28 ms·

‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any profit

271 points by NoRagrets 3y ago

juancb 3y ago
Amidst the inefficiencies plaguing the fresh produce sector, the astute capitalist sees ripe opportunity. By harnessing the superior capabilities of AI and large language models, one can exploit supply chain vulnerabilities and leverage arbitrage opportunities.
benj111 3y ago
How normal is this? I assume there are gluts fairly regularly so producers would to some extent be used to this? Further what does the future look like. Input costs going down, or food price rises?
- H8crilA 3y ago
  Completely normal? I don't see how you could expect anything else in a competitive market for any commodity.
londons_explore 3y ago
In an efficient market, everything is sold at breakr even. Produce is a competitive market, so there is no surprise that it's a market that is efficient.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- sambazi 3y ago
  interesting take so, is the reverse, huge margins indicate an inefficient market, also true?
rightbyte 3y ago
It is probably hard to compete with old investments that are payed off already? Prices should rise as maintenance takes its toll. Fundamentally, farmers are valeuing their work way to low and our work way to high. How many loc of C# do I need for a bottle of milk? The countryside need to squeeze us the city dwellers abit more. The income disparity allows for it and the countryside need to be able to flourish too.
- mrpopo 3y ago
  High food prices make for angry voters, though.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Right. Then import more slave labor to keep costs down. /s
    - Paul_S 3y ago
      That is literally what we've been doing in the UK for decades. It works!
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        So has Germany and any other wealthy nation. Locals don't want to work for poverty wages but there's a virtually unlimited number of desperate people worldwide willing to. That was my point.
  - magicalhippo 3y ago
    People here in Norway have complained about the price of food for ages. Farmers likewise have complained a lot about their low pay relative to workload. Some years ago I met some french folks who had recently landed a job here in Norway. They invited me for dinner which we prepared together, and I noticed they had gone to one of the food markets and gotten some quality ingredients. So we ended up talking about the price of food. They mentioned that when they moved here they were shocked at how expensive food was. However, after a little while they realized that they spent way less in terms of percentage of their income on food compared to what they used to do in France. In France they had spent around 15% on food, and if they did the same here then all of a sudden food here didn't seem more expensive than in France. In comparison, most Norwegians spend around 5% of their income on food. Farmers generally have the prices they get set by the government. From what I can tell what has happened is that we've gotten used to not spend a lot on food (relative to the french say), the government hasn't given the farmers a lot, meanwhile the "middle-men" has grown a lot and take a lot more of the pie compared to before. For example, a while ago the government reduced the VAT on food from 25% to 12%, and while food prices in the shops dropped right away, it didn't take long before they had crept back up...
dauertewigkeit 3y ago
Once you see the amount of food waste you start feeling cheated. Like, you pay top dollar for some greens and then you see tons of the same exact greens being dumped in a dumpster at the end of the day. The food itself is not worth the price you are paying for it. It's the service and the logistics that you are paying for. If everybody paid the dumpster price the supermarket would fail. It would be cool if there were business models where this was made more explicit.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > food itself is not worth the price you are paying for it...the service and the logistics that you are paying for It's the mass production and constant availability. (Also logistics.) Subsistence farming works great until a drought. Put another way, the waste lets the fresh produce be cheap. (That doesn't mean we can't do something better with it than drop it in a dumpster.) > If everybody paid the dumpster price the supermarket would fail. It would be cool if there were business models where this was made more explicit. If everyone paid the dumpster price, there wouldn't be any food in the dumpster.
  - datadrivenangel 3y ago
    Exactly. There is an optimal amount of spoilage to maximize the amount of actually consumed produce and minimize the cost.
  - rthomas6 3y ago
    > Subsistence farming works great until a drought. Maybe we should do this by default and fall back onto the global supply chain when there is a drought.
    - fomine3 3y ago
      "Fallback" to unprepared infrastructure doesn't work.
  - armchairhacker 3y ago
    It’s still not an excuse to throw the food away. Some supermarkets donate all of their excess food to pantries. Supermarkets have trouble paying their employees a decent wage, why can’t they let employees take X amount of leftover items? Some people don’t get enough food, many more do but would rather spend less and not be picky. They would be happy to take the remaining leftovers before they spoil, especially food like produce (whereas junk food, fortunately in this case, tends to last much longer so it doesn’t get wasted). A lot of places actually do this, which shows that it’s a real solution; I don’t really see why all can’t.
hcfman 3y ago
Well, if the food is actually being eaten, then that's actually a win situation for people eating fresh food and hence overall "good" from a benefit to the people perspective. So long as this situation continues, which is where the problem is I expect. Boots on the ground people should be able to grow and create savings as well.
klondike_klive 3y ago
Relevant: British farmer Guy Singh-Watson is urging the big 6 supermarket chains to Get Fair about Farming. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farmers-supermarkets-tesco-sainsbury-s-asda-morrisons-aldi-lidl-b2414130.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farmers-supe...
amitprayal 3y ago
Thankfully this does not apply for India
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > this does not apply for India India has a horribly inefficient agricultural sector [1]. It's run as a jobs program for surplus unskilled labor. Its cost is in land and water waste, together with excess emissions and diet-related premature deaths. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00157-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00157-w
  - amitprayal 3y ago
    Having been in US for a while and having coming back now I can definitely confirm that quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to India, If you have only grown up on a meat based and processed foods diet you may not be able to relate. We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared to the western world, don't always believe in biased articles.
    - sss111 3y ago
      +1 fully agree, as someone who has to travel often between the two countries.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to India I agree. (Though you can access similar quality at American farmers’ markets and upscale grocers in rich communities.) I never remarked on quality. Just efficiency. Indian agriculture is small scale, labour wasteful, land and water inefficient and carbon intensive. Relative to median income, produce is high cost, which causes a lot of the population to over-rely on processed cereals. High-income Americans and Indians consume a lot of good, fresh produce. (I’ve seen fresh Indian mangoes in New York, flown in overnight, though I’m doubtful they had their paperwork in order. That obviously isn’t scalable.) The absolute threshold is lower in India. But relatively speaking it’s higher. > We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared to the western world At a high relative income level, yes. (Lower in cities, because logistics.) There are good reasons Indian life expectancy is 15% lower than America’s at birth, 2 to 5% lower at 30 (males, reverse death probability) and then 20% lower again at 40 again.
