the jobs to come back.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Farms are essential. If you are willing to do "back breaking" manual labor there are farmers who can give you the papers to get out of your house. You may not like the location you end up in.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Working outside is orders of magnitude safer that working in an office.
aazaa 7y ago
> From Huelva to Hamburg and Newcastle to Naples, Europe’s farmers are struggling to find people to bring in rapidly ripening fruits and vegetables, which frequently must be hand-picked, usually within a window of just a few days. They typically rely on seasonal workers from eastern Europe or northern Africa, but fears of the coronavirus are keeping hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers from leaving home, and controls on once-unfettered borders are stopping many of those willing to make the trip. This is a recipe for shortage. Unlike funbucks dashed off by central banks without so much as breaking a sweat, it takes actual work to grow, harvest, and distribute crops. It also takes time. All of these things can't be faked the way that currency can.
- mc32 7y ago
  If they can't get picked in time, they can can them, freeze them or dry them. Some will spoil beyond recovery, but not all has to be lost either.
  - luxuryballs 7y ago
    uh you have to pick it before you can preserve it
    - mc32 7y ago
      Overripe fruits don’t sell in Tehran market, but you can do other things with them. So instead of two weeks to pick, you have maybe four, depending on the fruit.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  > it takes actual work to grow, harvest, and distribute crops. I look forward to the test of "Europeans don't want to do _____ work" when the shit-pay factor is removed.
  - phenkdo 7y ago
    do you also look forward to the 10x grocery shit-bill you will be stuck with?
baybal2 7y ago
Coworkers in Shenzhen are already saying that more fancier foods are already getting scarcer in the inland China, and prices are going up by day. China has done a massive livestock slaughter campaign when the quarantine was declared. That has actually depressed the food prices quite a bit for the first months, but after that, the prices have shot up. This is how they got that much meat: https://mustsharenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Wuhan-Residents-Receive-Frozen-Meat-Via-Garbage-Truck-Delivery-Officials-Reclaiming-Distributed-Bags.jpg https://mustsharenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Wuhan-R... The scariest part of it is that China relies ENORMOUSLY on the imported food, despite accounting for more than 20% of global food production. The government has expected to shut everything down, including food production, and weather the crisis by relying on the remaining food in the supply chain. China has spent a big portion of its national food reserve too: https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1220714156753653760/pu/img/YgmN0Rm1tncDvuf9.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1220714156753653760... They planned to restock quickly with overseas imports after the lockdown was to be lifted. Now that overseas supply is a big question mark... I heard the same is going in much of the world. Agricultural business is facing shutdown, and they are cashing out their livestock, seedstock, and trying to get an early harvest done before the lockdowns hit their countries. And people were saying that we will never see a famine in Asia in the 21st century. That optimism was premature...
- yunusabd 7y ago
  Your second link goes to a still image. I assume you mean this [1] video? Though I don't see how that supports the statement that China has spent a big portion of its national reserve. [1] https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett/status/1220725276394565632 https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett/status/122072527639456563...
  - baybal2 7y ago
    China imports a gigantic amount of food, and ports were first to be hit by disruption. As a person who works in OEM electronics in China, I can tell at least that. So, at any normal day, China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself. Agriculture has been on shutdown for the past 2.5 months. Farms have slaughtered a large portion of their livestock, and a big portion of the seedstock has been used for food in the last few months too. Chinese national reserves were said to be able to keep the country going for 3 months under a strict rationing regime, which we haven't seen, but at least we know by many accounts that meat reserves have been released all across China with no restraint. Now try guessing how much of it left. P.S. On ports. I initially wrote them being shut down, I correct that they are facing major disruption, with a lot of ships missing their berthing timeslots
downshun 7y ago
What is limiting robot-assisted telemetric food harvesting? Why cant I connect to the web with a gaming console, play farmer and be rewarded for it? The data could eventually be used to develop self-harvesting farms. There's already automated computer assisted surgery, so is this really that far off? Is it desirable? It runs eventually into a similar problem as self-driving cars and the looming unemployment of truckers. What's Earth's carrying capacity for humans? We can be our own existential risk.
- lnsru 7y ago
  This pandemic will boost automation for sure. I hope, I can transform my side project to robotics startup afterwards. Current home office regulation saves me commuting time and I can do more development for myself. Outdoor machinery is hard topic by itself. It’s not comparable to controlled environment where surgery robots operate. It’s permanent dirt, dust and changing weather conditions.
- qayxc 7y ago
  > There's already automated computer assisted surgery, so is this really that far off? Is it desirable? It's a question of cost and development effort versus utility. You can train a good picker/harvester within just a few weeks and that person can work the fields seasonally for decades while doing other productive things for the rest of the year. Designing, building, deploying, and maintaining a machine complex enough to harvest asparagus, strawberries, and salad, however, is a very costly endeavour that yields very little benefit. The machines would cost billions to develop, millions to build, and are only usable for a short time of the year and for a very limited task. A minimum-wage field worker can do the job faster and cheaper and a machine would basically need to run half a century just to pay for itself - and that doesn't even include the development costs. Don't make the mistake to underestimate the amount of technology required to replace a human being for doing "simple tasks". Things that are simple for humans are incredibly hard for machines and vice versa.
- gdubs 7y ago
  I hope we get there. Things have gotten closer. The ideal is being able to harvest something like a strawberry without ruining it and it turns out to be rather difficult. With enough attention and investment, this is certainly a solvable problem. Let’s hope our attention spans get a little longer and we can stay focused on the need to innovate on food security when this is all over.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
m0zg 7y ago
And that's what your average HN reader does not understand when they talk about keeping the country closed down forever. Groceries aren't put on the shelves by a grocery fairy. They can't be put there by the government or a central bank. They actually have to be grown or imported, both of which can be problematic if you shut everything down and disrupt the supply chains.
montalbano 7y ago
Another more UK-centric Guardian article that may be of interest: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-and-veg-will-run-out-unless-britain-charters-planes-to-fly-in-farm-workers-from-eastern-europe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...
- robk 7y ago
  Why aren't they just raising wages? There are many people who can work and need jobs simply a matter of finding the clearing price and passing it on to us consumers which I'm very happy to bear.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    The price is set by wholesalers, especially supermarkets. I'm not convinced they can re-eqilibriate the market before the harvest spoils.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      If the wholesalers want the product to sell it, then they will change the price so that it makes sense to harvest it.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - s1artibartfast 7y ago
        If this price is too high, the wholesalers will not be able to sell it and choose not to buy it
        lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Then that would indicate there is no market clearing price for the product so farmers will stop producing it. I.e. people can't afford it anymore.
thyrsus 7y ago
Low wages for field workers (e.g. picking berries) has stunted automation of these tasks, though I think we're now at the level of robotics (especially computer vision) where it's feasible.
- DethNinja 7y ago
  We are definitely at this stage. So long as ruling class wishes they can make huge automation improvements in agriculture in just couple of decades and easily feed the current world population.
- Etheryte 7y ago
  Sadly, I think this is an example of what I would maybe call the HN Dunning-Kruger approach to many problems: "just" use IT/AI/robots/etc. There are many companies who have been working in this space for a long time, there's a reason why it's still manual work — it's freaking hard. Berries are a good example of this, personally I'm intricately familiar with the strawberry industry, but I believe it applies elsewhere too. Strawberries are very tender. If you apply too much pressure, it will mulch and one berry going bad is usually enough to get the whole box moldy. The second tricky bit is that you want to pick strawberries with the right amount of stem remaining: too little and you risk hurting the berry, too much and the stem will break other berries in the box, leading to mold again. One final difficult problem is finding the berries: strawberries often grow fairly bushy, especially so if you grow one of the varieties that gives large berries. To find the strawberries in the bush, you usually gently move around the leaves to see if there are any. This is again a very "feel" based movement, too little movement and you miss the berry, too much and you damage the plant. I'm not saying this won't ever be done. As mentioned before, there are companies who are actively working in this space, many of them for many years already. I do think however that the problem is considerably more difficult than what may be observed at first.
  - jiggawatts 7y ago
    It has been done! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCivsotZEjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCivsotZEjk There's actually several designs out there for picking strawberries, but like the OP said, expensive robots aren't competitive with cheap labour. If the labour pool dries up, they're more economically viable.
ornornor 7y ago
