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Comment by ahmedalsudani | Hacker News Reader

Why is it sad?

It's sad that food has to travel long distances to be purchased at reasonable prices when it's grown relatively nearby. To put the shoe on a different foot. The Dominican Republic produces a lot of tomatoes. But they lack a lot of the infrastructure and machinery that both the US and Mexico have. Shops there sell Mexico and US tomatoes when there's a tomato field ten or twenty miles away. Those fields truly can't compete on a serious level without specialty importers in the USA. That's the sad part.

The bad part, environmentally, think of all the excess CO2 produced in transport that in reality, doesn't truly need to happen.

Just because the tomato is coming from the Dominican Republic doesn’t mean more CO2 was produced.

Farmer Jack driving a few hundred pounds of tomatoes to the farmer’s market might be spewing more CO2 per tomato than the hundreds of tons coming by ship from the Dominican Republic. Scale of efficiency definitely applies to transportation.

No way the potentially higher CO2 emissions per km/kg is higher than the 1000x factor from having tomatoes come from the US instead of locally.

Similarly my parents live in a rural community and practically everyone grows garlic, but farm-stands have trouble competing with grocery store (read: Chinese) garlic.

Florida has a fuckton of strawberry fields. I'm about 1-3 counties away from the major producers. In major grocery chains around me, it's all California and Mexico strawberries. You have no idea how angry that makes me.

Who eats the Floridian strawberries?

Nobody knows...

Just kidding. To my knowledge a lot go to processing, not consumer consumption. Typically these are also labeled as "ugly" because they're not always your traditional strawberry shape. Similar, Florida oranges were mostly juicing oranges, not consumption. Though greenery has really fucked up that market sector.

I just don't appreciate the whole "look" based market we have in the states. I think it's as stupid as stupid gets. A majority of food prices are due to people not wanting their food to "look" a certain way. Even though that look has zero correlation to taste. Which, typically, the ugly ones have more flavor. Like, the best beefsteak tomato looks like a hideous tumor. God as my witness, they have a great taste. It's good enough to just slice and eat by itself. But then the pretty beefsteak tomatoes are a watery disaster of sadness.

Just me ranting away about the terrible disconnect a majority of the population has to their food. It's really sad. There's really no cure to it unless the fed mandates Victory Gardens. Which, I'm totally for. The only big government action I'll approve is the fed saying "If you have a yard, you must cultivate 25% of it minimum as a Victory Garden or face penalty of death." A day worth celebrating.

People are averse to defective products. Because people can pick and choose, they will select the best product.

If we all agree to purchase slightly damaged food and only remove the damaged part, it would be fine.

There is still the issue that people do not know how the food was damaged, which is a different supply chain issue.

No no, I'm not talking about damaged.

I'm talking about "ugly". The strawberries and tomatoes at the store are perfect shaped. The breeds that pump out these typically lack the same intensity of flavor as heirloom varieties, that if you are not use to them, would barely recognize them.

Watch some homesteading harvest videos on youtube. Especially if they do carrots. They wont look like store bought ones.

The people who "select the best product" basically only have visuals to go on, therefore they actually select for the prettiest product, not the best tasting product.

Look has a correlation to perceived taste. People perceive things to be tastier when they look good.

Until you live on a farm and realize the ugly ones taste better by far measure and the pretty ones should just be fed to the chickens.

Most people these days never get that experience. So they think what they're looking at is a pretty strawberry. In reality, it's only real use is compost.

Most fresh fruit isn't beautiful but is still perfectly edible, so it goes into processed foods.

I definitely have seen Florida strawberries in Georgia. (Georgia also grows strawberries, although not that many.)

That's because you lot focus on peaches. Which, I mean, yea... Only good reason to risk getting a bs speeding ticket in Georgia is for a peach run.

North Carolinian here. SC peaches are superior to GA peaches.

They might be. I don't see SC peaches in Georgia, and I haven't been there, so I haven't tried them. I assume the South Carolinians are hoarding their peaches for themselves.

(If I have a dog in this fight, it's actually New Jersey, where I grew up.)

I agree, but that sounds like a case for a carbon tax, not for tariffs.

That is why the argument is made for freedom of movement of labour. If you could have cheaper labour in America, you would have the best of both worlds. But of course you’d have people complaining their jobs are being stolen.

We can’t have our cake and eat it too.

I don't know, I think that's only partially the problem. But just so we're clear, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying there are other factors. Mostly, I think it's the way distributors and retailers form their contract deals, which spills to the farmers. I've never done food, but I know some of the deals work similarly to what I experienced in security. Camera manufacturers for example, give you a discounted price when you buy a certain amount every year. The more you sell, the better your discount. Typically 3 tiers, some did 4. This is both good and bad. It protects the loyal and well experienced integrators from the fly by night folks from making quick turn and burn dollars. Fly by night folks get lower margins compared to the bigger guys. But at the same time, it makes it a serious pain in the ass to get a foot in the door when starting out. On top of that, if you're a middle of the field player, you don't take too much risk in a new or alternative brand because it'll hurt your yearly number, thus hurt your discount, thus hurt your margins, thus hurt your overall profit. I assume big box grocery stores have a similar instance with distributors, with nuances of course.

Part 2. There are farmer markets (real ones, not the hipster kind) with local farmers and it's a good 20%-50% cheaper. Plus, those farmers make a better margin. Problem, lower volume in comparison. Typically (near me) these are part of the weekly flea markets or literally a dude in his pickup truck on the side of the road. These places don't have a good... PR look. But I'm also in Florida and I grew up white trash. Nearly everything grows here and I'm fine if things aren't pristine/well-marketed.

I think over marketing, bad lock in deals and piss poor public perception of real food production are the main problems. Real strawberries look like Frankenstein's face. And they're fucking delicious.

You'd also often be forcing people to leave their communities and families, because the right job for them was somewhere else.

It feels weird to unthinkingly sacrifice valuable life preferences at the altar of Economic Efficiency Uber Alles.

What do you mean by 'the right job' and why would it 'force' people to leave their communities?

I'm going to change up the countries so there's less emotional value associated.

Why should Polish people leave their country so they can find work in England? In theory, countries should be self-sufficient enough to where only niche based jobs should have such movement. I'm talking about highly specialized stuff. But when it comes to generic labor, why? Farming? Building houses? The fact people want to leave one country for another just for basic jobs is kind of messed up. I feel both countries are to blame forcing people to leave their homeland. One needs to get their fucking shit together and/or quit punishing a demographic because said gov wants to become a more service oriented country, the other country needs to stop creating incentives for such actions to become easily profitable on a large scale basis.

Countries need to be self-sufficient with their own population. One population sacrificing its people for the good of another is not sustainable, no matter how you slice or dice it.

No one has to do anything.

> The fact people want to leave one country for another just for basic jobs is kind of messed up.

Do they have to or do they want to? If they want to, what is the problem?

Economically countries are linked. You can say how these things 'should' be, but do you only buy food that was produced locally? You have to think about the incentives all the way through.

In Punjab most of the time they Have to, because staying back means competition 1000sof Over Qualified applications for a peon job, whereas coming over to First World means being rich in few years.

Shipping foreign produce is not good for the environment at all. Easy to harvest and low maintenance produce such as garlic should not need to be imported. The margins over garlic may be low, but local producers can still benefit from being able to sell without too many intermediaries.

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