mihaic 3y ago
Farmers seem underrepresented in general economic planning, except when handing out subsidies to keep their votes. I've for instance thought that UBI would be unavoidable in a few decades, but how would we keep farmers to grow food? The only answer I have is that their income has to be at leat 3-5x that of the UBI.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Farmers seem underrepresented in general economic planning Wat. The USDA is a $181 to 500bn agency [1][2]. Every state has an agricultural agency. Alongside defence, another must-pass recurring bill is the farm bill [3][4]. > except when handing out subsidies to keep their votes This is democracy. If you're getting subsidies to buy your votes, you are by definition well represented. [1] https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-usda-budget-summary.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-usda... page 1 [4] https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-agriculture?fy=2023 https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-agriculture... [3] https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/farm-bill https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/farm-bill [4] https://www.farmaid.org/issues/farm-policy/whats-going-on-with-the-2023-farm-bill/ https://www.farmaid.org/issues/farm-policy/whats-going-on-wi...
  - Iulioh 3y ago
    And to add, 33% of the European budget is farn subsidies (and that's one big reason why ukraine is unlikely to enter the EU)
  - mihaic 3y ago
    I wasn't denying that a lot of money is being spent, it's how it's spent. What I meant was that subsidies for producing various crops/animal products dwarf all the other spending on rural programs, and not a lot of effort is put into actually figuring out how to improve those communities, many of which are bleeding young people. There is no plan to maintain agricultural communities, and what's worse, that doesn't seem to be a desire for such a plan.
    - 3y ago
zosima 3y ago
This has been in the cards for some time. It's also worth seeing what the price hikes are: "Those increases, the report says, were driven by costs of fertilizer (up 60 per cent worldwide), construction (+48 per cent), fuel and gas (+41 per cent), shipping rates (+40 per cent), and electricity (+40 percent)." A few of these may find their cause in the supply chain problems during Covid, but most of them are driven by political factors: 1. The transition to renewable energy and increased regulation and taxation on fertilizer usage. 2. The war in Ukraine Right now I see it as more and more likely that the starvation and calamities that global warming was claimed to soon cause, will instead be caused by the entirely misdirected attempts to reduce CO2-emissions.
- politelemon 3y ago
  > The war in Ukraine I often see this used as a reason for affected things but I've not seen it explained, so it must be self evident to many. What about it is causing the price hikes? Do our goods flow through it, is it affecting shipping routes? Is it a major provider of most good or just some kinds?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > Is it a major provider of most good or just some kinds? Ukraine had a 10% export share in wheat between 2017 and 2021 [1]. They're also a particularly low-cost provider, which is why they supply 40% of the World Food Programme's wheat [2]. [1] https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/02/revisiting-ukraine-russia-and-agricultural-commodity-markets.html https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/02/revisiting-ukraine... [2] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/forty-percent-world-food-programs-wheat-supplies-come-ukraine https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/forty-percent-world-f...
  - ralferoo 3y ago
    Ukraine was known as "the breadbasket of Europe" and the majority of the crops grown there were exported. In particular, grains such as wheat, corn and barley provide approximately 10% of the world's supply. From what I understood of the news, the exports weren't massively affected in the first year or so of the war due to a treaty with Russia that protected ships transporting grain from attack. In the last couple of months, Russia announced they weren't renewing that (yearly) treaty and would treat foreign ships transporting as if they were warships, and so viable military targets. As Russia has long had a massive sea base at Sevastopol in the south-west of Ukraine (when it gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, this base was kept as Russian territory due its significant influence over the Black Sea), this base is now a choke point for all sea vessels in and out of Ukraine, which is probably why Ukraine is now stepping up attacks here - because with the ending of the treaty, they need that export route to stay open. That last paragraph was a long winded way of saying that actually, until recently, the war in Ukraine shouldn't have affected the price of grain all that much, because it was largely continuing as before, so any prior price increases being blamed on the war were possibly just opportunistic. With the ending of the treaty, it's not unlikely that there will be significantly less grain exported, or more exported over land, and so the price could increase. Obviously in the situation where demand exceeds supply, price increases aren't proportional to the reduction in supply, but based on the willingness of buyers to pay more than someone else to secure their supply, so the increases will probably be more dramatic.
eecc 3y ago
The way I understood it is that producers get paid a pittance (thus they turn around to squeezing farmland workers even more) by the distributors that act as a monopsony and impose ever lower prices and production standards optimizing for process rather than quality. This is especially egregious in the Netherlands for example, where you will regularly find moldy products shipped from across the world (Chile, New Zealand) sold at a discount (down from eye watering starting prices.)
- barrkel 3y ago
  Finding a lot of moldy "fresh" products on supermarket shelves was one of the big changes I experienced moving from UK to Switzerland. Food prices in Switzerland are generally 2x or 3x EU prices, but the most aggravating thing was that quality was lower than the UK (Coop/Migros vs Waitrose/Sainsburys).
  - birdstheword5 3y ago
    I haven't noticed that myself but it's been 5 years since I've been there (Zürich) - how recently did you move there and which canton are you in? I do agree that most UK shops (Waitrose/ Sainsbury's like you mention) are really good compared with most stuff in Switzerland
    - barrkel 3y ago
      Moved here two years ago. Spent three months in Zurich (more local, smaller shops were worse) and now live in Baden, Aargau.
- lucumo 3y ago
  > monopsony This really doesn't pass the smell test. There are multiple very large supermarket chains here. They aren't monopsonies, by the simple fact that there are multiple. They are also large and very good at negotiating and optimising their supply chains. If any of their suppliers were to have absurdly high margins they would fuck them out of existence. Especially for commodities like farm produce which you can get almost anywhere. The supermarkets make enormous profits, but it's nearly all due to scale. Their margins on products are in the low single digits. (In the Netherlands. The largest chain, Ahold Delhaize, does make higher margins in the US.)
aszantu 3y ago
Everybody should have a pig, or maybe 2-3 houses should share a pig for food waste, just so it doesn't get wasted and everyone gets good protein by the end of the year. Been thinking about this for a while, don't know how to promote this idea more
