5 ms·

But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

by CooCooCaCha 2y ago

boxed 2y ago
What is the cost we are paying that you imply is too high?
- password_ 2y ago
  [flagged]
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Why not? Bulk shipping is really efficient, local farmers markets can easily be worse for the environment than going to a supermarket. A Semi moving 35 tons at 7 MPG is 25 times more fuel efficient vs a ford F-150 moving 1/2 ton at 20 MPG and trains or boats are even better. In the end fuel costs money so more efficient logistics is often good for the environment. Buying local makes a lot more sense if you live in a farming community than a port city.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Replacing shipped blueberries with locally farmed ones definitely could be a wash or a loss, environmentally, for sure I agree there. But we have relatively efficient industrial scale farming in the US as well, if we admitted that blueberries are seasonal we could grow them in big efficient farms and then just ship them less far.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        A lot of fruits freeze pretty well too. When I'm in Maine at the right time of year and big boxes of "wild" local (low-bush) blueberries are for sale, often they're already frozen. I agree that local fruits during their short local season can be pretty good but stuff that's shipped in or frozen isn't necessarily bad. Depends on the produce.
    - VelesDude 2y ago
      In a previous job, I did the math for shipping goods from Melbourne to Perth here in Australia via freight train. It worked out to be 1 litre of fuel per ton moved 500km. In imperial, that is 1 ton at 930MPG! That efficiency is mind blowing but it does rely on a lot of goods to be moved to gain that scale efficiency. This is where the last mile problem comes in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)
  - boxed 2y ago
    For sure the cost of carbon and other pollution should be factored in. But I don't think the externalities are that large really. I would be surprised if the cost would go up more than 20% if we had a proper carbon tax in place. At least after the market adapts.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Yeah, a carbon tax is the way to go. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you are right that the externalities aren’t huge on this one, but it would be good to take them into account regardless.
    - tekla 2y ago
      The externality of a locally grown blueberry is incredibly higher than industrial farmed blueberries
      - genewitch 2y ago
        lol, what? I have blueberry bushes in my yard, they were like $5. i put them in the ground and then ignored them for years. It is true that not every piece of land can do what i did here, but these sweeping "marvel at the advance of farming" ideas are silly to me. I had a peach, plum, orange, and fig tree in my back yard growing up in california. When we sold the house the new owners tore them down. I think that's sad. Fresh, free fruit every year? Now, growing enough of one thing to be able to sell it to turn a profit might have "greater externality" but even that might not be true depending on the methods used. There are composting farms where people bring their refuse - specifically "anything that was alive recently" can go in the compost, and this will provide nutrients and soil amendments in a sustainable way to that farm, which can then provide nutrition to the community it serves. You can't feed the planet with a small, self-sustaining farm. But this idea that it's a net negative needs to DIAF.
  - anonporridge 2y ago
    There's no intrinsic reason why it can't be. It entirely depends on how many externalities are created as debt to the future in order to ship blueberries around the world. Internalize those externalities and the grinding force of the market will eventually eliminate or mitigate them. The future we should all be striving for is one of extreme abundance for everyone, not forcing everyone into hair shirts.
  - RecycledEle 2y ago
    > Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment. Look at the price to ship something. The cost of fuel burned can not be greater than the shipping cost, and it is probably much less.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      The cost of fuel could be higher than the shipping cost, if we include things like: * the cost of cleaning up all the carbon we’ve spewed out * the cost of fossil fuel subsidies * the political cost of doing business with oil producing countries, many of which seem to be fairly hostile
- ks2048 2y ago
  People mention environmental costs. There are also geopolitical costs. I write this from Guatemala, where 70 years ago, a budding 10-year-old democracy was destroyed so that Americans could continue to get cheap bananas. And the country never really recovered. Of course, from technology and "globalization", I think the abundance of American supermarkets would still have occurred, but this has been optimized at the expense of human rights and wages of people throughout the world.
  - oblio 2y ago
    > I write this from Guatemala, where 70 years ago, a budding 10-year-old democracy was destroyed so that Americans could continue to get cheap bananas. And the country never really recovered. Worse, they mocked it and still do with terms such as "banana republic". They haven't even learned any better.
mtalantikite 2y ago
My problem with it is that not only are we paying the environmental cost to have berries all year round in the grocery store, it's that they're also just shit quality. Like not just passable, but are bitter and sour and not worth it at all. And it's sort of at the expense of really good, local berries when the real season hits. For example, I live in Brooklyn and the grocery stores last summer barely had any local blueberries from New Jersey. Everything was Driscolls branded berries, and they're always bad. They look like berries, but they taste awful, or at best like nothing, 95% of the time. I don't know much about the market, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had a year long contract and the local producers get shut out during the real season. Luckily there are farmers markets and CSAs near me.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  This so much. People who live in Western cities have no fucking clue what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like. It’s like a running gag that my father complains about supermarket tomatoes, but after travelling through rural places in Eastern and Southern Europe and a little bit in Central America, I totally get it.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Tomatoes are probably about the worst example you could pick. Fresh tomatoes can be excellent (though I'm really not a tomato aficionado) during the short period when they're in season locally in much of the US. Outside that period, the recommendation for cooking tomatoes is generally to use canned because tomatoes are an example of something that doesn't ship well.
    - wumbo 2y ago
      That’s why they’re the best example. Grow your own and the difference is extreme between that and a mealy, flavorless storebought
      - ghaff 2y ago
        That assumes you care enough about tomatoes to grow them. My local farmstand probably does a better job than I could when they’re in season which is true of most of what they sell.
RecycledEle 2y ago
> But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round? Look at the price tag on the blueberries. That is the cost. The opportunity cost is that the money could have neen spent on something else. The great thing about a free market is that if you think resources should be allocated elsewhere, you can do that. Your labor is your resource. I find greenhouses to be wonderfully environmentally friendly, and do not understand why someone would object to them.
- CooCooCaCha 2y ago
  No. Price is an amalgamation and approximation of a lot of different factors rolled into one. Concepts like cost and value are much deeper and richer than economic cost and economic value.
- oblio 2y ago
  > Look at the price tag on the blueberries. That is the cost. We're absolute garbage at including externalities like pollution or long term effects into prices. Look at incredibly cheap plastic. It's a massive danger to everything yet a plastic bag costs cents.

