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there is some truth to this. same news was posted here on HN last year. but in reality, there is more to it. yes, there is a pathogen. but EU olive industry is

there is some truth to this. same news was posted here on HN last year. but in reality, there is more to it. yes, there is a pathogen. but EU olive industry is moving to turkey and morocco. why? simple. cheap labour. olive trees can live for a very very long time, but there are two kinds of olives harvested. for oil and then for table olives. the former has been mechanised and the latter is not. so it's expensive. it's cheaper to raze down old olive orchards and just plant new ones. the new ones can be trellised and have dwarf hybrids or disease resistant varieties. also cheaper labour if not grown in the EU. i suspect they'd use that ag land for something else. likely development. the same thing happened in central california. one of the major buyers for table olives from EU stopped orders from california. and entire orchards..thousands and thousands of acres were razed down. they simply moved their business to morocco and turkey. (inside source. cant confirm or verify, but i trust this source.) western countries have this plan to outsource ag to developing nations because of labour. it is the most dumbass strategy ever. it is not going to be like IT has been outsourced. it relies on long supply chains by ships entirely dependent on dirty energy. food security is nothing to be trifled with(remember venezuela?)..but labour costs in western nations is nothing to be sneezed at. automation and robotics is the only solution. as long as VCs dont think of it as a data play for commodity ag market only , that tech wont trickle down to food crops. with the current covid crisis, everything will change. everything has to change. local food networks, food security and shorter tighter supply chains are going to become necessary. it's time to automate small acreage food farms and reclassify Ag as essential protected industry. i also expect this covid crisis to facilitate the biggest wealth transfer and land grab in the last hundred years. but i am not betting on anything now. things should get interesting. i hope that automation in ag at all levels become a reality and the sector (hopefully along with healthcare) becomes less exploitative. altho' ag exploits the producers and healthcare exploits the consumers. but that is likely a different topic.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago
>automation and robotics is the only solution. Maybe to us idealist techies wishing for a fair world, but to the people with big bucks who own and run the show as long as there is someone willing to work for cheaper than it is to develop, buy and run machines it's not worth investing in automation and the world is currently not in short supply of cheap labor unfortunately. There is always a cheaper place with poor oppressed people ripe for exploitation. Hell, I've worked in tech companies where it was cheaper to send all the mind numbing repetitive stuff nobody wanted to do to some developing nation rather than figuring out how to automate it because management isn't good at thinking long term. Same in the European tech sector, it's cheaper for companies to invest is visa sponsorships, recruitment fees and relocation packages to import devs from developing nations to put downward pressure on the market and create this image of scarcity than it is to invest in the local talent pool to make wages more competitive.
- rjzzleep 7y ago
  The irony is that I think some of these "knowledge economy" jobs i.e. doctors and lawyers(and even software engineers) are easier to replace than say nurses(although there is a big conflict going on where lots of nurses actually have more experience and knowledge than doctors) and cleaners. The idea that creating robots that mimic certain mechanic function is easier than creating something that replaces a person that is essentially an overpaid human dictionary is ludicrous. But I guess lawyers have better lobbies than cleaners.
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    Nurses need how many years of school? Lawyers need how many years of school? The harder to replace one is the one who spends more time in school. As much as we like to think software doesn't need an education, for the overwhelming majority, they spend at least 4 years in University before working in industry. Bootcampers/self-tahght are a small minority of workers.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Lawyers aren’t mere human dictionaries — they have an understanding of the system that is the law and how everything works in that context. Interacting with a legal system without that domain knowledge leads to Freemen Of The Land, or to thinking that Section 69 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 outlaws all sexual contact with humans “because humans are a type of animal”. What senior lawyers (and senior pharmacists and senior software developers) have is the stuff people mistakenly call “common sense” — a phrase which is only ever used while complaining someone else doesn’t have it, because the knowledge is not genuinely common, rather it is a set of domain knowledge they and we have learned over a long period without consciously noticing.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      What you said is true but often when you pay for a lawyer you're paying in part for their longstanding business relationship and non-business reputation with everyone else they have to do business with. Whether they know it or not the other party's lawyer, the DA, the Judge, the clerk at the courthouse, etc are more likely to (unconsciously) give favorable treatment to a lawyer with a name they recognize who's been working in that jurisdiction for 30yr, been bankrolling the local little league team for 20 and funding local politicians campaigns for 10 than he is with someone's who's just become a partner at a law firm that's only existed for a decade and isn't held in high regard by every other important person in the jurisdiction. People generally give people they know better treatment than people they don't. This effect is important for anyone who's job involves negotiation with other people in an industry without tons of turnover.