Holly shit since this whole pandemic thing has started, I couldn’t stop thinking about the preppers who must be popping champagne every night and be so happy all their work was for something after all. Everyone made fun of them, but now they’re the ones laughing. The rest of us? We’re just clueless. Seriously, if society was going to collapse I don’t think I’d last very long. I could maybe trade some tomatoes for a couple bullets but then what?
- Mirioron 7y ago
  Preppers are just a more extreme version of the people who have a gun for defending themselves. A bad enough emergency can wipe out everything you have. I guess you could compare this to IT plans for disasters. Most of us have barely any backups for most things. Yet there are those who have multiple off-site backups that are tested often whether they work.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Being prepared is how you survive and thrive in 90% of situations. While I am not one, I never thought it made sense to make fun of them. Folks who laughed at them played a stupid game and won a stupid prize...
2ion 7y ago
I'd go to the fields at once if it be worth my time. That means 50€/hour plus benefits, and fully paid transportation and accommodation. There are enough jobless people in Germany that should be able to pick any number of fields. For this kind of money, that'd be a no-brainer. Here we have two problems: Wages are too low to pay for higher food prices that could sustain local field labour, and the majority of average people are already having their hands full with and pockets empty from paying rent, gas, transportation, emergency fund & food as-is. That means, all other jobs also don't pay that well here, and there is simply no local money that could pay high prices. It's the consequence of having an export-oriented economy: labour must at all cost be as low as possible.
- Torwald 7y ago
  > It's the consequence of having an export-oriented economy: labour must at all cost be as low as possible. In what type of economy would that not be the case then?
  - maigret 7y ago
    If you’re not export oriented, you need more consumer purchasing power, so higher wages.
    - Torwald 7y ago
      Seems illogical to me. Companies are paying the wages of only their own workers, but not of their customers.
- rad_gruchalski 7y ago
  > There are enough jobless people in Germany that should be able to pick any number of fields. For this kind of money, that'd be a no-brainer. Following your thought: if it is worth their time and effort. They can’t earn more than €450/month to not have their Krankenversicherung affected. And then, there are taxes, tax classes and whatnot. What if they earn too much and they lose their unemployment status? The situation requires changes in law.
- 7y ago
contingencies 7y ago
Meanwhile in Australia: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/coronavirus-crisis-food-supplies-in-australia-adequate-but-warnings-of-longer-term-supply-impacts https://www.sbs.com.au/news/coronavirus-crisis-food-supplies...
patall 7y ago
Since restaurants are one of the major sources of food going to trash, I was wondering whether the current crisis would not actually have an opposite effect with more food being on the market. Sure, not all types of food but on the other hand people have been buying a lot of nonperishable goods from what i have seen last few weeks which would also indicate lower demand in the near future.
- mycall 7y ago
  Surely a Freakonomics question.
- ginko 7y ago
  >restaurants are one of the major sources of food going to trash Is that the case? I would have assumed that restaurant kitchens are a lot better at avoiding wastage and random spoilage than home cooks. I guess there's left-overs, but you'd also have that at home.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    AFAIK catering (not eat-in/take-out restaurants) waste ridiculous amounts of food, because they overprovision for events and then throw uneaten food away.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      If the host plans ahead and brings some cheap cardboard cartons, they can tell guests to take what they like before leaving. Maybe in some places regulations or liability wouldn't allow this, but I've seen it done and it results in very little food being thrown out.
    - collyw 7y ago
      There is an app here where you can buy up unsold restaurant food at a cheap price.
  - orwin 7y ago
    My sister used to be a cook for two one-star restaurant and a five-star hotel (now in a better paid yet more laid-back job). Your assumption is normal (i had the same) but its false. Even when they reduce some leftovers for sauce/juice, they trow away a lot of food to make it look good. And its even worst for the "grande cuisine" where they throw away multiple dishes when someone at the table goes for a piss and the waiter forgot to tell the cooks. Maybe in fast-food or with bar cuisine this is not the case, but from what i know, they are probable the most inneficient users of food.
carapace 7y ago
Plant your Victory Garden now. (You should have a garden anyway or you're just not living the good life, eh?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden One packet each of your favorite veggies: $10-$30. The next three months of spring & summer: priceless. If you live in an apartment or condo fill your windows with plants using little planter boxes and whatnot. Every bit helps.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  It takes a full acre of land to feed a single person.
  - carapace 7y ago
    I'll grant you that for the sake of discussion (although I don't think it's strictly true), but that acre doesn't have to be all in one place eh? Every bit helps. My sister's neighbor farmed in his (San Francisco) backyard and got about 3~4 crops a year, all year round. It wasn't enough to feed their whole family but it helped.
    - koheripbal 7y ago
      In fact, 1 acre is actually very difficult to get enough food out of. The more common estimate is actually 3 acres for a more varied diet. 1 acre full of potatoes is not what I want in my life.
scanr 7y ago
Fruit and veg 'will run out' unless Britain charters planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe. UK urgently needs 90,000 labourers to pick crops that will otherwise die in the fields, warns charity. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-and-veg-will-run-out-unless-britain-charters-planes-to-fly-in-farm-workers-from-eastern-europe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...
- andarleen 7y ago
  Actually, this is a golden opportunity for east european countries to grow their agro industry. COVID now gives legal grounds to keep workers in their own country, so they neither catch the virus nor enjoy british racism. This can help their economies as well.
  - burntoutfire 7y ago
    There's plenty of agricultural industry in EE (at least in Poland), it's just that it pays a pittance, so the locals prefer to go west, while farmers employ migrants from poorer countries.
    - djsumdog 7y ago
      That's such a fucked up cycle.
      - throwaway894345 7y ago
        Doesn’t it prosper everyone? What happens if the workers from the poorest countries aren’t allowed to work in the wealthier countries? Surely they and the wealthier countries are all worse off? “Non-zero-sum game” and all that...
        mantap 7y ago
        I've noticed that often people who think fruit picking and other "undesirable" jobs should be done by locsl people, never express any interest in doing the aforementioned jobs themselves.
trekrich 7y ago
This is what happens when you dont invest in equipment to harvest in your crop. Rather than relying on cheap migrant labour.
nemo44x 7y ago
In the US I expect prime meat to be considerably cheaper than usual. With restaurants not buying there will be a glut and I expect regular stores (instead of just speciality shops and suppliers) will be getting it for awhile. If there’s 1 thing the US has it is food and the supply chain is excellent. If anything this is an opportunity for the US to make a move on trade with Britain and possibly the EU to export our Ag there, for awhile anyways.
- grumple 7y ago
  I hope you’re right. What’s the situation at the southern border though? Aren’t most of our workers migrants (often undocumented)?
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Only some farms use immigrant labor. They are in trouble. There will be plenty of meat as there is much less labor involved in general. Fruits and vegetables could be left to rot in the field though for lack of labor.
- 01100011 7y ago
  Anecdotal but at Costco the other day all beef was sold out except the prime cuts. I ended up buying some after noticing the price wasn't much higher than what I used to pay. Now, granted, I don't remember what prime meat used to cost, so maybe it was always competitive at Costco?
  - cryptonector 7y ago
    On the day the President declared a national emergency, all the meat was sold out at the local HEB, even the wagyu stuff -- everything. But that was... two weeks ago, and it was probably the start and peak of food panic buying? Today at the local H-Mart there was plenty of everything.
    - 01100011 7y ago
      No doubt the supply chain is catching up. I think things will be fine for many commodities, especially less labor intensive ones like staple crops. I worry about meat, because, AFAIK, it is fairly labor intensive. I think we may see shortages and price increases in a month or two if the virus doesn't subside.
jagger27 7y ago
Got a butternut squash in your pantry? Maybe a couple of tomatoes? Cook it up for dinner and save some seeds! Wash off the pulp and dry them out on a paper towel. It's not too late to start some seedlings, and it's a nice way to pass the time. I've also been experimenting with different dried beans that we stocked up on, and most of them have a pretty high germination rate. Roma beans are super tasty and high in protein, though you need a lot of space to get a good amount of them. Lentils are super easy to sprout too. Another great tip is that once you have a good sized tomato plant, it's super super easy to clone it. You just have to take a cutting at a node and let the stem soak in water. Rooting hormone helps speed it up, but it's possible to do it without. I've cloned about a dozen plants from a single tomato I accidentally started early. Needless to say I'm running out of window sills to stick them as it's still too cold to transplant them. Frankly I saw this coming in January and started hundreds of seedlings of different tomatoes, hot peppers, squash, pumpkins, cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, and chard to share with my neighbours. I'm a bit of a gardening nerd and had a big collection of unused seeds from prior seasons, but you'd be amazed at what you can grow that's already in your pantry or fridge. Potatoes are easy to get started but can be a little finicky with soil conditions. I'm thinking I'll have quite a bit of time to spend in the garden in the coming months. Hopefully I can make a small difference in my community.
- mft_ 7y ago