But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round?

boxed 2y ago

What is the cost we are paying that you imply is too high?

password_ 2y ago
[flagged]
bee_rider 2y ago
Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment.
- Retric 2y ago
  Why not? Bulk shipping is really efficient, local farmers markets can easily be worse for the environment than going to a supermarket. A Semi moving 35 tons at 7 MPG is 25 times more fuel efficient vs a ford F-150 moving 1/2 ton at 20 MPG and trains or boats are even better. In the end fuel costs money so more efficient logistics is often good for the environment. Buying local makes a lot more sense if you live in a farming community than a port city.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Replacing shipped blueberries with locally farmed ones definitely could be a wash or a loss, environmentally, for sure I agree there. But we have relatively efficient industrial scale farming in the US as well, if we admitted that blueberries are seasonal we could grow them in big efficient farms and then just ship them less far.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      A lot of fruits freeze pretty well too. When I'm in Maine at the right time of year and big boxes of "wild" local (low-bush) blueberries are for sale, often they're already frozen. I agree that local fruits during their short local season can be pretty good but stuff that's shipped in or frozen isn't necessarily bad. Depends on the produce.
  - VelesDude 2y ago
    In a previous job, I did the math for shipping goods from Melbourne to Perth here in Australia via freight train. It worked out to be 1 litre of fuel per ton moved 500km. In imperial, that is 1 ton at 930MPG! That efficiency is mind blowing but it does rely on a lot of goods to be moved to gain that scale efficiency. This is where the last mile problem comes in. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)
- boxed 2y ago
  For sure the cost of carbon and other pollution should be factored in. But I don't think the externalities are that large really. I would be surprised if the cost would go up more than 20% if we had a proper carbon tax in place. At least after the market adapts.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Yeah, a carbon tax is the way to go. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you are right that the externalities aren’t huge on this one, but it would be good to take them into account regardless.
  - tekla 2y ago
    The externality of a locally grown blueberry is incredibly higher than industrial farmed blueberries
    - genewitch 2y ago
      lol, what? I have blueberry bushes in my yard, they were like $5. i put them in the ground and then ignored them for years. It is true that not every piece of land can do what i did here, but these sweeping "marvel at the advance of farming" ideas are silly to me. I had a peach, plum, orange, and fig tree in my back yard growing up in california. When we sold the house the new owners tore them down. I think that's sad. Fresh, free fruit every year? Now, growing enough of one thing to be able to sell it to turn a profit might have "greater externality" but even that might not be true depending on the methods used. There are composting farms where people bring their refuse - specifically "anything that was alive recently" can go in the compost, and this will provide nutrients and soil amendments in a sustainable way to that farm, which can then provide nutrition to the community it serves. You can't feed the planet with a small, self-sustaining farm. But this idea that it's a net negative needs to DIAF.
- anonporridge 2y ago
  There's no intrinsic reason why it can't be. It entirely depends on how many externalities are created as debt to the future in order to ship blueberries around the world. Internalize those externalities and the grinding force of the market will eventually eliminate or mitigate them. The future we should all be striving for is one of extreme abundance for everyone, not forcing everyone into hair shirts.
- RecycledEle 2y ago
  > Shipping blueberries around the world can’t be great for the environment. Look at the price to ship something. The cost of fuel burned can not be greater than the shipping cost, and it is probably much less.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    The cost of fuel could be higher than the shipping cost, if we include things like: * the cost of cleaning up all the carbon we’ve spewed out * the cost of fossil fuel subsidies * the political cost of doing business with oil producing countries, many of which seem to be fairly hostile
ks2048 2y ago
People mention environmental costs. There are also geopolitical costs. I write this from Guatemala, where 70 years ago, a budding 10-year-old democracy was destroyed so that Americans could continue to get cheap bananas. And the country never really recovered. Of course, from technology and "globalization", I think the abundance of American supermarkets would still have occurred, but this has been optimized at the expense of human rights and wages of people throughout the world.
- oblio 2y ago
  > I write this from Guatemala, where 70 years ago, a budding 10-year-old democracy was destroyed so that Americans could continue to get cheap bananas. And the country never really recovered. Worse, they mocked it and still do with terms such as "banana republic". They haven't even learned any better.