DoingIsLearning 7y ago
> it's cheaper to raze down old olive orchards and just plant new ones Sure there are a lot of mass production olive oil across southern europe consisting of 'young' olive trees. However, I don't think you realize how much history there is associated with some olive orchards and how old some of these trees are (multiple centuries old). To have a disease wipe these trees or voluntarily chop them down would be a huge heritage loss.
mikekchar 7y ago
There are other solutions. Institute a minimum wage for farm work. Make it attractive to those who would ordinarily choose to work in a factory to work at a farm. Break the monopolies on food distribution (probably will require the companies to be restructured by law). Create a national food distribution service to compete with the original companies. Provide minimum prices for farmers with the national food distribution service. Put tarifs on imports. Remove all subsidies for food exports (and stop trying to bomb the world food prices in order to offer loans to countries to buy your food exports when they can't afford to compete with their own home grown products). Ha ha. But seriously, automation and robotics will be much easier to implement.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  The biggest problem why extremely cheap food prices are needed is that there is a ton of people that are on minimum wage or below who would not be able to survive otherwise. If that is to change and ag products be priced in a way that allows fair wages to farm employees and proper treatment to animals, then wages have to be raised across the board and wealth taken from the rich elites and redistributed to the poor.
- batushka3 7y ago
  Yes, easier and also it's not building a socialist economy that would end in just another starvation.
  - madaxe_again 7y ago
    You might have missed it, but it’s capitalism that’s grievously mismanaging this crisis, and everybody suddenly wants a handout. Capitalism when the sun shines, socialism when it rains.
  - krageon 7y ago
    Please leave right-wing propaganda outside of a good discussion. The US-centric view that "socialism" is some sort of great evil is just that: a view that is (mostly) geographically locked and has good examples of working just fine elsewhere.
baud147258 7y ago
Personally, even if it's more expensive, I only buy olive oil from Europe, at least to support where I live
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  So you want to reduce trade between Europe and neighbouring mediterranean nations like Morocco and Turkey, the same countries we want to take in all the refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
  - close04 7y ago
    There's no need to politicize the issue or bring the completely irrelevant refugee topic in the discussion. Anyway the argument is so oversimplified that it's irrelevant in any discussion. No matter where you buy from a similar argument can just as easily and arbitrarily be used pro or against it.
    - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
      I strongly disagree. Trade is very relevant to improving living standards and living standards are very relevant to migration (which is the term I should have used instead of refugees in spite of the fact that these two issues are closely linked). Of course this is a complex subject, but I am responding to the extremely oversimplified idea that not buying from neighbouring regions is somehow supporting "where we live".
      - lostlogin 7y ago
        This I completely agreed with until 3 weeks ago. When borders close you need local industries and a degree of security in terms of food and other resources. The foreign owned supermarket couldn’t provide and the locally owned one couldn’t either (there are only 2 here in New Zealand), and it took over an hour queuing to find this out. However I contacted a farm with a mill which could. I don’t know what to think now, as it isn’t practical to make everything in one country.
sondar 7y ago
I don't think olive industry will move out in the south of euorpe, it is highly vinculated to people and villages. There are huge extensions of land dedicated to that, and that land can't be used to grow many things. As far as I remember I've only seen almond trees, sheeps, vinewoods and grain, and the last two only in plain lands. I don't know if those extensions can be used to grow more profitable stuff, but I don't think people would want to. Also olive trees require to work on them only a few times per year. The desrtuction of those olive orchards would be a death sentence for many small villages. The only thing I feel could replace some of those fields are solar panels; in those regions it's not strange to be 6 months with a single drop of rain.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  They will make more $ as tourist destinations and cottage ag industry. Modern olive groves are planted for mechanization of harvests. Olive trees can go on for a hundred years even and a tree that old is no longer profitable. esp for the demand we have and for cost of labour involved. Automation will at least secure local production profitably.