  Thanks for this! Can you recommend some simple concise instructions on growing tomatoes? I’ve explored a little in the past, but always seemed to run into fairly impenetrable instructions. A basic list of what to buy (in non-gardeners’ terminology) and some simple instructions would be great.
  - jagger27 7y ago
    I'd be happy to! Tomatoes are super forgiving and are a great place to start. The easiest thing is to pick up a seed packet at a garden supply store. I buy most of mine online or from Stokes. Drying out seeds is fairly easy, but seed packets are less work. For starting seedlings you only need a few simple supplies. Ideally you have very light, "airy", soil. This usually sold as "seed starter" mix. You can make do with normal potting soil, or even whatever you can scrounge up from outside, but the seedling has to push its way up to the surface. So if your soil is chunky, or has stuff like woodchips in it, a seedling might struggle to breach the surface. A cheap way to make seed sprouting mix is to pass dry soil through a sifter. You can dry soil in the oven at a low temperature, but it's a bit stinky. You should plant each seed around a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch deep in the soil. I usually lightly poke the soil with my pinky, drop one seed in the hole, and brush some surrounding soil over top. The important thing here is to leave the soil as loose as possible, so don't compact the soil at all if you can help it. Like I mentioned above, the sprout has to poke its way out all on its own, and it's not very strong. You can plant it deeper, but it'll take longer to reach the surface, or may not at all. The ideal place to plant seedlings is in a covered seed tray, though any type of pot will do. If you have a bigger pot, you can plant a bunch of seeds in the same pot. You'd be surprised how big a plant can get in a tiny pot (maybe 2 cubic inches) before running out of space to spread its roots. If you have a good liquid fertilizer (I have a big jug from a hydroponic supply store that I've been going through for two years now) you can basically grow it anything. Some people use clay pellets or rockwool. A plant needs something to hold onto as it grows. Soil is convenient in that it provides both structure and nutrients, and it's what you already have outside. Keep your seedlings in a warm place and never let them dry out. I like using a spray bottle to avoid disturbing the soil when things are just getting started. A covered seed tray keeps the moisture and heat in. Plastic wrap, or some other clear cover works fine in a pinch. Once the plants start getting their "true leaves", i.e. the second set of leaves that look different from the initial seedling leaves, you can remove the cover to give it space to reach up. Most tomatoes need staking (one wooden stake is ideal, bamboo is great, metal cages are common but I find them annoying) to keep them upright once they start getting flowers. Loosely tie the plant to the stake with yarn or twine. If you intend on keep your tomatoes in a pot instead of the ground or some sort of raised bed, make sure the pot is fairly large and either has a drainage hole or some rocks at the bottom of it for water to pool. You never want the soil to be soupy. ---- Edit: not super concise, sorry about that :) Feel free to ask any questions you might have. Also, don't be afraid to experiment. I was lucky enough to have a mother who grew up on a farm teach me most of what I know, but it really just boils down to: light + nutrients + water + heat = food The art is knowing how much of each.
shoulderfake 7y ago
Maybe Americans can experience a few days of hunger here and there and finally get a glimpse into what a lot of the world they invade goes through regularly.
- GhostVII 7y ago
  Which part of the world in particular are you referring to?
- dang 7y ago
  If you continue to post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN, we are going to have to ban you, so please stop. We've had to ask you this repeatedly before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Gustomaximus 7y ago
Extremely anecdotal but in Australia we are seeing people from the retail sector looking at farm work, often the domain of backpackers who are now.not traveling. It is a rebalancing so will likely come with some issues but if cafes/stores etc remain closed perhaps we will likely see these workers head to farms and balance the issue.
- chris1993 7y ago
  I'm not sure this will happen as the state borders are being closed and governments are strongly advising people to stay put. Also the federal government is looking at an 80% of wage scheme similar to the UK which must reduce the pressure to move just to cover living expenses.
agumonkey 7y ago
at this point this is the New main topic médical research and logistics have been reorganized, now critical economic structure has to be ensured do countries list immunized people to know who can fill in rapidly ? should people learn how to ration more ?
mindcrime 7y ago
It may seem a little overly paranoid, but I went to the store a couple of days ago and bought enough new fishing line to re-spool all of my reels (which have sat mostly untouched for nearly 20 years, as I'd drifted away from fishing for fun), and some new lures, bobbers, etc. And tomorrow I think I'm going to go out and do a little fishing, just to make sure I still remember how, and to make sure my gear all still works. I don't necessarily expect to be reduced to needing to fish to feed myself, but at least I have one backup plan if all else fails. Now, note to self... go order that roll of snare wire that I meant to order months ago, and forgot...
- SupplyChainGuy 7y ago
  Except ALOT of people fish for fun. Most lakes are stocked, and as soon as food becomes a shortage i'm pretty sure lakes will stop being stocked.
  - mindcrime 7y ago
    Yep. I'm not saying one could support oneself through nothing but fishing (depending on a lot of details, of course). But I see no reason not to make that one component of a strategy for procuring food. And even if it only serves for a limited period of time (until your local fishing hole is all fished out), that may be enough time to bridge to the point where other options become available. I think that ideally, one would use a combination of fishing, trapping, hunting, foraging for wild edibles, gardening, plus buying whatever food remains available for sale, to handle a shortage situation. Perhaps no one of those mechanisms is sufficient by itself, but the combination may be.
nootropicat 7y ago
If you have pets, don't forget they have to eat too. I just ordered a half year supply of dry food. I wouldn't be surprised to see pet food shortages as global food shortage rears its head.
en4bz 7y ago
This doesn't really track with Agricultural futures. They are all down in the last few months [1]. Either this is bait for retail investors or the pros are asleep at the wheel. [1] https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/ https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/
- makomk 7y ago
  The bulk commodities which have futures markets will likely be fine. Grains are mechanically harvested, so they don't need much in the way of labour. Meat might be a little more in short supply, but not due to labour shortages so much as problems in China. The problems are with fresh food like fruit and vegetables that aren't well suited to futures trading.
  - kasey_junk 7y ago
    Historically problems in fresh veg supply has translated into higher prices for both meat and grains as consumers switch their preferences. The futures markets for grains and meats are both running lower right now. The pros think that demand is going down due to economic activity and the supply chain issues aren’t going to make a dent in that. I have no position but the reading of the markets is that no one is worried about food yet.
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
      > The pros think that demand is going down due to economic activity Does that make any sense? Do people eat fewer grains when economic activity goes down?
      - jldugger 7y ago
        People aren't the only consumer of grains. You have biofuels, as well as livestock feed. Biofuels are likely having a bad time with the breakdown in OPEC. With livestock, people might eat a bit less meat, but I donno if that's really gonna move much. But directly to your point, grain alcohol products might drop a smidge with restaurants out of commission for months. Even if people only drink marginally less, they'll be paying way less for it and I imagine some of that margin cut trickles down the supply chain. More darkly, there may be 1 percent fewer people around to eat bread, steak and drink vodka.
spanktheuser 7y ago
I must be reading the introductory paragraphs incorrectly. Because it seemed like a wealthy landowner was complaining that the virus was preventing them from exploiting the desperately poor to do the actual work of producing a crop (and opposed to just rent-seeking on some family land). Dooming Wimbledon to mere cream without strawberries or something. But I probably misunderstood because mind kept drifting to what would become of those immigrant farm laborers once covid19 is alight in their country. The ones we pay so little they don’t have access to decent healthcare. So we can save €2 on a carton of berries.
kubav 7y ago
You can make your own "vegetable" even in big cities. Tomatoes and peppers are really easy to grow on window or balcony. You can seed them yourself but much easier is to buy young plants. I am also using sprouting jar [1]. Just buy any bio quality seeds and you have you own sprouts grown in 4-7 days, Bio quality is important as normal seed are often chemically treated. I also like garden cress which you can easily plant on paper tissues or cotton wool. It is really delicious with bread and fresh cheese. It is far from 100% vegetable replacement but it is tasty source of vitamins. Especially home grown tomatoes are way more tasty than those sold in normal groceries because they are picked too early to last longer. [1] Something like this https://boulderlocavore.com/sprouting-101-homemade-sprouting-jars-tutorial-diy-mason-jars-giveaway/ https://boulderlocavore.com/sprouting-101-homemade-sprouting...
X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
Anyone have good sources on what foods aren't dependant on farm labor? Can the world get by on them for now? I.e. corn, beans & oil? Maybe apples?
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
The take away from this article must that we have to automate Ag. Any job right now that is considered ‘essential job’ and exposes the worker to covid is the exact job that needs to be automated. What is happening right now is a cautionary tale and answers the question, “what jobs should we automate?”
LockAndLol 7y ago
Maybe right wingers and xenophobes will finally understand why migrant workers are a thing. I doubt they'll appreciate all the work migrant workers do after all this is over, but hopefully the general populace will understand that voting for a bunch of fear-mongerers might lead to a situation where they actually have to pick their own produce. Maybe it has to get worse before people understand just how connected the world is and that local actions do actually have an impact on the world. I severely doubt it though...

