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> 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 frequ
by 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 agoIf 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 agouh you have to pick it before you can preserve it
- mc32 7y agoOverripe 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 agodo you also look forward to the 10x grocery shit-bill you will be stuck with?
- 13415 7y agoYes.
- robk 7y agoSure if it means people are being paid a fair wage. I should pay more for things where I'm exploiting labor tbh.
- phenkdo 7y agoSomehow I think your keyboard bravado will vanish once you start paying 60-70% of salary for just basic necessities. And even if I were to concede that you - presumably high paid tech workers - were willing & able, imagine the fate of the pensioners, bus drivers, retail workers...they barely make ends meet as it is.
- korijn 7y agoSo we should continue exploiting, is what you are saying?
- phenkdo 7y agoI am not thrilled about the situation, but the alternative, unfortunately, is far worse. The people in Ukraine/Moldova etc. will go deeper into poverty, and people in the west will have to contend with sky-high inflation.
- vbezhenar 7y agoOne reason for poverty is because active people are working in foreign countries.
- nicoburns 7y ago
- geniium 7y agoThat’s not just an “Europeans” problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- op03 7y agoIt's not going to happen. Europe will handle it better than anyone else if they use their imagination and not loose their minds - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-...
- 0xcoffee 7y agoThe Dutch vegetables are picked by Polish workers though. The problem remains: https://nos.nl/artikel/2328611-wie-gaan-de-asperges-steken-nu-veel-poolse-arbeidskrachten-niet-komen.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2328611-wie-gaan-de-asperges-steken-n...
- banmeagaindan2 7y agoI am up for doing some fruit picking if it can be organized correctly. The strategy of allowing in migrant labour would be a political fiasco.
- beberlei 7y agoThere is a platform for Germany by the ministry of agriculture organizing it and it seems they had 30k prospects last week: www.daslandhilft.de - one problem as I understood is that this is not all unskilled laborer work, but the there is quite some machinery involved where skilled personal is required.
- avip 7y agoMy experience organizing groups for picking tells me this feel good effort doesn't work.
- nicoburns 7y agoI'd be interested to hear more about what you think will go wrong. It seems like this is an important problem to solve.
- KarlKemp 7y agoSearch for images or videos of asparagus or strawberry picking. Or try holding small bottles of water in each hand, bend over with your arms stretched out, hold for 8 hours.
- balola 7y agoAlso the standards, produce being wasted too much.
- avip 7y ago<disclaimer: have been volunteering for an org fighting food waste by organizing volunteer pickers> It's simpler than you think. 1. Commercially viable picking actually requires some training (identify pickable fruits, avoid damaging plants, don't half pick) 2. Farmers (rightfully) don't like people who have no knowledge in growing crops hanging around in their fields. They just do dumb things like drink from irrigation pipes (for some crops irrigation is periodically mixed with fertilizer or pesticides). 3. Volunteers are not trustworthy. You have 30 RSVP-ed and 5 show up. Picking season is usually a narrow window of opportunity. 4. Most importantly - the vast majority of people (from the subset of human race who may volunteer for picking in the first place) really don't know how to work consistently for 8-10 hours. They show up 8 AM (3h too late), then they sit down to drink coffee. Your equation is 10 volunteers ~ 1 professional labourer. And then you have to bring professional labour anyhow to clean after them. All in all, this doesn't work.
- klipt 7y agoHopefully this won't lead to any actual starvation? As I understand it, staples like grains and root vegetables can mostly be harvested by machine. While it would be sad to waste fruits and leafy vegetables, I expect you can survive without them for quite a while, especially if you have access to multivitamins.
- simonh 7y agoI don't think there's much risk of serious food shortages. We'll just be eating more staples and fewer exotics and luxury foods. That may mean less meat, so we can use the grains those animals would usually eat to feed us. The economic impact on farmers, as on many other industries will be pretty traumatic and we'll have to decide as society how to deal with all of that, but we'll still be able to eat.
- baybal2 7y agoThe meat price across the globe has actually seen a U shaped move. A lot of panic slaughter was done when people though that they need to sell their meat before the price crashes through the floor. And before that, there were people capitalising on historically high meat prices because of ASF in China. Now it is shooting up again across the globe as lockdowns spread to more countries. Industrial meatpackers are making a killing now thought
- KarlKemp 7y agoZero risk of starvation. The labor-intensive produce at this time of year (and the next 3 months) is mostly asparagus and strawberries. Grain & corn is all machines. If there’s a second wave, or it takes very long, olives could become a major problem (Nov/Dec). Not for nutrition, but economically and my breakfast routine. There’s still a lot of fresh fruit in warehouses. Apples, for example, which will last until the end of year.
- csomar 7y ago> olives could become a major problem (Nov/Dec) I don't think so. My country is a top olive oil exporter and I can tell you that stocks and harvest are at full capacity. Many people (my father included) did not harvest this year because of the low prices. Many exporters are also struggling to sell their produce.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoI love how this Fed has got people thinking employment is irrelevant. Sure, maybe if some people stopped working for a few months, it wouldn't matter to much. But we still need energy and water and food (and Internet). And most of this requires actual work being done. Not just updating numbers on a spreadsheet.
- atomi 7y agoYeah but infrastructure is already up. A lot of the work required for upkeep doesn't require as many people as is required to build it out in the first place.
- ciconia 7y agoIt's funny how everybody (in the first world) just takes for granted the fact that a large part of the agricultural workforce is low-paid migrant workers. All of us want our food to be available all year round, and cheap. It's been my opinion for a while that food prices do not represent the real cost of food production when taking into account all the externalities. Low-wage labor is just one of those externalities.
- dredmorbius 7y agoModern market economics is a ... marvel ... of numerous uncosted externalities. Pollution, labour, externalised risk, unaccounted systemic risks, natural resource depletion and formation costs, political power, corruption...
- Guthur 7y agoAnd communism is a marvel of suffering and deprivation. Which would you prefer?
- hyperbovine 7y agoThat's a false dichotomy you're holding up.
- JadeNB 7y agoTrying to silence complaints about the evils of capitalism with aspersions on the evils of communism does no good to anyone.