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Everybody should have a pig You're describing peasants. Playing peasant doesn't work at scale. Imagine the environmental impact and economic destruction giving everyone in Tokyo and New York farm animals would entail. > maybe 2-3 houses should share a pig But sometimes some people don't want to eat pork. No worries, we have the law of large numbers. A thousand people can share a pool of pigs. Someone is vegetarian? What if those who want to participate share a pig? Some people are tired of pork? People are moving in and out? What if we have a pool of pigs that are slaughtered from time to time, and you can take what you want when you want it? Oh right. That's a store. We circled back to a butcher. If you care about this, 4-H has a program where kids raise a farm animal to sell at auction. > just so it doesn't get wasted Hunters I know are close to zero waste. Farmers? No clear link between raising a chicken and e.g. eating its gizzard.
  - gigel82 3y ago
    I think the point they were making was that pigs eat food scraps of all kinds, and produce organic fertilizer (in addition to meat). It's an interesting idea, but it definitely doesn't work in the cities and I bet most folks in the suburbs wouldn't tolerate the smell either. But maybe if we force supermarkets to give out expired food to coop farmers for animal feed instead of just throwing it out in the dumpster, we could be on to something.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > if we force supermarkets to give out expired food to coop farmers for animal feed instead of just throwing it out in the dumpster Getting fresh produce from farms to shoppers involves enough waste. You need to transform the waste into something non-perishable, so transport can be done lazily. Composting, perhaps?
haroldship 3y ago
This seems like the experience of Jeremy Clarkson in Clarkson’s Farm. Many things against being a successful farmer resulting in practically zero profit.
- JackFr 3y ago
  But in the US at least your land is taxed at an agricultural rate rather than single family residential rate. There can be an enormous financial benefit to being a 'farmer'. Even if you ostensibly lose money at it.
glitchc 3y ago
A fresh batch of basil at the grocery store is essentially a luxury item, exclusive to those who can afford it. What doesn't sell is waste. Perhaps it's time to consider community kitchens residing alongside grocery stores. This would be a place where a meal is always available, all hours of the day, for free, to anyone who walks in. These kitchens can consume food waste while providing a useful benefit to the population. It's surprising we don't have this already in North America given how much surplus food is produced.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  I don't have statistics on how many, but I know that some grocery stores donate end of shelf-life produce to food banks.
- euroderf 3y ago
  > This would be a place where a meal is always available, all hours of the day, for free, to anyone who walks in. How about vending machines that scan an ID and dispense nutritious (but bland) biscuits ?
- pcl 3y ago
  Sounds a bit like the deli counter.
- CoffeeOnWrite 3y ago
  Love this idea. To add food for thought, could the basil be dried in a dehydrator immediately after being taken off the shelves after minor wilting but while the taste and nutrition are still there? The resulting product might be better quality than what is sold in the dried spices aisle that is much less fresh..
  - User23 3y ago
    Better yet is a freeze dryer if you can afford one.
    - AussieWog93 3y ago
jeffbee 3y ago
Yes, food is ridiculously cheap. Capitalism: it gets the job done. Among American households, food costs as a fraction of household disposable income fell by more than half in the last 50 years. Produce is commodities and the nature of commodities is for all the profit to be removed from the system. A related fact is agriculture as a fraction of GDP/GSP is close to zero in every state. Only in Iowa is it even worth mentioning, and in that state it's still not even 5% of the economy. Any time you meet someone who wants to "decommodify food" you know you're dealing with an idiot.
- bannedbybros 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >Capitalism: it gets the job done. So you just ignore the billions in subsidies to keep food cheap? That's capitalism now?
voisin 3y ago
In British Columbia, Canada, there is a system called Loop Resources (https://loopresource.ca/ https://loopresource.ca/) whereby grocers and farmers can connect and expired food can be set aside and picked up by farmers to feed to their animals. The one farmer I know who participates collects a pickup truck full 3x per week, and he is only one of several farmers collecting from that grocer.
scythe 3y ago
Commenters seem to be analyzing this as though it were a steady-state phenomenon. But it isn't. The article clearly states that this is a result of increased costs along the supply chain that appeared due to disruption during the COVID pandemic.
ravenstine 3y ago
If we want to reduce produce waste, then we should be buying more of our produce frozen rather than fresh.
- cosinetau 3y ago
  Yes. Let's burn fossil fuels to make sure we don't waste anything.
  - Tokkemon 3y ago
    Freezing food takes a fraction of the energy it costs to ship fresh foods before they rot.
    - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
      Sorry but nobody in these comments understands the food value chain. Most foods require very specific temperatures and handling. Even if you transport them right, the actual storage and routing of food varies widely. There is often no location to store food properly intermediately, so diesel trucks are kept idling to keep the food in a place with the right environment. But it varies greatly depending on where it's being sold and what their logistics chain is, in addition to what market they're serving and thus where they're sourcing their food and how they're picking it. HN sure does love to oversimplify...
  - deelowe 3y ago
    I'm fairly certain shipping and warehousing frozen food in bulk would be more efficient than shipping containers with fresh produce going to each and every grocery store several days a week.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
greenie_beans 3y ago
we should have a decentralized agriculture system based on local farms and communities, then we wouldn't have this problem.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  Yes, essentially, we need to get rid of corporate communism as it destroyed every industry it touched. Farming is now centralised and controled by a handful of corporate politburos, software, media, everything else. So called capitalism is dead, this is not capitalism we are experiencing. Otherwise you'd have many small farms and businesses in general that freely move capital and products around.
  - ainiriand 3y ago
    In capitalism, capital de tend to concentrate.
    - gumballindie 3y ago
      At extreme ends capitalism manifests itself like communism: oversight, concentration of power and capital in the hands of few, and so on. Proper capitalism means that capital flows freeley around all layers of society. In corporate communism and communist socialism capital clogs. Doesn't flow naturaly, it's slowed down, stored, accessible to and managed by those few.
      - ainiriand 3y ago
        Looks to me like the same rethoric of those that speak the virtues of true communism. I heard the song many times already.
  - greenie_beans 3y ago
    yes, we should go to a decentralized system where the community or workers own the farm.
miguelazo 3y ago
I wonder if this is what helped kill AppHarvest. There are a lot of middlemen in produce, especially when it is produced abroad. I don't think they're the ones hurting, and are a big part of the problem.
gdubs 3y ago
We purchased a farm many years ago that had become eroded after many years of conventional farming. In our quest to transition to regenerative practices, and things like organic, we've definitely had the realization that most people have no idea where their food comes from, or why it costs what it does. The margins in most farming are razor thin. Our neighbors who grow conventionally spend tons on inputs like fertilizer, for a shockingly small amount of money [in return per acre]. A year of extreme weather – more and more common – throws the whole thing out the window. People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it when you're not just spraying to control weeds (or, more shockingly, to stop growth on your food crop at just the right time). All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward anyone who has the dream of growing their own food is often coming from a conventional mindset. There are alternative approaches. A few great books are "Permaculture" by Mollison, "One Straw Revolution" by Fukuoka, "Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing – you can start with some perennial herbs on your balcony. Larger scale, I'm an advocate for things like agroforestry practices, becoming more and more interested in agrivoltaics. You can go a very long way with a few dwarf fruit and nut trees, an understory of berries, and a few raised beds managed with no-dig methods. If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and joys) of growing food, become more connected to the world that sustains us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the people who work really hard for very thin margins to keep us all fed.