464 points by montalbano 7y ago

Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient. Gardens that you grow your own, allotments - the mentality of that has been driven away over decades and now people are starting to smell the roses and realize they can't eat them. So in many avenues - complacency gets highlighted more and I'm sure many and much will change on the back of this period in time. Overall I'd say for the better. Certainly the environment is doing better, so not all side-effects that bad, but even the bad ones, may well get exacerbated and become fear/panic driven. Equally many manual aspects of farming have long been on the verge of better automation and with that, robots. However that drive will only see less people working and the knock-on effects of any change has ripples. But let's not overlook the whole import/export aspects and SPain for example exports a huge amount of fruit and veg, how that pans out over this period will be of note. But for some perspective: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/EDN-20171016-1?inheritRedirect=true https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/-/E... Shows the export and import of food in EUrope as a whole is somewhat balanced. How that balance plays out this year and for few years after will be interesting. Though I don't see any fear of food shortages, sure may be case of some food items being more expensive. But such articles, whilst are a caution warning, they themselves can drive fear and panic and they as always do more damage as any toilet roll can attest. [EDIT spellings and grams]

alexandernst 7y ago
Where (physically) do you expect 500.000 (a small town example) people garden their own food? They'd need to travel outside town, garden, then get back (and all this while also commuting to work on a daily basis). Also, the amount of tools every single person would need to buy. "Decentralisation" is a goof idea, but not feasible in the real world, IMHO. And this is a small town example, leave alone a huge capital like Madrid or Barcelona.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Surrounding farmland, greenhouses if necessary. Can't scale now, but this is the result of fragile ag supply chains. Lessons for the future. Not just ag, manufacturing capacity and black swan preparedness in general. Fragile systems break more easily. Make sturdy systems humans rely on, even if more costly and less efficient.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(gardening) In Britain and Germany, allotment gardening was promoted as a social measure and by all accounts it was successful.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    It's successful at giving people the option to occasionally put some fresh produce on their plates. It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round, let alone your family or everyone else who doesn't have an allotment. If an acute food shortage hit right during harvest season I might be able to hold out for a few weeks, but any other time of year would be pretty bad.
    - pvaldes 7y ago
      > It's not enough to keep yourself fed all year round In 2019 I produced almost 300 Kg of my own food at home without really trying hard, so maybe not all year round, but is possible to notice a difference. The garden had provided me with at least a piece of fresh fruit each day of 2020 and this point is covered until june-2020 at least. The problem is trying to obtain your food without space, without feeding your plants, and relying in magical products. This never works as intended. People needs to understand also that producing food at home is more expensive (but the quality is better).
  - pjc50 7y ago
    Possibly too successful. The waiting lists are usually very long: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/edinburgh-allotment-shortfall-means-plot-waiting-list-12-years-256061 https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/edinburgh-allotm...
groby_b 7y ago
This is a very naive take on the world. You'll need at the very least half an acre to feed yourself sustainably, and that's if you're highly optimized. It's also backbreaking work, and you won't be able to do much else except subsistence farming. In short, it's not practical for the vast majority of the population. The closest we can probably get to this model is instead CSA memberships, supporting farms right outside the dense urban areas which can leverage economies of scale to feed several hundred people. I mean, sure, grow your spring onions, your herbs, and a tomato plant. It's nice. It keeps you connected to where food comes from. It's a yummy addition to your plate. It won't feed you in an emergency, though.
- makomk 7y ago
  Note that it's fine to leave the supply of staples like wheat to large farmers with economies of scale, since that's heavily mechanized and doesn't require many workers, plus the workers it does rely on can be fairly effectively distanced. It's mostly the stuff like fresh fruit and vegetables which is the problem. Those are less reliant on economies of scale and more on cheap imported labour.
  - Zenst 7y ago
    Exactly, I grew tomatoes in my flat few years back, was so choice picking a ripe tomato on christmas day grown indoors on a window ledge and no additional lighting needed. Sure can't grow it all, but certainly makes a positive dent in my needs.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      Yikes, you grew tomatoes indoors? How did you stand the smell?
      - Zenst 7y ago
        Was not an issue at all.
- Zenst 7y ago
pascalxus 7y ago
It's sad, but here in CA, most people don't have yards and there's nowhere to grow food. It's especially dumb because there's miles and miles of undeveloped land everywhere (at least in the east bay suberbs), not being used for anything in particular except maybe some farms with cows on it: I'm sure they're taking advantage of huge tax wholes because they're sitting on land that would cost 10s of millions of dollars in property taxes were it taxed at the same rate that people need to pay. Also, there's no community compost which means people need to buy all of it at stores like home depot, making it expensive because they have to bag it and warehouse it, etc. The nearest compost I have to my house where I can get compost is nearly 35 miles away.
- Zenst 7y ago
  I live in a flat, it has windows and window ledges and I grow things - sure not enough to sustain, but makes a dent in the right direction, also helps flats air quality. As for compost, i'm supprised as I live in London and can easily get it. But appreciate that it may be a case of supply/demand and if no demand, the supply moves away. Seems like an opportunity business wise in the times ahead as if you have that issue - many others will.
- sologoub 7y ago
  SF Bay Area is not really representative of California as a whole. Most people outside of the dense cores have a place for a small garden. State is large and diverse. Los Angeles is a lot less dense and most people have at least a balcony on which you can grow stuff in pots. Won’t sustain you as the only source, but will provide greens and some variety. Yards are pretty common and usually green. Water shortages have led to some converting to hardscape, but that can be reversed. Prop 13 is an issue, but the level of development opposition in Bay Area is another matter all together compared to the rest of the state. Where little you can build developers end up cramming every last inch with profit-producing structures. Couple with crappy commuting infrastructure and you have what we are living.
  - pascalxus 7y ago
    You can drive out as far as fairfield, about 70 miles outside of the bay area and still see housing communities packed together like slums with nothing but yellow and green for miles in every direction.
downshun 7y ago
> incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient The drawback to this is the opportunity cost. Comparative advantage is the benefit of the current set-up. Although 'self-sufficient' may sound warm and nice.
mellow2020 7y ago
> Certainly the environment is doing better, I wouldn't be so sure (yet) about the overall outcome. For example, the EPA just suspends enforcement of all environmental laws "because corona". https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-suspends-enforcement-of-environmental-laws-amid-coronavirus https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/489753-epa-sus... > The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental laws Thursday, telling companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak. > The temporary policy, for which the EPA has set no end date, would allow any number of industries to skirt environmental laws, with the agency saying it will not “seek penalties for noncompliance with routine monitoring and reporting obligations.”
- abootstrapper 7y ago
  I really don’t get this. How is this helpful against the pandemic?
  - pvaldes 7y ago
    What? No more illegal pangolin for dinner?.
    - abootstrapper 7y ago
      Honest question. How is the EPA suspending enforcement aid in the fight against Covid-19?
      - tlb 7y ago
        The EPA says not only that your new chemical plant can't dump waste in the river, but also that before you even start your factory you have to file elaborate plans explaining all the measures you're going to take to make sure it never happens. If we want companies to quickly spin up new factories for ventilators and masks, it's a good idea to let them start the factory now and file the plans next year.
2ion 7y ago
> Hopefully this may incentivize people to be a bit more self-sufficient This has nothing to do with "people". Securing the food supply is a matter of national security, which is why such a shortage of labour should have never been allowed to even happen. The correct way to go about this would have been subsidized pay for local farmhands, a directive that a given / high percentage of food crop must be preserved at any cost and regulation that subsidies that already go to agriculture do not go into profits but actually trickle down.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

