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Berlin: Record harvest sparks mass giveaway of free potatoes
- dr_dshiv 9mo agoWeird abundance problems. Should we get used to it?
- burnt-resistor 9mo agoThe fail-safe answer is: absolutely not. Climate change is already leading to mass migrations and decreasing food security due to greater variance in floods and droughts, and heat waves and cold snaps. We should be doing all we can to holistically improve food security by: - expand fresh water reservoir, flood control, reclamation, and RO water generation capacity - increase diversity of crop cultivars because monoculture is a liability, e.g., Gros Michel banana - increase geographic distribution of farming - improve long-term food preservation technology - increase strategic food storage capacity rather than relying entirely upon for-profit, just-in-time-delivery and inventory minimization cost-optimization - cut net GHG emissions and gradually return to pre-industrial levels
- solatic 9mo ago> “There were pictures of huge mountains of ‘earth apples’,” she recalled, using the word Erdäpfel, an affectionate term for the potato sometimes used by Berliners Fun fact: the Hebrew translation of potato, תפוח אדמה, is the portmanteau of "earth" (אדמה) and "apple" (תפוח). If you should ever be so fortunate as to have too many potatoes, see if you can shred them with a food processor and combine with onion, egg, salt, and pepper to make potato kugel, which freezes exceptionally well.
- docdeek 9mo agoThe French term for potatoes is also ‘earth apple’: pomme de terre
- epolanski 9mo agoPolish is ziemniaki, where ziemia is earth.
- sleepychu 9mo agoI'm fairly sure that is the origin of Erdäpfel. We certainly thought this was a funny name for potato when we learned French in Scotland :-) When I learned German the word for potato was Kartoffel.
- majoe 9mo agoKartoffel is the standard German word. Erdäpfel is used in many dialects and has plenty of variants. Actually the various different words for potatoe and their distribution across Germany, Swiss and Austria is linguistically quite interesting (see this map [1]). The legend is in German and roughly translates to (from top to bottom): - Potatoes - Ground pears - Earth apples - Earth pears - Hearth apples [1]: http://stepbysteplingue.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/kartoffeln-erd%C3%A4pfel.png http://stepbysteplingue.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/karto...
- LePetitPrince 9mo ago[dead]
- HPsquared 9mo agoI suppose this "earth apple" formulation coming up in several languages is partly because potatoes are from the New World, and Old World languages won't have a "traditional" word for them. Whereas in English it's basically a loanword.
- notepad0x90 9mo agoPotatoes originated from the Americas, so I suppose that word was created in the past 500 years. But even for modern computer names, I would thing old languages would just use amalgamations like that.
- card_zero 9mo agoChecks Wiktionary says it was in Old High German a thousand years ago, but defines that word as "pumpkin, squash, melon", which is strange since pumpkins are New World too.
- wiml 9mo agoSquashes are New World, but gourds and melons were grown in the Old World (Wikipedia says brought to Europe during the Roman era).
- seydor 9mo agothe same in many languages, french pomme de terre, greek geomilo,
- DonaldFisk 9mo agoDutch is aardappel. Fun fact: there's a programming language called Aardappel: https://strlen.com/aardappel-language/ https://strlen.com/aardappel-language/
- pixl97 9mo ago>make potato kugel, This seems very similar to a hash brown breakfast casserole in the US.
- yorwba 9mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618544
- dang 9mo agoThanks! Macroexpanded: 4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618544 - Jan 2026 (141 comments)
- relaxing 9mo agoWow. Not only is this not tech, but it’s a dupe from two weeks ago, yet no one has flagged it?
- Flavius 9mo agoThis is a massive missed opportunity for financialization. We need a 3x Leveraged Bull Potato ETF immediately. Tokenize the crop, lock it in a vault and trade futures against the harvest. Why feed people for free when we could create artificial scarcity and pump the price 10x by next week? McDonald’s fries pricing suggests the market has already priced in a massive supply squeeze. They are generating better margins on a sliced potato than the Central Banks get when they print fiat.
- assaddayinh 9mo agoLeave it to [capitalism|socialism] to organize artificial scarcity.. why does endstage one starts to feel like the other..
- ahartmetz 9mo agoThe scarcity in socialism is all real! Organic, if you wish.
- seydor 9mo agoDuh. Just set up a viral potato coin and then short it to death
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- KellyCriterion 9mo agobut... will this solution be Cloud Native? :-D
- yongjik 9mo agoI know it's fashionable to blame capitalism on everything, but dealing with excess produce is legitimately a hard problem because they have a shelf life and someone has to harvest them and move them to where consumers are.