- ch4s3 3y ago
  To your point, you're talking about processes that while impressive in many respects are HIGHLY labor intensive. The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food. In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to.
  - dmoy 3y ago
    > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to. Not only that, but as recently as like 100 years ago, 30% of people in the US were farmers (ish).
Tokkemon 3y ago
Wasn't this a whole plot point in the Grapes of Wrath? People starving while the farmers let the crops rot to keep the price up?
andy_ppp 3y ago
Sounds like all industries, the longer they have gone on the less profitable they are. I’m not excusing ripping off farmers but it seems to be a pattern in all industries i.e. textiles, newspapers, building, car manufacturing, even most engineering… unless there is constant technological innovation (or market capture like the music industry) their profitability tends to zero.
- abigail95 3y ago
  i'm not sure agricultural profit is tending towards zero, it says half of it is profitable. if i took a random assortment of companies, how many would be profitable in a given year? half? two thirds?
- asdff 3y ago
  Tell that to the oil industry
nly 3y ago
Maybe food production shouldn't be highly profitable anyway, seeing as food is a basic need?
- sambazi 3y ago
  could be argued that most produce in a supermarket is not there to satisfy 'basic needs'
- abigail95 3y ago
  At a glance if I look at a map, the areas with large and profitable food companies tend to be more well fed. I would dare to say that's causal. The more money you can make selling food, the more people will do it.
myshpa 3y ago
I think the structure of subsidies makes the problem worse. The price of meat and healthy whole foods in the US is heavily distorted by lobying [0] and by subsidies ($38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables) [1]. [0] https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive-in-america-blame-farm-bill-congress-always-renews-make-burgers-cheaper-salad-gene-baur/ https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive... [1] https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...
jimnotgym 3y ago
>‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any profit None at all, or none for the producer?
gnicholas 3y ago
Bananas are among the most popular fruit, as they are available year-round and travel well. They are also often used as a loss-leader. When I was at UCLA, the Whole Foods sold bananas at a very low price (39¢ a pound?), as a loss leader. Since I was a budget-conscious student, I would frequently just go in to buy bananas (it was 2 blocks from my apt, and on my walk home). But most shoppers who brave LA traffic to go to the grocery store would buy many other items, making the whole trip profitable for the store.
- jzwinck 3y ago
  Bananas also serve another important function which ensures their continued success as an export product: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/65-tonnes-of-cocaine-found-hidden-between-bananas-in-colombia-and-spain https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/65-t...
  - smorrebrod 3y ago
    I had an anti-corruption mandatory course in a previous job in the naval industry. They talked about drugs hidden in refrigerated containers: they swapped the insulation material of the containers with cocaine. Apparently the goods in the containers did not spoil so thermal conductivity of cocaine is pretty low.
lasermike026 3y ago
I eat some of my vegetables from a garden. We should eat what is in season and not eat food that travels very far. Perhaps fruits and vegetables are to expensive or unprofitable because we are asking too much.
pers0n 3y ago
Also keep in mind that they destroy crops before they ever go to market, if they produce too much. This is how capitalism works, you have to waste resources to keep the prices stable.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
Food production should be strictly regulated and prices protected. If food is treated like a generic commodity, the capitalist incentives end up destroying flavor, nutrition, variety, and the environment (read: your soil, your water, anything that lives in or near soil or water). People will always buy the cheapest possible thing, even if it's the worst thing for them and everything around them. We shouldn't give people and corporations the choice to slowly destroy everything. Not if we want to survive long term.
gatvol 3y ago
From TA: "Those increases, the report says, were driven by costs of fertiliser (up 60 per cent worldwide), construction (+48 per cent), fuel and gas (+41 per cent), shipping rates (+40 per cent), and electricity (+40 percent)." All of the drivers are energy related - I'd hypothesise this is the result of climate policies impacting energy costs.
GartzenDeHaes 3y ago
Dole makes $1.2 billion a year EBITDA. https://www.doleplc.com/investor-relations/news/ir-news-details/2023/Dole-plc-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2022-Financial-Results/default.aspx https://www.doleplc.com/investor-relations/news/ir-news-deta...
cushpush 3y ago
How can we make food free for all and also delicious
scoofy 3y ago
That's not even counting the amount of taxpayer funding that comes from developing the water resources that subsidize these growers. People have no idea how thin of a razor we stand on in terms of food production. I can't speak for the whole world, but United States has built an incredible food exportation economy built on groundwater pumping and damming rivers in the desert. Both of which will ultimately fail, it's just a matter of when they fail. When they do, the world will become dramatically poorer all at once, and we could see a global famine beyond anything anyone could imagine.
canadianfella 3y ago
[dead]
Borrible 3y ago
I probably make one of the most delicious marmelades in human history. At least that's what my clan claims. Made from blackberries I collect myself(around 10kg or so per year, takes few hours), Rum, Coffee, cinnamon and vanilla(the real one).Relatively little preserving sugar, so it is not too sweet. Around a fourth of my output I give away for fun. From time to time somebody asks me why I don't make a business out of it, some little side hustle in autumn and winter. I then show them the math and the resulting price. And if that is not enough, I explain to them how I could turn this into a semi-profitable small-scale business... This makes them even more grateful for the little gift of mine. In 2020 I probably grew the most expensive San Marzano tomatoes worldwide. The amount of work, water and fertilizer I sacrificed for 16kg of the finest dried tomatoes i ever ate is ridiculous. But then again, family and friends still talk about it. The only vegetable in my little garden of about 350 square yards I could ever break even, beside the usual suspects of different herbs, were Musquée de Provence pumpkins. A compost heap and a lot of water is all they need. But then again I still have a few kilo of them in the freezer from last year and to be honest I can't stand them anymore. Fed up, so to say.
b3nji 3y ago
Turns out if you shut the vast majority of the world down by fiat, the economy tanks, and inflation goes up. Who knew ;)
t0bia_s 3y ago
Great, we need to get back to buy from local producers. For now, global supermarkets set prices that are not sustainable for competition - like those local producers. Decentralisation is even more broken chain supply and regulation proof.