Tangentially related, NPR aired an interview the other day with undocumented migrant workers (in the US) living very close together when traveling (sleeping sitting up together in a van) and having very limited access to water for bathing and hygiene when lodging at farms where they were working picking produce; it's likely this causes grave loss of life in the migrant community, and decimates produce farms economically this season. Edit: This is not intended as a political comment, only an observation of a component of the pandemic macro. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/816644358/covid-19-threatens-food-supply-chain-as-farms-worry-about-workers-falling-ill https://www.npr.org/2020/03/18/816644358/covid-19-threatens-...

lone_post 7y ago
Tangentially related: Yet another reason why illegal aliens must be expelled from the country and not allowed to return unless through legal means. Of course Republicans love illegal labor because it's cheap and Democrats love it because they don't believe in borders anymore. Thus the American people and the American worker must wage a two front war against two selfish and entrenched political classes.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't use HN for political battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys what this site exists for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - lone_post 7y ago
    I'm sorry, I'll hold back next time.
Zenst 7y ago
Undocumented migrants have for all effect become the modern day equivalent of slavery without the associated compasion. Many happy to lambast such people and yet, be first to complain if their avocados go up in price or out of stock. Hopefully, some level of amnisty and clean slate is driven here as currently without that, will only shoot themselves in the foot on many levels. After all, many live day by day, kinda hard to carry on if that is removed from them and more so, kinda hard to isolate if they have no other choice. That is sadly one area that politics needs to agree upon and deal with, otherwise the impact will be wide upon many fronts.

partingshots 7y ago

Doesn’t the Netherlands export the majority of Europe’s fresh food? As long as the supply chain doesn’t break down, I don’t see how it would be possible for Spain and Germany to run out of food. Especially since they’re all in the EU, even if the Netherlands wanted to close off their borders, there’s no way they really could.

isaacgreyed 7y ago
A drop in supply in food all at once could raise the price causing considerable issues.
llampx 7y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by countries in the EU not being able to close their borders, they can.
- muro 7y ago
  They can and recently did.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
the8472 7y ago
Based on the greenhouses I could identify on google maps spain's part seems much larger. Netherlands - https://www.google.com/maps/@52.021357,4.5405597,46292m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@52.021357,4.5405597,46292m/data... Spain - https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7995257,-2.4654344,60237m/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@36.7995257,-2.4654344,60237m/da...
- danieldk 7y ago
  I am not sure about fresh food, but The Netherlands is world's second largest agricultural exporter (and no, it's not only flowers): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-... Also, it's not only about size, also efficiency. Scroll down the article and look at the insane yields per square mile for tomatoes, chilies + green peppers, and cucumbers. No other country comes even close.

411111111111111 7y ago

Nobody forced the farmers to become reliant on migrant workers though. It was just a simple decision for them: cheap labor that's available today or expensive labor... They mostly went with cheap, and now they don't have anyone available. Tough luck I guess, but it always was just a question of time until this happened.

makomk 7y ago
At least in the UK, the countryside has basically turned into a vacation and retirement area for wealthy Londoners. It's pretty much impossible for people to afford to live where the labour is needed on any sort of pay that would make farming actually viable, which restricts it to workers from lower cost-of-living countries that cram into cramped accommodation for the length of the season and then return home. Not sure about countries like Spain and Germany.
- maelito 7y ago
  The countryside everywhere in UK ? Or just around London ?
  - makomk 7y ago
    Everywhere in England at the very least. Wales and especially Scotland might be a little better. The south and around London is probably worse, but even rural Yorkshire is pretty bad.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      Scot here. The countryside is open to everyone, and the "right to roam" makes it even moreso. But I haven't seen much different in the rest of the UK - honestly, to claim the countryside is a giant retirement home seems absolutely absurd to me.
  - gambiting 7y ago
    Around London and a lot of the "south". But come out to Yorkshire or Northumberland and you can buy a farm and some land for very little. Living outside of the city in Northumberland(say within 30 minute driving distance to Newcastle) can be stupidly cheap.

MrKitai 7y ago

This is false, at least in Spain. Farms are working normally except that they increased prices a bit. But that's normal due to the situation.

asien 7y ago
Where did you get that info ? The news in France reported strictly the same situation. Polish Worker ( which are majority in field work in rural area ) are sent home due to quarantaine, thus there is not enough workforce to harvest fruits and vegetables. More than half of the production of small farmer is at risk of being lost , and theirs salary with it. Societies are at risk of much bigger collapse.

ojagodzinski 7y ago

paywall

dheera 7y ago
Paste this into the console: document.body.dataset.paywallOverlayStatus="hide";document.querySelector("#graphics-paywall-overlay").remove();
- evv 7y ago
  Easier to use a browser that has your back, like Brave or Cliqz

dheera 7y ago

To get past the paywall, paste this into the console: document.body.dataset.paywallOverlayStatus="hide";document.querySelector("#graphics-paywall-overlay").remove(); I think it is unethical to put information regarding an epidemic behind a paywall.

Noumenon72 7y ago
We want information about the pandemic, don't we? If we do not pay for it, all we will get is what people figure out in their spare time while confined to their homes. Without paywalls, we would just have Kickstarters like "If everyone who wants to know whether farmers are able to produce fresh fruit gives me $5, I will go and ask them!" You can always get the information by word of mouth or waiting. The amount you're not willing to do that is the amount you should pay to see it now. (I don't pay and just read the reaction in the comments for free.)
- dheera 7y ago
  I disagree, I think when it comes to a pandemic or any other public safety issue, immediate access to information should be free. FWIW NYT has disabled the paywall on all their articles about coronavirus (although there's still a loginwall). We shouldn't be putting prices on human lives.
  - Noumenon72 7y ago
    If the NYT gives it for free, that means you should read the NYT, not steal from people who don't give it for free. Putting prices on human lives is a good idea. We do it for food, we do it for car safety, we do it for relative risk analysis. Putting a price on groceries means the government can subsidize food fairly, rather than having individuals break the locks on the grocery stores and say "food should be free".

ur-whale 7y ago

https://archive.is/hczJN https://archive.is/hczJN

writejournal 7y ago

not sure if this will help the situation...

k__ 7y ago

I also read, the nurses that were commuting from other EU countries to work in Germany are now going back to help their home countries.

odshoifsdhfs 7y ago
mind sharing a source? Would be interested to know abou this since I have been defending the reason some countries are at a better position than others Healthcare wise is due to brain-drain in those segments.
hocuspocus 7y ago
That sounds a bit hard to believe. Walk away now and you'll probably never be employed in the country ever again. If they were OK with wages in their home country they would not be cross border commuters to begin with.
- rm_-rf_slash 7y ago
  Perhaps they wanted to be closer to their families and the communities they grew up with.
- Izkata 7y ago
  May have something to do with Germany closing their borders: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51905129 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51905129

chewz 7y ago

So we have labour shortages in countryside and unemployed people in urban centers. Problem?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gutnor 7y ago
The only reason people are unemployed is that they are confined in their homes. Once they can head to the countryside to pick strawberries, chances are they can just head back to their regular job too.
- pm90 7y ago
  Not if a lot of small businesses shut down. In which case it will take a while for the jobs to come back.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Farms are essential. If you are willing to do "back breaking" manual labor there are farmers who can give you the papers to get out of your house. You may not like the location you end up in.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Working outside is orders of magnitude safer that working in an office.

aazaa 7y ago

> From Huelva to Hamburg and Newcastle to Naples, Europe’s farmers are struggling to find people to bring in rapidly ripening fruits and vegetables, which frequently must be hand-picked, usually within a window of just a few days. They typically rely on seasonal workers from eastern Europe or northern Africa, but fears of the coronavirus are keeping hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers from leaving home, and controls on once-unfettered borders are stopping many of those willing to make the trip. This is a recipe for shortage. Unlike funbucks dashed off by central banks without so much as breaking a sweat, it takes actual work to grow, harvest, and distribute crops. It also takes time. All of these things can't be faked the way that currency can.