- Flavius 9mo ago
- scirob 9mo agoIt's good they didn't flood the market and tank the price. It's real btw. I got a whole wagens worth and distributed amongst my neighbors
- Flavius 9mo ago> It's good they didn't flood the market and tank the price. God forbid the price of food ever goes down. That would kill millions.
- nosianu 9mo ago> God forbid the price of food ever goes down. They did give it away for free...? And not letting farms go bust is not the worst idea. Crops are not like industrial products, how much gets produced has a significant random component. Relying on market forces alone does not appear to be the best solution in this field, no? That's independent of how much big agro-businesses benefitting from policies they asked politicians to create for them is a problem too. Anyway - my recommendation for potatoes is "Kartoffelpuffer"! Can be combined with a large number of things, applesauce is the most simple and laziest choice. https://youtu.be/obs5MhNA4Rs https://youtu.be/obs5MhNA4Rs (German Potato Pancakes | Kartoffelpuffer | Reibekuchen Homemade) This is very easy to make, the only problem is that you may end up with a lot of oil splashes around your pan. I cover everything around the pan with kitchen paper towels, carefully leaving a few millimeters of space around the heating circle, so that afterwards all I have to do is collect them at the end, no other cleanup necessary. They need to be as brown as shown at the beginning of the above video for best taste, and not too thick. They do it all manually in the video, but I just use a mixer, which is much faster and the resulting texture is more to my liking anyway compared to having solid stripes of potato in there. It is also the more common method. Do it like in the video if you prefer them made out of small solid stripes.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- doctorwho42 9mo agoYour sarcasm is valid, up until you dig past first order effects.
- Animats 9mo agoThe US has a soy glut and a corn glut, and Germany has a potato glut. What to do with all those carbs? Feed cattle?
- pixl97 9mo agoCattle, ethanol, vodka. Not sure what else with these numbers.
- Animats 9mo agoThe US corn industry is lobbying for more ethanol in gasoline. Nobody else can absorb all those carbs near term.
- burnt-resistor 9mo ago5% of all land in America is used to grow corn because taxpayer money in the form of government subsidies makes it a cash crop. Socialism wealth transfer just for farming.
- throwaway173738 9mo agoSoy is a pretty good protein.
- novaRom 9mo agoFun facts from Germany: - Fresh Aldi potatoes are like 0.5 Euro per 1 Kilogram - basically the same price as 25 years ago when Euro currency was introduced - Our national TV channel now shows a great collection of "potato recipes" videos on demand on its main page - Price of McDonalds/BurgerKing fries is around 4 Euro, and 5-6 Euro as a street food - Crisps like Pringles are like 15 Euro per 1 Kilogram (a typical 2.50 Euro for 175gm pack)
- KellyCriterion 9mo agoSmall fries at McD had been lately around 2,99 EUR, that was very expensive given that the "small fries" are actually really small :-D
- novaRom 9mo agoMost of it is probably labor, marketing & franchise fees, rent, utilities, and equipment depreciation. Raw ingredients are likely 5-10%.
- SapporoChris 9mo agoJapan: McFry S Size ¥ 200~ (1.09 EUR) M Size ¥ 330~ (1.80 EUR) L Size ¥ 380~ (2.07 EUR) * Prices may differ at selected restaurants and for delivery.
- throwup238 9mo agoThey’ve been driving people to use their app for years now. The menu prices isn’t what one pays if they use the app, since it has a constant stream of coupons and discounts that bring the list price down.
- pests 9mo agoPretty much a standard 20% off, sometimes 25% as a deal depending on amount spent. BOGO value menu McDouble / McChickens. Points that add up to actually free food. Items not on the menu in store. It's robbery if you don't use their app now.
- seb1204 9mo agoI heard the potato harvest was generally good in Germany. This particular company is rumored to transition to organic farming in the next season. I think it is great to ensure the product gets used but I also heard that it puts many other potato farmers under price pressure in the area.
- novaRom 9mo agoInterestingly, some other products are also cheaper today than few months ago: Basmati rice: -25% (2.5 Euro/Kg) Pork: -25% (7-8 Euro/Kg) Butter: -33% (4 Euro/Kg) Coffee beans: -25% (10-12 Euro/Kg) Chocolate: -15% (20-30 Euro/Kg)
- BadBadJellyBean 9mo agoAnd then I went to the supermarket today and they wanted like €1.50 for a cucumber. A cucumber! That is essentially crispy water.
- dauertewigkeit 9mo agoAll I want to know is if they are the floury kind or the waxy kind, or some in between hybrid. Floury potatoes are so hard to find these days. Almost everyone is growing these "allrounder" hybrids that cannot really be fried or roasted. I imagine these are also some kind of in between hybrid.