271 points by NoRagrets 3y ago

Amidst the inefficiencies plaguing the fresh produce sector, the astute capitalist sees ripe opportunity. By harnessing the superior capabilities of AI and large language models, one can exploit supply chain vulnerabilities and leverage arbitrage opportunities.

benj111 3y ago

How normal is this? I assume there are gluts fairly regularly so producers would to some extent be used to this? Further what does the future look like. Input costs going down, or food price rises?

H8crilA 3y ago
Completely normal? I don't see how you could expect anything else in a competitive market for any commodity.

londons_explore 3y ago

In an efficient market, everything is sold at breakr even. Produce is a competitive market, so there is no surprise that it's a market that is efficient.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sambazi 3y ago
interesting take so, is the reverse, huge margins indicate an inefficient market, also true?

rightbyte 3y ago

It is probably hard to compete with old investments that are payed off already? Prices should rise as maintenance takes its toll. Fundamentally, farmers are valeuing their work way to low and our work way to high. How many loc of C# do I need for a bottle of milk? The countryside need to squeeze us the city dwellers abit more. The income disparity allows for it and the countryside need to be able to flourish too.

mrpopo 3y ago
High food prices make for angry voters, though.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Right. Then import more slave labor to keep costs down. /s
  - Paul_S 3y ago
    That is literally what we've been doing in the UK for decades. It works!
    - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
      So has Germany and any other wealthy nation. Locals don't want to work for poverty wages but there's a virtually unlimited number of desperate people worldwide willing to. That was my point.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  People here in Norway have complained about the price of food for ages. Farmers likewise have complained a lot about their low pay relative to workload. Some years ago I met some french folks who had recently landed a job here in Norway. They invited me for dinner which we prepared together, and I noticed they had gone to one of the food markets and gotten some quality ingredients. So we ended up talking about the price of food. They mentioned that when they moved here they were shocked at how expensive food was. However, after a little while they realized that they spent way less in terms of percentage of their income on food compared to what they used to do in France. In France they had spent around 15% on food, and if they did the same here then all of a sudden food here didn't seem more expensive than in France. In comparison, most Norwegians spend around 5% of their income on food. Farmers generally have the prices they get set by the government. From what I can tell what has happened is that we've gotten used to not spend a lot on food (relative to the french say), the government hasn't given the farmers a lot, meanwhile the "middle-men" has grown a lot and take a lot more of the pie compared to before. For example, a while ago the government reduced the VAT on food from 25% to 12%, and while food prices in the shops dropped right away, it didn't take long before they had crept back up...

dauertewigkeit 3y ago

Once you see the amount of food waste you start feeling cheated. Like, you pay top dollar for some greens and then you see tons of the same exact greens being dumped in a dumpster at the end of the day. The food itself is not worth the price you are paying for it. It's the service and the logistics that you are paying for. If everybody paid the dumpster price the supermarket would fail. It would be cool if there were business models where this was made more explicit.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> food itself is not worth the price you are paying for it...the service and the logistics that you are paying for It's the mass production and constant availability. (Also logistics.) Subsistence farming works great until a drought. Put another way, the waste lets the fresh produce be cheap. (That doesn't mean we can't do something better with it than drop it in a dumpster.) > If everybody paid the dumpster price the supermarket would fail. It would be cool if there were business models where this was made more explicit. If everyone paid the dumpster price, there wouldn't be any food in the dumpster.
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  Exactly. There is an optimal amount of spoilage to maximize the amount of actually consumed produce and minimize the cost.
- rthomas6 3y ago
  > Subsistence farming works great until a drought. Maybe we should do this by default and fall back onto the global supply chain when there is a drought.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    "Fallback" to unprepared infrastructure doesn't work.
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  It’s still not an excuse to throw the food away. Some supermarkets donate all of their excess food to pantries. Supermarkets have trouble paying their employees a decent wage, why can’t they let employees take X amount of leftover items? Some people don’t get enough food, many more do but would rather spend less and not be picky. They would be happy to take the remaining leftovers before they spoil, especially food like produce (whereas junk food, fortunately in this case, tends to last much longer so it doesn’t get wasted). A lot of places actually do this, which shows that it’s a real solution; I don’t really see why all can’t.

hcfman 3y ago

Well, if the food is actually being eaten, then that's actually a win situation for people eating fresh food and hence overall "good" from a benefit to the people perspective. So long as this situation continues, which is where the problem is I expect. Boots on the ground people should be able to grow and create savings as well.

klondike_klive 3y ago

Relevant: British farmer Guy Singh-Watson is urging the big 6 supermarket chains to Get Fair about Farming. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farmers-supermarkets-tesco-sainsbury-s-asda-morrisons-aldi-lidl-b2414130.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/farmers-supe...

amitprayal 3y ago

Thankfully this does not apply for India

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> this does not apply for India India has a horribly inefficient agricultural sector [1]. It's run as a jobs program for surplus unskilled labor. Its cost is in land and water waste, together with excess emissions and diet-related premature deaths. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00157-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-00157-w
- amitprayal 3y ago
  Having been in US for a while and having coming back now I can definitely confirm that quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to India, If you have only grown up on a meat based and processed foods diet you may not be able to relate. We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared to the western world, don't always believe in biased articles.
  - sss111 3y ago
    +1 fully agree, as someone who has to travel often between the two countries.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > quality of fresh produce in US very bad compared to India I agree. (Though you can access similar quality at American farmers’ markets and upscale grocers in rich communities.) I never remarked on quality. Just efficiency. Indian agriculture is small scale, labour wasteful, land and water inefficient and carbon intensive. Relative to median income, produce is high cost, which causes a lot of the population to over-rely on processed cereals. High-income Americans and Indians consume a lot of good, fresh produce. (I’ve seen fresh Indian mangoes in New York, flown in overnight, though I’m doubtful they had their paperwork in order. That obviously isn’t scalable.) The absolute threshold is lower in India. But relatively speaking it’s higher. > We generally consume a lot of fresh produce as compared to the western world At a high relative income level, yes. (Lower in cities, because logistics.) There are good reasons Indian life expectancy is 15% lower than America’s at birth, 2 to 5% lower at 30 (males, reverse death probability) and then 20% lower again at 40 again.