mc32 7y ago
If they can't get picked in time, they can can them, freeze them or dry them. Some will spoil beyond recovery, but not all has to be lost either.
- luxuryballs 7y ago
  uh you have to pick it before you can preserve it
  - mc32 7y ago
    Overripe fruits don’t sell in Tehran market, but you can do other things with them. So instead of two weeks to pick, you have maybe four, depending on the fruit.
Scoundreller 7y ago
> it takes actual work to grow, harvest, and distribute crops. I look forward to the test of "Europeans don't want to do _____ work" when the shit-pay factor is removed.
- phenkdo 7y ago
  do you also look forward to the 10x grocery shit-bill you will be stuck with?

baybal2 7y ago

Coworkers in Shenzhen are already saying that more fancier foods are already getting scarcer in the inland China, and prices are going up by day. China has done a massive livestock slaughter campaign when the quarantine was declared. That has actually depressed the food prices quite a bit for the first months, but after that, the prices have shot up. This is how they got that much meat: https://mustsharenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Wuhan-Residents-Receive-Frozen-Meat-Via-Garbage-Truck-Delivery-Officials-Reclaiming-Distributed-Bags.jpg https://mustsharenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Wuhan-R... The scariest part of it is that China relies ENORMOUSLY on the imported food, despite accounting for more than 20% of global food production. The government has expected to shut everything down, including food production, and weather the crisis by relying on the remaining food in the supply chain. China has spent a big portion of its national food reserve too: https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1220714156753653760/pu/img/YgmN0Rm1tncDvuf9.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/ext_tw_video_thumb/1220714156753653760... They planned to restock quickly with overseas imports after the lockdown was to be lifted. Now that overseas supply is a big question mark... I heard the same is going in much of the world. Agricultural business is facing shutdown, and they are cashing out their livestock, seedstock, and trying to get an early harvest done before the lockdowns hit their countries. And people were saying that we will never see a famine in Asia in the 21st century. That optimism was premature...

yunusabd 7y ago
Your second link goes to a still image. I assume you mean this [1] video? Though I don't see how that supports the statement that China has spent a big portion of its national reserve. [1] https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett/status/1220725276394565632 https://twitter.com/laurie_garrett/status/122072527639456563...
- baybal2 7y ago
  China imports a gigantic amount of food, and ports were first to be hit by disruption. As a person who works in OEM electronics in China, I can tell at least that. So, at any normal day, China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself. Agriculture has been on shutdown for the past 2.5 months. Farms have slaughtered a large portion of their livestock, and a big portion of the seedstock has been used for food in the last few months too. Chinese national reserves were said to be able to keep the country going for 3 months under a strict rationing regime, which we haven't seen, but at least we know by many accounts that meat reserves have been released all across China with no restraint. Now try guessing how much of it left. P.S. On ports. I initially wrote them being shut down, I correct that they are facing major disruption, with a lot of ships missing their berthing timeslots

downshun 7y ago

What is limiting robot-assisted telemetric food harvesting? Why cant I connect to the web with a gaming console, play farmer and be rewarded for it? The data could eventually be used to develop self-harvesting farms. There's already automated computer assisted surgery, so is this really that far off? Is it desirable? It runs eventually into a similar problem as self-driving cars and the looming unemployment of truckers. What's Earth's carrying capacity for humans? We can be our own existential risk.

lnsru 7y ago
This pandemic will boost automation for sure. I hope, I can transform my side project to robotics startup afterwards. Current home office regulation saves me commuting time and I can do more development for myself. Outdoor machinery is hard topic by itself. It’s not comparable to controlled environment where surgery robots operate. It’s permanent dirt, dust and changing weather conditions.
qayxc 7y ago
> There's already automated computer assisted surgery, so is this really that far off? Is it desirable? It's a question of cost and development effort versus utility. You can train a good picker/harvester within just a few weeks and that person can work the fields seasonally for decades while doing other productive things for the rest of the year. Designing, building, deploying, and maintaining a machine complex enough to harvest asparagus, strawberries, and salad, however, is a very costly endeavour that yields very little benefit. The machines would cost billions to develop, millions to build, and are only usable for a short time of the year and for a very limited task. A minimum-wage field worker can do the job faster and cheaper and a machine would basically need to run half a century just to pay for itself - and that doesn't even include the development costs. Don't make the mistake to underestimate the amount of technology required to replace a human being for doing "simple tasks". Things that are simple for humans are incredibly hard for machines and vice versa.
gdubs 7y ago
I hope we get there. Things have gotten closer. The ideal is being able to harvest something like a strawberry without ruining it and it turns out to be rather difficult. With enough attention and investment, this is certainly a solvable problem. Let’s hope our attention spans get a little longer and we can stay focused on the need to innovate on food security when this is all over.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

m0zg 7y ago

And that's what your average HN reader does not understand when they talk about keeping the country closed down forever. Groceries aren't put on the shelves by a grocery fairy. They can't be put there by the government or a central bank. They actually have to be grown or imported, both of which can be problematic if you shut everything down and disrupt the supply chains.

montalbano 7y ago

Another more UK-centric Guardian article that may be of interest: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-and-veg-will-run-out-unless-britain-charters-planes-to-fly-in-farm-workers-from-eastern-europe https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/28/fruit-an...

robk 7y ago
Why aren't they just raising wages? There are many people who can work and need jobs simply a matter of finding the clearing price and passing it on to us consumers which I'm very happy to bear.
- pjc50 7y ago
  The price is set by wholesalers, especially supermarkets. I'm not convinced they can re-eqilibriate the market before the harvest spoils.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    If the wholesalers want the product to sell it, then they will change the price so that it makes sense to harvest it.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - s1artibartfast 7y ago
      If this price is too high, the wholesalers will not be able to sell it and choose not to buy it
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Then that would indicate there is no market clearing price for the product so farmers will stop producing it. I.e. people can't afford it anymore.

thyrsus 7y ago

Low wages for field workers (e.g. picking berries) has stunted automation of these tasks, though I think we're now at the level of robotics (especially computer vision) where it's feasible.

DethNinja 7y ago
We are definitely at this stage. So long as ruling class wishes they can make huge automation improvements in agriculture in just couple of decades and easily feed the current world population.
Etheryte 7y ago
Sadly, I think this is an example of what I would maybe call the HN Dunning-Kruger approach to many problems: "just" use IT/AI/robots/etc. There are many companies who have been working in this space for a long time, there's a reason why it's still manual work — it's freaking hard. Berries are a good example of this, personally I'm intricately familiar with the strawberry industry, but I believe it applies elsewhere too. Strawberries are very tender. If you apply too much pressure, it will mulch and one berry going bad is usually enough to get the whole box moldy. The second tricky bit is that you want to pick strawberries with the right amount of stem remaining: too little and you risk hurting the berry, too much and the stem will break other berries in the box, leading to mold again. One final difficult problem is finding the berries: strawberries often grow fairly bushy, especially so if you grow one of the varieties that gives large berries. To find the strawberries in the bush, you usually gently move around the leaves to see if there are any. This is again a very "feel" based movement, too little movement and you miss the berry, too much and you damage the plant. I'm not saying this won't ever be done. As mentioned before, there are companies who are actively working in this space, many of them for many years already. I do think however that the problem is considerably more difficult than what may be observed at first.
- jiggawatts 7y ago
  It has been done! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCivsotZEjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCivsotZEjk There's actually several designs out there for picking strawberries, but like the OP said, expensive robots aren't competitive with cheap labour. If the labour pool dries up, they're more economically viable.

ornornor 7y ago

Holly shit since this whole pandemic thing has started, I couldn’t stop thinking about the preppers who must be popping champagne every night and be so happy all their work was for something after all. Everyone made fun of them, but now they’re the ones laughing. The rest of us? We’re just clueless. Seriously, if society was going to collapse I don’t think I’d last very long. I could maybe trade some tomatoes for a couple bullets but then what?

Mirioron 7y ago
Preppers are just a more extreme version of the people who have a gun for defending themselves. A bad enough emergency can wipe out everything you have. I guess you could compare this to IT plans for disasters. Most of us have barely any backups for most things. Yet there are those who have multiple off-site backups that are tested often whether they work.
Der_Einzige 7y ago
Being prepared is how you survive and thrive in 90% of situations. While I am not one, I never thought it made sense to make fun of them. Folks who laughed at them played a stupid game and won a stupid prize...