ChuckNorris89 7y ago

>automation and robotics is the only solution. Maybe to us idealist techies wishing for a fair world, but to the people with big bucks who own and run the show as long as there is someone willing to work for cheaper than it is to develop, buy and run machines it's not worth investing in automation and the world is currently not in short supply of cheap labor unfortunately. There is always a cheaper place with poor oppressed people ripe for exploitation. Hell, I've worked in tech companies where it was cheaper to send all the mind numbing repetitive stuff nobody wanted to do to some developing nation rather than figuring out how to automate it because management isn't good at thinking long term. Same in the European tech sector, it's cheaper for companies to invest is visa sponsorships, recruitment fees and relocation packages to import devs from developing nations to put downward pressure on the market and create this image of scarcity than it is to invest in the local talent pool to make wages more competitive.

rjzzleep 7y ago
The irony is that I think some of these "knowledge economy" jobs i.e. doctors and lawyers(and even software engineers) are easier to replace than say nurses(although there is a big conflict going on where lots of nurses actually have more experience and knowledge than doctors) and cleaners. The idea that creating robots that mimic certain mechanic function is easier than creating something that replaces a person that is essentially an overpaid human dictionary is ludicrous. But I guess lawyers have better lobbies than cleaners.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  Nurses need how many years of school? Lawyers need how many years of school? The harder to replace one is the one who spends more time in school. As much as we like to think software doesn't need an education, for the overwhelming majority, they spend at least 4 years in University before working in industry. Bootcampers/self-tahght are a small minority of workers.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Lawyers aren’t mere human dictionaries — they have an understanding of the system that is the law and how everything works in that context. Interacting with a legal system without that domain knowledge leads to Freemen Of The Land, or to thinking that Section 69 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 outlaws all sexual contact with humans “because humans are a type of animal”. What senior lawyers (and senior pharmacists and senior software developers) have is the stuff people mistakenly call “common sense” — a phrase which is only ever used while complaining someone else doesn’t have it, because the knowledge is not genuinely common, rather it is a set of domain knowledge they and we have learned over a long period without consciously noticing.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    What you said is true but often when you pay for a lawyer you're paying in part for their longstanding business relationship and non-business reputation with everyone else they have to do business with. Whether they know it or not the other party's lawyer, the DA, the Judge, the clerk at the courthouse, etc are more likely to (unconsciously) give favorable treatment to a lawyer with a name they recognize who's been working in that jurisdiction for 30yr, been bankrolling the local little league team for 20 and funding local politicians campaigns for 10 than he is with someone's who's just become a partner at a law firm that's only existed for a decade and isn't held in high regard by every other important person in the jurisdiction. People generally give people they know better treatment than people they don't. This effect is important for anyone who's job involves negotiation with other people in an industry without tons of turnover.

DoingIsLearning 7y ago

> it's cheaper to raze down old olive orchards and just plant new ones Sure there are a lot of mass production olive oil across southern europe consisting of 'young' olive trees. However, I don't think you realize how much history there is associated with some olive orchards and how old some of these trees are (multiple centuries old). To have a disease wipe these trees or voluntarily chop them down would be a huge heritage loss.

mikekchar 7y ago

There are other solutions. Institute a minimum wage for farm work. Make it attractive to those who would ordinarily choose to work in a factory to work at a farm. Break the monopolies on food distribution (probably will require the companies to be restructured by law). Create a national food distribution service to compete with the original companies. Provide minimum prices for farmers with the national food distribution service. Put tarifs on imports. Remove all subsidies for food exports (and stop trying to bomb the world food prices in order to offer loans to countries to buy your food exports when they can't afford to compete with their own home grown products). Ha ha. But seriously, automation and robotics will be much easier to implement.

mschuster91 7y ago
The biggest problem why extremely cheap food prices are needed is that there is a ton of people that are on minimum wage or below who would not be able to survive otherwise. If that is to change and ag products be priced in a way that allows fair wages to farm employees and proper treatment to animals, then wages have to be raised across the board and wealth taken from the rich elites and redistributed to the poor.
batushka3 7y ago
Yes, easier and also it's not building a socialist economy that would end in just another starvation.
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  You might have missed it, but it’s capitalism that’s grievously mismanaging this crisis, and everybody suddenly wants a handout. Capitalism when the sun shines, socialism when it rains.
- krageon 7y ago
  Please leave right-wing propaganda outside of a good discussion. The US-centric view that "socialism" is some sort of great evil is just that: a view that is (mostly) geographically locked and has good examples of working just fine elsewhere.

baud147258 7y ago

Personally, even if it's more expensive, I only buy olive oil from Europe, at least to support where I live

fauigerzigerk 7y ago
So you want to reduce trade between Europe and neighbouring mediterranean nations like Morocco and Turkey, the same countries we want to take in all the refugees from Africa and the Middle East.
- close04 7y ago
  There's no need to politicize the issue or bring the completely irrelevant refugee topic in the discussion. Anyway the argument is so oversimplified that it's irrelevant in any discussion. No matter where you buy from a similar argument can just as easily and arbitrarily be used pro or against it.
  - fauigerzigerk 7y ago
    I strongly disagree. Trade is very relevant to improving living standards and living standards are very relevant to migration (which is the term I should have used instead of refugees in spite of the fact that these two issues are closely linked). Of course this is a complex subject, but I am responding to the extremely oversimplified idea that not buying from neighbouring regions is somehow supporting "where we live".
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      This I completely agreed with until 3 weeks ago. When borders close you need local industries and a degree of security in terms of food and other resources. The foreign owned supermarket couldn’t provide and the locally owned one couldn’t either (there are only 2 here in New Zealand), and it took over an hour queuing to find this out. However I contacted a farm with a mill which could. I don’t know what to think now, as it isn’t practical to make everything in one country.

sondar 7y ago

I don't think olive industry will move out in the south of euorpe, it is highly vinculated to people and villages. There are huge extensions of land dedicated to that, and that land can't be used to grow many things. As far as I remember I've only seen almond trees, sheeps, vinewoods and grain, and the last two only in plain lands. I don't know if those extensions can be used to grow more profitable stuff, but I don't think people would want to. Also olive trees require to work on them only a few times per year. The desrtuction of those olive orchards would be a death sentence for many small villages. The only thing I feel could replace some of those fields are solar panels; in those regions it's not strange to be 6 months with a single drop of rain.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago
They will make more $ as tourist destinations and cottage ag industry. Modern olive groves are planted for mechanization of harvests. Olive trees can go on for a hundred years even and a tree that old is no longer profitable. esp for the demand we have and for cost of labour involved. Automation will at least secure local production profitably.