mihaic 3y ago

Farmers seem underrepresented in general economic planning, except when handing out subsidies to keep their votes. I've for instance thought that UBI would be unavoidable in a few decades, but how would we keep farmers to grow food? The only answer I have is that their income has to be at leat 3-5x that of the UBI.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Farmers seem underrepresented in general economic planning Wat. The USDA is a $181 to 500bn agency [1][2]. Every state has an agricultural agency. Alongside defence, another must-pass recurring bill is the farm bill [3][4]. > except when handing out subsidies to keep their votes This is democracy. If you're getting subsidies to buy your votes, you are by definition well represented. [1] https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-usda-budget-summary.pdf https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2024-usda... page 1 [4] https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-agriculture?fy=2023 https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-agriculture... [3] https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/farm-bill https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/farm-bill [4] https://www.farmaid.org/issues/farm-policy/whats-going-on-with-the-2023-farm-bill/ https://www.farmaid.org/issues/farm-policy/whats-going-on-wi...
- Iulioh 3y ago
  And to add, 33% of the European budget is farn subsidies (and that's one big reason why ukraine is unlikely to enter the EU)
- mihaic 3y ago
  I wasn't denying that a lot of money is being spent, it's how it's spent. What I meant was that subsidies for producing various crops/animal products dwarf all the other spending on rural programs, and not a lot of effort is put into actually figuring out how to improve those communities, many of which are bleeding young people. There is no plan to maintain agricultural communities, and what's worse, that doesn't seem to be a desire for such a plan.
  - 3y ago

zosima 3y ago

This has been in the cards for some time. It's also worth seeing what the price hikes are: "Those increases, the report says, were driven by costs of fertilizer (up 60 per cent worldwide), construction (+48 per cent), fuel and gas (+41 per cent), shipping rates (+40 per cent), and electricity (+40 percent)." A few of these may find their cause in the supply chain problems during Covid, but most of them are driven by political factors: 1. The transition to renewable energy and increased regulation and taxation on fertilizer usage. 2. The war in Ukraine Right now I see it as more and more likely that the starvation and calamities that global warming was claimed to soon cause, will instead be caused by the entirely misdirected attempts to reduce CO2-emissions.

politelemon 3y ago
> The war in Ukraine I often see this used as a reason for affected things but I've not seen it explained, so it must be self evident to many. What about it is causing the price hikes? Do our goods flow through it, is it affecting shipping routes? Is it a major provider of most good or just some kinds?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Is it a major provider of most good or just some kinds? Ukraine had a 10% export share in wheat between 2017 and 2021 [1]. They're also a particularly low-cost provider, which is why they supply 40% of the World Food Programme's wheat [2]. [1] https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/02/revisiting-ukraine-russia-and-agricultural-commodity-markets.html https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2022/02/revisiting-ukraine... [2] https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/forty-percent-world-food-programs-wheat-supplies-come-ukraine https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/forty-percent-world-f...
- ralferoo 3y ago
  Ukraine was known as "the breadbasket of Europe" and the majority of the crops grown there were exported. In particular, grains such as wheat, corn and barley provide approximately 10% of the world's supply. From what I understood of the news, the exports weren't massively affected in the first year or so of the war due to a treaty with Russia that protected ships transporting grain from attack. In the last couple of months, Russia announced they weren't renewing that (yearly) treaty and would treat foreign ships transporting as if they were warships, and so viable military targets. As Russia has long had a massive sea base at Sevastopol in the south-west of Ukraine (when it gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, this base was kept as Russian territory due its significant influence over the Black Sea), this base is now a choke point for all sea vessels in and out of Ukraine, which is probably why Ukraine is now stepping up attacks here - because with the ending of the treaty, they need that export route to stay open. That last paragraph was a long winded way of saying that actually, until recently, the war in Ukraine shouldn't have affected the price of grain all that much, because it was largely continuing as before, so any prior price increases being blamed on the war were possibly just opportunistic. With the ending of the treaty, it's not unlikely that there will be significantly less grain exported, or more exported over land, and so the price could increase. Obviously in the situation where demand exceeds supply, price increases aren't proportional to the reduction in supply, but based on the willingness of buyers to pay more than someone else to secure their supply, so the increases will probably be more dramatic.

eecc 3y ago

The way I understood it is that producers get paid a pittance (thus they turn around to squeezing farmland workers even more) by the distributors that act as a monopsony and impose ever lower prices and production standards optimizing for process rather than quality. This is especially egregious in the Netherlands for example, where you will regularly find moldy products shipped from across the world (Chile, New Zealand) sold at a discount (down from eye watering starting prices.)

barrkel 3y ago
Finding a lot of moldy "fresh" products on supermarket shelves was one of the big changes I experienced moving from UK to Switzerland. Food prices in Switzerland are generally 2x or 3x EU prices, but the most aggravating thing was that quality was lower than the UK (Coop/Migros vs Waitrose/Sainsburys).
- birdstheword5 3y ago
  I haven't noticed that myself but it's been 5 years since I've been there (Zürich) - how recently did you move there and which canton are you in? I do agree that most UK shops (Waitrose/ Sainsbury's like you mention) are really good compared with most stuff in Switzerland
  - barrkel 3y ago
    Moved here two years ago. Spent three months in Zurich (more local, smaller shops were worse) and now live in Baden, Aargau.
lucumo 3y ago
> monopsony This really doesn't pass the smell test. There are multiple very large supermarket chains here. They aren't monopsonies, by the simple fact that there are multiple. They are also large and very good at negotiating and optimising their supply chains. If any of their suppliers were to have absurdly high margins they would fuck them out of existence. Especially for commodities like farm produce which you can get almost anywhere. The supermarkets make enormous profits, but it's nearly all due to scale. Their margins on products are in the low single digits. (In the Netherlands. The largest chain, Ahold Delhaize, does make higher margins in the US.)

aszantu 3y ago

Everybody should have a pig, or maybe 2-3 houses should share a pig for food waste, just so it doesn't get wasted and everyone gets good protein by the end of the year. Been thinking about this for a while, don't know how to promote this idea more

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Everybody should have a pig You're describing peasants. Playing peasant doesn't work at scale. Imagine the environmental impact and economic destruction giving everyone in Tokyo and New York farm animals would entail. > maybe 2-3 houses should share a pig But sometimes some people don't want to eat pork. No worries, we have the law of large numbers. A thousand people can share a pool of pigs. Someone is vegetarian? What if those who want to participate share a pig? Some people are tired of pork? People are moving in and out? What if we have a pool of pigs that are slaughtered from time to time, and you can take what you want when you want it? Oh right. That's a store. We circled back to a butcher. If you care about this, 4-H has a program where kids raise a farm animal to sell at auction. > just so it doesn't get wasted Hunters I know are close to zero waste. Farmers? No clear link between raising a chicken and e.g. eating its gizzard.
- gigel82 3y ago
  I think the point they were making was that pigs eat food scraps of all kinds, and produce organic fertilizer (in addition to meat). It's an interesting idea, but it definitely doesn't work in the cities and I bet most folks in the suburbs wouldn't tolerate the smell either. But maybe if we force supermarkets to give out expired food to coop farmers for animal feed instead of just throwing it out in the dumpster, we could be on to something.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > if we force supermarkets to give out expired food to coop farmers for animal feed instead of just throwing it out in the dumpster Getting fresh produce from farms to shoppers involves enough waste. You need to transform the waste into something non-perishable, so transport can be done lazily. Composting, perhaps?

haroldship 3y ago

This seems like the experience of Jeremy Clarkson in Clarkson’s Farm. Many things against being a successful farmer resulting in practically zero profit.