2ion 7y ago

I'd go to the fields at once if it be worth my time. That means 50€/hour plus benefits, and fully paid transportation and accommodation. There are enough jobless people in Germany that should be able to pick any number of fields. For this kind of money, that'd be a no-brainer. Here we have two problems: Wages are too low to pay for higher food prices that could sustain local field labour, and the majority of average people are already having their hands full with and pockets empty from paying rent, gas, transportation, emergency fund & food as-is. That means, all other jobs also don't pay that well here, and there is simply no local money that could pay high prices. It's the consequence of having an export-oriented economy: labour must at all cost be as low as possible.

Torwald 7y ago
> It's the consequence of having an export-oriented economy: labour must at all cost be as low as possible. In what type of economy would that not be the case then?
- maigret 7y ago
  If you’re not export oriented, you need more consumer purchasing power, so higher wages.
  - Torwald 7y ago
    Seems illogical to me. Companies are paying the wages of only their own workers, but not of their customers.
rad_gruchalski 7y ago
> There are enough jobless people in Germany that should be able to pick any number of fields. For this kind of money, that'd be a no-brainer. Following your thought: if it is worth their time and effort. They can’t earn more than €450/month to not have their Krankenversicherung affected. And then, there are taxes, tax classes and whatnot. What if they earn too much and they lose their unemployment status? The situation requires changes in law.
7y ago

contingencies 7y ago

Meanwhile in Australia: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/coronavirus-crisis-food-supplies-in-australia-adequate-but-warnings-of-longer-term-supply-impacts https://www.sbs.com.au/news/coronavirus-crisis-food-supplies...

patall 7y ago

Since restaurants are one of the major sources of food going to trash, I was wondering whether the current crisis would not actually have an opposite effect with more food being on the market. Sure, not all types of food but on the other hand people have been buying a lot of nonperishable goods from what i have seen last few weeks which would also indicate lower demand in the near future.

mycall 7y ago
Surely a Freakonomics question.
ginko 7y ago
>restaurants are one of the major sources of food going to trash Is that the case? I would have assumed that restaurant kitchens are a lot better at avoiding wastage and random spoilage than home cooks. I guess there's left-overs, but you'd also have that at home.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  AFAIK catering (not eat-in/take-out restaurants) waste ridiculous amounts of food, because they overprovision for events and then throw uneaten food away.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    If the host plans ahead and brings some cheap cardboard cartons, they can tell guests to take what they like before leaving. Maybe in some places regulations or liability wouldn't allow this, but I've seen it done and it results in very little food being thrown out.
  - collyw 7y ago
    There is an app here where you can buy up unsold restaurant food at a cheap price.
- orwin 7y ago
  My sister used to be a cook for two one-star restaurant and a five-star hotel (now in a better paid yet more laid-back job). Your assumption is normal (i had the same) but its false. Even when they reduce some leftovers for sauce/juice, they trow away a lot of food to make it look good. And its even worst for the "grande cuisine" where they throw away multiple dishes when someone at the table goes for a piss and the waiter forgot to tell the cooks. Maybe in fast-food or with bar cuisine this is not the case, but from what i know, they are probable the most inneficient users of food.

carapace 7y ago

Plant your Victory Garden now. (You should have a garden anyway or you're just not living the good life, eh?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden One packet each of your favorite veggies: $10-$30. The next three months of spring & summer: priceless. If you live in an apartment or condo fill your windows with plants using little planter boxes and whatnot. Every bit helps.

koheripbal 7y ago
It takes a full acre of land to feed a single person.
- carapace 7y ago
  I'll grant you that for the sake of discussion (although I don't think it's strictly true), but that acre doesn't have to be all in one place eh? Every bit helps. My sister's neighbor farmed in his (San Francisco) backyard and got about 3~4 crops a year, all year round. It wasn't enough to feed their whole family but it helped.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    In fact, 1 acre is actually very difficult to get enough food out of. The more common estimate is actually 3 acres for a more varied diet. 1 acre full of potatoes is not what I want in my life.

scanr 7y ago

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

andarleen 7y ago
Actually, this is a golden opportunity for east european countries to grow their agro industry. COVID now gives legal grounds to keep workers in their own country, so they neither catch the virus nor enjoy british racism. This can help their economies as well.
- burntoutfire 7y ago
  There's plenty of agricultural industry in EE (at least in Poland), it's just that it pays a pittance, so the locals prefer to go west, while farmers employ migrants from poorer countries.
  - djsumdog 7y ago
    That's such a fucked up cycle.
    - throwaway894345 7y ago
      Doesn’t it prosper everyone? What happens if the workers from the poorest countries aren’t allowed to work in the wealthier countries? Surely they and the wealthier countries are all worse off? “Non-zero-sum game” and all that...
      - mantap 7y ago
        I've noticed that often people who think fruit picking and other "undesirable" jobs should be done by locsl people, never express any interest in doing the aforementioned jobs themselves.

trekrich 7y ago

This is what happens when you dont invest in equipment to harvest in your crop. Rather than relying on cheap migrant labour.

nemo44x 7y ago

In the US I expect prime meat to be considerably cheaper than usual. With restaurants not buying there will be a glut and I expect regular stores (instead of just speciality shops and suppliers) will be getting it for awhile. If there’s 1 thing the US has it is food and the supply chain is excellent. If anything this is an opportunity for the US to make a move on trade with Britain and possibly the EU to export our Ag there, for awhile anyways.

grumple 7y ago
I hope you’re right. What’s the situation at the southern border though? Aren’t most of our workers migrants (often undocumented)?
- bluGill 7y ago
  Only some farms use immigrant labor. They are in trouble. There will be plenty of meat as there is much less labor involved in general. Fruits and vegetables could be left to rot in the field though for lack of labor.
01100011 7y ago
Anecdotal but at Costco the other day all beef was sold out except the prime cuts. I ended up buying some after noticing the price wasn't much higher than what I used to pay. Now, granted, I don't remember what prime meat used to cost, so maybe it was always competitive at Costco?
- cryptonector 7y ago
  On the day the President declared a national emergency, all the meat was sold out at the local HEB, even the wagyu stuff -- everything. But that was... two weeks ago, and it was probably the start and peak of food panic buying? Today at the local H-Mart there was plenty of everything.
  - 01100011 7y ago
    No doubt the supply chain is catching up. I think things will be fine for many commodities, especially less labor intensive ones like staple crops. I worry about meat, because, AFAIK, it is fairly labor intensive. I think we may see shortages and price increases in a month or two if the virus doesn't subside.

jagger27 7y ago

Got a butternut squash in your pantry? Maybe a couple of tomatoes? Cook it up for dinner and save some seeds! Wash off the pulp and dry them out on a paper towel. It's not too late to start some seedlings, and it's a nice way to pass the time. I've also been experimenting with different dried beans that we stocked up on, and most of them have a pretty high germination rate. Roma beans are super tasty and high in protein, though you need a lot of space to get a good amount of them. Lentils are super easy to sprout too. Another great tip is that once you have a good sized tomato plant, it's super super easy to clone it. You just have to take a cutting at a node and let the stem soak in water. Rooting hormone helps speed it up, but it's possible to do it without. I've cloned about a dozen plants from a single tomato I accidentally started early. Needless to say I'm running out of window sills to stick them as it's still too cold to transplant them. Frankly I saw this coming in January and started hundreds of seedlings of different tomatoes, hot peppers, squash, pumpkins, cucumber, zucchini, lettuce, and chard to share with my neighbours. I'm a bit of a gardening nerd and had a big collection of unused seeds from prior seasons, but you'd be amazed at what you can grow that's already in your pantry or fridge. Potatoes are easy to get started but can be a little finicky with soil conditions. I'm thinking I'll have quite a bit of time to spend in the garden in the coming months. Hopefully I can make a small difference in my community.