- trebligdivad 9mo ago'Maris piper' are very common in the UK that I'd say are floury.
- BadBadJellyBean 9mo agoIn my super market we usually have three kinds of potatos: festkochend (probably what you mean with waxy), vorwiegend festkochend (somewhere in between), weichkochend (maybe what you mean with floury, they fall appart easily)
- hilios 9mo agoWeichkochend, really? I've only ever seen mehligkochend (floury), but yeah those are widely available in supermarkets.
- _frkl 9mo agoThey were Agria, mehligkochend (not waxy): https://4000-tonnen.de/faq.html https://4000-tonnen.de/faq.html
- didgetmaster 9mo agoCrops are a commodity where you can't instantly ramp up or down the supply to meet demand. Most require the better part of a year from seed to harvest. If it grows on trees, it can take years before they produce. Forecasting crop output can also be tricky. Weather conditions, pests, or other things can lead to failed crops or bumper crops. The life of a farmer can literally and figuratively be 'feast or famine'.
- pixl97 9mo agoThis is why nations tend to have things like large stores of long lasting foods, and do things like crop insurance, so that they actually have farmers after a bad year to feed their people. It is a very risky profession and unless you want to depend on other nations for your continued survival is absolutely needed.
- novaRom 9mo agoBut how do they store and preserve that surplus for a longer time cheaply? Probably dehydration helps, but it adds some energy and storing costs.
- riffraff 9mo agoI think most national reserves are cereals (wheat, rice) which are naturally long lasting. There's some storage of special products (dairy, pork, famously maple syrup) but those have ad-hoc storage.
- themaninthedark 9mo agoIt's not always stored, sometimes it is spoiled. https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/mississippi-delta-farmers-rice-crops-surplus/ https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/mississippi-delta-farme... At one point more was sent to developing countries as aid but that practice was curbed as it was undercutting local farmers.
- president_zippy 9mo agoMy grandfather was a farmer in the 70s-80s, and he used futures on about 50% of his crop every year. Just enough to make sure a bad year can't wipe out the farm.
- ChrisArchitect 9mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618544 And also: https://www.4000-tonnen.de/ https://www.4000-tonnen.de/
- labrador 9mo agoGemini 3.0 informs me that the surplus is so large it has overwhelmed the German biofuel industry capacity.
- novaRom 9mo agoI heard crops now cost more to transport than they are worth. Also, it drives most other prices down e.g. pork is getting cheaper.
- arjie 9mo agoFood abundance is crazy to have. Preservation techniques are incredible right now as well. They're no match for a fresh fruit, but if I can get thawed grapes through the year without seasons having significance I'll take them. I am constantly impressed by these seemingly mundane improvements to our lives over the years that have advanced science and development behind them.
- fy20 9mo agoI watched a documentary a while ago on YT, I can't remember the name now, but it was talking about the negative affects of this. It was discussing how crops are bred specifically for life span and storefront appeal, at the expense of other attributes like taste and nutrition. It focussed on tomatoes, but I'd assume it is true for all crops. Also fun fact: a kg of tomato seeds can be worth more than a kg of gold.
- top_sigrid 9mo agohttps://archive.ph/ClLpZ https://archive.ph/ClLpZ
- trhway 9mo agoSurprisingly (for people who never lived in USSR/Russia :) Belarus and Russia have very tight supply of potatoes (after outright shortages in 2025) with Russia importing Chinese potatoes.
- anticodon 9mo agoIn 2023 there was record harvest of potatoes in Russia. Prices dropped, so farmers stopped planting potatoes in 2024 and 2025. Wouldn't be surprised if they plant more this year due to high price.
- rouanza 9mo agoChop into fries, wash, quick boil 3 minutes, rinse with cold water, dry ( salad spinner works well). Fry in beef tallow and never use veg oil. Remove when crispy and place in drip basket. Season
- chao- 9mo agoSo this is a legit version of the Polish farmer who was robbed of 150 tons of potatoes after a fake social media post saying they were free? https://www.vice.com/en/article/viral-free-potatoes-post-cost-this-farmer-150-tons-of-crops/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/viral-free-potatoes-post-cos... Good to see that not everything is awful all of the time.
- president_zippy 9mo agoI foresee a busy year for potato flour and MRE processing plants. ... And those little boxes of instant au gratin.
- burnt-resistor 9mo agoMeanwhile, Russia is importing potatoes because of record low harvests.
- therealdkz 9mo ago[dead]
- fifilura 9mo agoThis kind of stunt is never received well in a working market economy. Best case it will bankrupt well-meaning potato farmers. Worst case, someone does it with malicious intent to grow a monopoly.
- onraglanroad 9mo agoBerlin: Take My Spuds Away