JackFr 3y ago
But in the US at least your land is taxed at an agricultural rate rather than single family residential rate. There can be an enormous financial benefit to being a 'farmer'. Even if you ostensibly lose money at it.

glitchc 3y ago

A fresh batch of basil at the grocery store is essentially a luxury item, exclusive to those who can afford it. What doesn't sell is waste. Perhaps it's time to consider community kitchens residing alongside grocery stores. This would be a place where a meal is always available, all hours of the day, for free, to anyone who walks in. These kitchens can consume food waste while providing a useful benefit to the population. It's surprising we don't have this already in North America given how much surplus food is produced.

bdcravens 3y ago
I don't have statistics on how many, but I know that some grocery stores donate end of shelf-life produce to food banks.
euroderf 3y ago
> This would be a place where a meal is always available, all hours of the day, for free, to anyone who walks in. How about vending machines that scan an ID and dispense nutritious (but bland) biscuits ?
pcl 3y ago
Sounds a bit like the deli counter.
CoffeeOnWrite 3y ago
Love this idea. To add food for thought, could the basil be dried in a dehydrator immediately after being taken off the shelves after minor wilting but while the taste and nutrition are still there? The resulting product might be better quality than what is sold in the dried spices aisle that is much less fresh..
- User23 3y ago
  Better yet is a freeze dryer if you can afford one.
  - AussieWog93 3y ago

jeffbee 3y ago

Yes, food is ridiculously cheap. Capitalism: it gets the job done. Among American households, food costs as a fraction of household disposable income fell by more than half in the last 50 years. Produce is commodities and the nature of commodities is for all the profit to be removed from the system. A related fact is agriculture as a fraction of GDP/GSP is close to zero in every state. Only in Iowa is it even worth mentioning, and in that state it's still not even 5% of the economy. Any time you meet someone who wants to "decommodify food" you know you're dealing with an idiot.

bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mrguyorama 3y ago
>Capitalism: it gets the job done. So you just ignore the billions in subsidies to keep food cheap? That's capitalism now?

voisin 3y ago

In British Columbia, Canada, there is a system called Loop Resources (https://loopresource.ca/ https://loopresource.ca/) whereby grocers and farmers can connect and expired food can be set aside and picked up by farmers to feed to their animals. The one farmer I know who participates collects a pickup truck full 3x per week, and he is only one of several farmers collecting from that grocer.

scythe 3y ago

Commenters seem to be analyzing this as though it were a steady-state phenomenon. But it isn't. The article clearly states that this is a result of increased costs along the supply chain that appeared due to disruption during the COVID pandemic.

ravenstine 3y ago

If we want to reduce produce waste, then we should be buying more of our produce frozen rather than fresh.

cosinetau 3y ago
Yes. Let's burn fossil fuels to make sure we don't waste anything.
- Tokkemon 3y ago
  Freezing food takes a fraction of the energy it costs to ship fresh foods before they rot.
  - throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
    Sorry but nobody in these comments understands the food value chain. Most foods require very specific temperatures and handling. Even if you transport them right, the actual storage and routing of food varies widely. There is often no location to store food properly intermediately, so diesel trucks are kept idling to keep the food in a place with the right environment. But it varies greatly depending on where it's being sold and what their logistics chain is, in addition to what market they're serving and thus where they're sourcing their food and how they're picking it. HN sure does love to oversimplify...
- deelowe 3y ago
  I'm fairly certain shipping and warehousing frozen food in bulk would be more efficient than shipping containers with fresh produce going to each and every grocery store several days a week.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

greenie_beans 3y ago

we should have a decentralized agriculture system based on local farms and communities, then we wouldn't have this problem.

gumballindie 3y ago
Yes, essentially, we need to get rid of corporate communism as it destroyed every industry it touched. Farming is now centralised and controled by a handful of corporate politburos, software, media, everything else. So called capitalism is dead, this is not capitalism we are experiencing. Otherwise you'd have many small farms and businesses in general that freely move capital and products around.
- ainiriand 3y ago
  In capitalism, capital de tend to concentrate.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    At extreme ends capitalism manifests itself like communism: oversight, concentration of power and capital in the hands of few, and so on. Proper capitalism means that capital flows freeley around all layers of society. In corporate communism and communist socialism capital clogs. Doesn't flow naturaly, it's slowed down, stored, accessible to and managed by those few.
    - ainiriand 3y ago
      Looks to me like the same rethoric of those that speak the virtues of true communism. I heard the song many times already.
- greenie_beans 3y ago
  yes, we should go to a decentralized system where the community or workers own the farm.

miguelazo 3y ago

I wonder if this is what helped kill AppHarvest. There are a lot of middlemen in produce, especially when it is produced abroad. I don't think they're the ones hurting, and are a big part of the problem.

gdubs 3y ago

We purchased a farm many years ago that had become eroded after many years of conventional farming. In our quest to transition to regenerative practices, and things like organic, we've definitely had the realization that most people have no idea where their food comes from, or why it costs what it does. The margins in most farming are razor thin. Our neighbors who grow conventionally spend tons on inputs like fertilizer, for a shockingly small amount of money [in return per acre]. A year of extreme weather – more and more common – throws the whole thing out the window. People say they want organic, but then they balk at the price without realizing how much labor goes into it when you're not just spraying to control weeds (or, more shockingly, to stop growth on your food crop at just the right time). All of that said, a lot of the negativity directed toward anyone who has the dream of growing their own food is often coming from a conventional mindset. There are alternative approaches. A few great books are "Permaculture" by Mollison, "One Straw Revolution" by Fukuoka, "Restoration Agriculture" by Shephard. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing – you can start with some perennial herbs on your balcony. Larger scale, I'm an advocate for things like agroforestry practices, becoming more and more interested in agrivoltaics. You can go a very long way with a few dwarf fruit and nut trees, an understory of berries, and a few raised beds managed with no-dig methods. If nothing else, you learn first-hand the challenges (and joys) of growing food, become more connected to the world that sustains us, and maybe gain a better appreciation for the people who work really hard for very thin margins to keep us all fed.

ch4s3 3y ago
To your point, you're talking about processes that while impressive in many respects are HIGHLY labor intensive. The benefits from modern agriculture are the low levels or required human labor and the low prices, both of which free up most people to do other things and to spend far less on food. In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to.
- dmoy 3y ago
  > In the not distant past most Americans spent 30+% of their income on food, which I doubt is a world many of us want to return to. Not only that, but as recently as like 100 years ago, 30% of people in the US were farmers (ish).