mft_ 7y ago
Thanks for this! Can you recommend some simple concise instructions on growing tomatoes? I’ve explored a little in the past, but always seemed to run into fairly impenetrable instructions. A basic list of what to buy (in non-gardeners’ terminology) and some simple instructions would be great.
- jagger27 7y ago
  I'd be happy to! Tomatoes are super forgiving and are a great place to start. The easiest thing is to pick up a seed packet at a garden supply store. I buy most of mine online or from Stokes. Drying out seeds is fairly easy, but seed packets are less work. For starting seedlings you only need a few simple supplies. Ideally you have very light, "airy", soil. This usually sold as "seed starter" mix. You can make do with normal potting soil, or even whatever you can scrounge up from outside, but the seedling has to push its way up to the surface. So if your soil is chunky, or has stuff like woodchips in it, a seedling might struggle to breach the surface. A cheap way to make seed sprouting mix is to pass dry soil through a sifter. You can dry soil in the oven at a low temperature, but it's a bit stinky. You should plant each seed around a 1/4 to a 1/2 inch deep in the soil. I usually lightly poke the soil with my pinky, drop one seed in the hole, and brush some surrounding soil over top. The important thing here is to leave the soil as loose as possible, so don't compact the soil at all if you can help it. Like I mentioned above, the sprout has to poke its way out all on its own, and it's not very strong. You can plant it deeper, but it'll take longer to reach the surface, or may not at all. The ideal place to plant seedlings is in a covered seed tray, though any type of pot will do. If you have a bigger pot, you can plant a bunch of seeds in the same pot. You'd be surprised how big a plant can get in a tiny pot (maybe 2 cubic inches) before running out of space to spread its roots. If you have a good liquid fertilizer (I have a big jug from a hydroponic supply store that I've been going through for two years now) you can basically grow it anything. Some people use clay pellets or rockwool. A plant needs something to hold onto as it grows. Soil is convenient in that it provides both structure and nutrients, and it's what you already have outside. Keep your seedlings in a warm place and never let them dry out. I like using a spray bottle to avoid disturbing the soil when things are just getting started. A covered seed tray keeps the moisture and heat in. Plastic wrap, or some other clear cover works fine in a pinch. Once the plants start getting their "true leaves", i.e. the second set of leaves that look different from the initial seedling leaves, you can remove the cover to give it space to reach up. Most tomatoes need staking (one wooden stake is ideal, bamboo is great, metal cages are common but I find them annoying) to keep them upright once they start getting flowers. Loosely tie the plant to the stake with yarn or twine. If you intend on keep your tomatoes in a pot instead of the ground or some sort of raised bed, make sure the pot is fairly large and either has a drainage hole or some rocks at the bottom of it for water to pool. You never want the soil to be soupy. ---- Edit: not super concise, sorry about that :) Feel free to ask any questions you might have. Also, don't be afraid to experiment. I was lucky enough to have a mother who grew up on a farm teach me most of what I know, but it really just boils down to: light + nutrients + water + heat = food The art is knowing how much of each.

shoulderfake 7y ago

Maybe Americans can experience a few days of hunger here and there and finally get a glimpse into what a lot of the world they invade goes through regularly.

GhostVII 7y ago
Which part of the world in particular are you referring to?
dang 7y ago
If you continue to post flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN, we are going to have to ban you, so please stop. We've had to ask you this repeatedly before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Gustomaximus 7y ago

Extremely anecdotal but in Australia we are seeing people from the retail sector looking at farm work, often the domain of backpackers who are now.not traveling. It is a rebalancing so will likely come with some issues but if cafes/stores etc remain closed perhaps we will likely see these workers head to farms and balance the issue.

chris1993 7y ago
I'm not sure this will happen as the state borders are being closed and governments are strongly advising people to stay put. Also the federal government is looking at an 80% of wage scheme similar to the UK which must reduce the pressure to move just to cover living expenses.

agumonkey 7y ago

at this point this is the New main topic médical research and logistics have been reorganized, now critical economic structure has to be ensured do countries list immunized people to know who can fill in rapidly ? should people learn how to ration more ?

mindcrime 7y ago

It may seem a little overly paranoid, but I went to the store a couple of days ago and bought enough new fishing line to re-spool all of my reels (which have sat mostly untouched for nearly 20 years, as I'd drifted away from fishing for fun), and some new lures, bobbers, etc. And tomorrow I think I'm going to go out and do a little fishing, just to make sure I still remember how, and to make sure my gear all still works. I don't necessarily expect to be reduced to needing to fish to feed myself, but at least I have one backup plan if all else fails. Now, note to self... go order that roll of snare wire that I meant to order months ago, and forgot...

SupplyChainGuy 7y ago
Except ALOT of people fish for fun. Most lakes are stocked, and as soon as food becomes a shortage i'm pretty sure lakes will stop being stocked.
- mindcrime 7y ago
  Yep. I'm not saying one could support oneself through nothing but fishing (depending on a lot of details, of course). But I see no reason not to make that one component of a strategy for procuring food. And even if it only serves for a limited period of time (until your local fishing hole is all fished out), that may be enough time to bridge to the point where other options become available. I think that ideally, one would use a combination of fishing, trapping, hunting, foraging for wild edibles, gardening, plus buying whatever food remains available for sale, to handle a shortage situation. Perhaps no one of those mechanisms is sufficient by itself, but the combination may be.

nootropicat 7y ago

If you have pets, don't forget they have to eat too. I just ordered a half year supply of dry food. I wouldn't be surprised to see pet food shortages as global food shortage rears its head.

en4bz 7y ago

This doesn't really track with Agricultural futures. They are all down in the last few months [1]. Either this is bait for retail investors or the pros are asleep at the wheel. [1] https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/ https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/agricultural/

makomk 7y ago
The bulk commodities which have futures markets will likely be fine. Grains are mechanically harvested, so they don't need much in the way of labour. Meat might be a little more in short supply, but not due to labour shortages so much as problems in China. The problems are with fresh food like fruit and vegetables that aren't well suited to futures trading.
- kasey_junk 7y ago
  Historically problems in fresh veg supply has translated into higher prices for both meat and grains as consumers switch their preferences. The futures markets for grains and meats are both running lower right now. The pros think that demand is going down due to economic activity and the supply chain issues aren’t going to make a dent in that. I have no position but the reading of the markets is that no one is worried about food yet.
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    > The pros think that demand is going down due to economic activity Does that make any sense? Do people eat fewer grains when economic activity goes down?
    - jldugger 7y ago
      People aren't the only consumer of grains. You have biofuels, as well as livestock feed. Biofuels are likely having a bad time with the breakdown in OPEC. With livestock, people might eat a bit less meat, but I donno if that's really gonna move much. But directly to your point, grain alcohol products might drop a smidge with restaurants out of commission for months. Even if people only drink marginally less, they'll be paying way less for it and I imagine some of that margin cut trickles down the supply chain. More darkly, there may be 1 percent fewer people around to eat bread, steak and drink vodka.

spanktheuser 7y ago

I must be reading the introductory paragraphs incorrectly. Because it seemed like a wealthy landowner was complaining that the virus was preventing them from exploiting the desperately poor to do the actual work of producing a crop (and opposed to just rent-seeking on some family land). Dooming Wimbledon to mere cream without strawberries or something. But I probably misunderstood because mind kept drifting to what would become of those immigrant farm laborers once covid19 is alight in their country. The ones we pay so little they don’t have access to decent healthcare. So we can save €2 on a carton of berries.

kubav 7y ago

You can make your own "vegetable" even in big cities. Tomatoes and peppers are really easy to grow on window or balcony. You can seed them yourself but much easier is to buy young plants. I am also using sprouting jar [1]. Just buy any bio quality seeds and you have you own sprouts grown in 4-7 days, Bio quality is important as normal seed are often chemically treated. I also like garden cress which you can easily plant on paper tissues or cotton wool. It is really delicious with bread and fresh cheese. It is far from 100% vegetable replacement but it is tasty source of vitamins. Especially home grown tomatoes are way more tasty than those sold in normal groceries because they are picked too early to last longer. [1] Something like this https://boulderlocavore.com/sprouting-101-homemade-sprouting-jars-tutorial-diy-mason-jars-giveaway/ https://boulderlocavore.com/sprouting-101-homemade-sprouting...

X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago

Anyone have good sources on what foods aren't dependant on farm labor? Can the world get by on them for now? I.e. corn, beans & oil? Maybe apples?

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

The take away from this article must that we have to automate Ag. Any job right now that is considered ‘essential job’ and exposes the worker to covid is the exact job that needs to be automated. What is happening right now is a cautionary tale and answers the question, “what jobs should we automate?”

LockAndLol 7y ago

Maybe right wingers and xenophobes will finally understand why migrant workers are a thing. I doubt they'll appreciate all the work migrant workers do after all this is over, but hopefully the general populace will understand that voting for a bunch of fear-mongerers might lead to a situation where they actually have to pick their own produce. Maybe it has to get worse before people understand just how connected the world is and that local actions do actually have an impact on the world. I severely doubt it though...