mtalantikite 2y ago

My problem with it is that not only are we paying the environmental cost to have berries all year round in the grocery store, it's that they're also just shit quality. Like not just passable, but are bitter and sour and not worth it at all. And it's sort of at the expense of really good, local berries when the real season hits. For example, I live in Brooklyn and the grocery stores last summer barely had any local blueberries from New Jersey. Everything was Driscolls branded berries, and they're always bad. They look like berries, but they taste awful, or at best like nothing, 95% of the time. I don't know much about the market, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had a year long contract and the local producers get shut out during the real season. Luckily there are farmers markets and CSAs near me.

rrr_oh_man 2y ago
This so much. People who live in Western cities have no fucking clue what fruits and vegetables are supposed to taste like. It’s like a running gag that my father complains about supermarket tomatoes, but after travelling through rural places in Eastern and Southern Europe and a little bit in Central America, I totally get it.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Tomatoes are probably about the worst example you could pick. Fresh tomatoes can be excellent (though I'm really not a tomato aficionado) during the short period when they're in season locally in much of the US. Outside that period, the recommendation for cooking tomatoes is generally to use canned because tomatoes are an example of something that doesn't ship well.
  - wumbo 2y ago
    That’s why they’re the best example. Grow your own and the difference is extreme between that and a mealy, flavorless storebought
    - ghaff 2y ago
      That assumes you care enough about tomatoes to grow them. My local farmstand probably does a better job than I could when they’re in season which is true of most of what they sell.

RecycledEle 2y ago

> But at what cost? How much should we sacrifice so that blueberries exist year round? Look at the price tag on the blueberries. That is the cost. The opportunity cost is that the money could have neen spent on something else. The great thing about a free market is that if you think resources should be allocated elsewhere, you can do that. Your labor is your resource. I find greenhouses to be wonderfully environmentally friendly, and do not understand why someone would object to them.

CooCooCaCha 2y ago
No. Price is an amalgamation and approximation of a lot of different factors rolled into one. Concepts like cost and value are much deeper and richer than economic cost and economic value.
oblio 2y ago
> Look at the price tag on the blueberries. That is the cost. We're absolute garbage at including externalities like pollution or long term effects into prices. Look at incredibly cheap plastic. It's a massive danger to everything yet a plastic bag costs cents.