Tokkemon 3y ago

Wasn't this a whole plot point in the Grapes of Wrath? People starving while the farmers let the crops rot to keep the price up?

andy_ppp 3y ago

Sounds like all industries, the longer they have gone on the less profitable they are. I’m not excusing ripping off farmers but it seems to be a pattern in all industries i.e. textiles, newspapers, building, car manufacturing, even most engineering… unless there is constant technological innovation (or market capture like the music industry) their profitability tends to zero.

abigail95 3y ago
i'm not sure agricultural profit is tending towards zero, it says half of it is profitable. if i took a random assortment of companies, how many would be profitable in a given year? half? two thirds?
asdff 3y ago
Tell that to the oil industry

nly 3y ago

Maybe food production shouldn't be highly profitable anyway, seeing as food is a basic need?

sambazi 3y ago
could be argued that most produce in a supermarket is not there to satisfy 'basic needs'
abigail95 3y ago
At a glance if I look at a map, the areas with large and profitable food companies tend to be more well fed. I would dare to say that's causal. The more money you can make selling food, the more people will do it.

myshpa 3y ago

I think the structure of subsidies makes the problem worse. The price of meat and healthy whole foods in the US is heavily distorted by lobying [0] and by subsidies ($38 billion each year to subsidize the meat and dairy industries, but only 0.04 percent of that (i.e., $17 million) each year to subsidize fruits and vegetables) [1]. [0] https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive-in-america-blame-farm-bill-congress-always-renews-make-burgers-cheaper-salad-gene-baur/ https://fortune.com/2023/07/21/why-healthy-food-so-expensive... [1] https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavingThePlanetSustainableMeatAlternatives.pdf https://scet.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/CopyofFINALSavi...

jimnotgym 3y ago

>‘Less than half’ fresh produce sold globally makes any profit None at all, or none for the producer?

gnicholas 3y ago

Bananas are among the most popular fruit, as they are available year-round and travel well. They are also often used as a loss-leader. When I was at UCLA, the Whole Foods sold bananas at a very low price (39¢ a pound?), as a loss leader. Since I was a budget-conscious student, I would frequently just go in to buy bananas (it was 2 blocks from my apt, and on my walk home). But most shoppers who brave LA traffic to go to the grocery store would buy many other items, making the whole trip profitable for the store.

jzwinck 3y ago
Bananas also serve another important function which ensures their continued success as an export product: https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/65-tonnes-of-cocaine-found-hidden-between-bananas-in-colombia-and-spain https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/65-t...
- smorrebrod 3y ago
  I had an anti-corruption mandatory course in a previous job in the naval industry. They talked about drugs hidden in refrigerated containers: they swapped the insulation material of the containers with cocaine. Apparently the goods in the containers did not spoil so thermal conductivity of cocaine is pretty low.

lasermike026 3y ago

I eat some of my vegetables from a garden. We should eat what is in season and not eat food that travels very far. Perhaps fruits and vegetables are to expensive or unprofitable because we are asking too much.

pers0n 3y ago

Also keep in mind that they destroy crops before they ever go to market, if they produce too much. This is how capitalism works, you have to waste resources to keep the prices stable.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

Food production should be strictly regulated and prices protected. If food is treated like a generic commodity, the capitalist incentives end up destroying flavor, nutrition, variety, and the environment (read: your soil, your water, anything that lives in or near soil or water). People will always buy the cheapest possible thing, even if it's the worst thing for them and everything around them. We shouldn't give people and corporations the choice to slowly destroy everything. Not if we want to survive long term.

gatvol 3y ago

From TA: "Those increases, the report says, were driven by costs of fertiliser (up 60 per cent worldwide), construction (+48 per cent), fuel and gas (+41 per cent), shipping rates (+40 per cent), and electricity (+40 percent)." All of the drivers are energy related - I'd hypothesise this is the result of climate policies impacting energy costs.

GartzenDeHaes 3y ago

Dole makes $1.2 billion a year EBITDA. https://www.doleplc.com/investor-relations/news/ir-news-details/2023/Dole-plc-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2022-Financial-Results/default.aspx https://www.doleplc.com/investor-relations/news/ir-news-deta...

cushpush 3y ago

How can we make food free for all and also delicious

scoofy 3y ago

That's not even counting the amount of taxpayer funding that comes from developing the water resources that subsidize these growers. People have no idea how thin of a razor we stand on in terms of food production. I can't speak for the whole world, but United States has built an incredible food exportation economy built on groundwater pumping and damming rivers in the desert. Both of which will ultimately fail, it's just a matter of when they fail. When they do, the world will become dramatically poorer all at once, and we could see a global famine beyond anything anyone could imagine.

canadianfella 3y ago

[dead]

Borrible 3y ago

I probably make one of the most delicious marmelades in human history. At least that's what my clan claims. Made from blackberries I collect myself(around 10kg or so per year, takes few hours), Rum, Coffee, cinnamon and vanilla(the real one).Relatively little preserving sugar, so it is not too sweet. Around a fourth of my output I give away for fun. From time to time somebody asks me why I don't make a business out of it, some little side hustle in autumn and winter. I then show them the math and the resulting price. And if that is not enough, I explain to them how I could turn this into a semi-profitable small-scale business... This makes them even more grateful for the little gift of mine. In 2020 I probably grew the most expensive San Marzano tomatoes worldwide. The amount of work, water and fertilizer I sacrificed for 16kg of the finest dried tomatoes i ever ate is ridiculous. But then again, family and friends still talk about it. The only vegetable in my little garden of about 350 square yards I could ever break even, beside the usual suspects of different herbs, were Musquée de Provence pumpkins. A compost heap and a lot of water is all they need. But then again I still have a few kilo of them in the freezer from last year and to be honest I can't stand them anymore. Fed up, so to say.

b3nji 3y ago

Turns out if you shut the vast majority of the world down by fiat, the economy tanks, and inflation goes up. Who knew ;)

t0bia_s 3y ago

Great, we need to get back to buy from local producers. For now, global supermarkets set prices that are not sustainable for competition - like those local producers. Decentralisation is even more broken chain supply and regulation proof.