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Comment by greazy | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the strawberry growers here in Australia, QLD. Many farmers switched to strawberries and the market was flooded for one season. They were literally selling them by the kilo when previously punnets (250g) were 3-5 dollars each.

Lots of farmers switched to other more stable crops. The big players stayed and the small farmers producing high quality fruit continued.

The market stabilizing. Interesting times.

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Off topic. I've been appalled at how tasteless store-bought strawberries in the U.S. have become. I don't know happened, a change in cultivar? 12 years ago I could buy flavorful strawberries in the U.S., today I cannot. I hope they have more flavor in AU.

Many varieties were replaced with the "Camarosa", which is now the default grocery-store berry. Here's an article from the change-over:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-21-mn-61072-...

[edited to add: see also: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/interesting-chandler-strawberr... -- but there are a lot of astroturf pieces out there also]

Camarosa ships well (high firmness), but the taste really isn't there.

That replacement was more of a circa-2000 thing. Perhaps the further decline since then has been due to relocation of berry production even farther away from U.S. markets (e.g., in Mexico or Central America).

You can still get the other varieties from local producers, at least where I live in southern California. The taste difference is enormous, it's worth going to a farmer's market just for the berries.

Same kind of thing has happened with tomatoes.

JS-free archive link: https://archive.ph/xdkfC

Because consumers in the US buy on size and appearance and not taste.

We'll buy a pint of massive, red, perfect looking berries that have zero flavor before we'll buy a smaller, dented berry that has the best flavor on the planet. Add to that the berries tend to be picked green and shipped long distances and you have the perfect maelstrom for the next 'red delicious' debacle.

> Because consumers in the US buy on size and appearance and not taste.

They buy on size and appearance signals that, within familiar varieties, correlate very strongly with taste, because you can't taste offerings in the store to choose which to buy.

This is then exploited by the commercial supply chain in a way which proves Goodhart’s Law.

> This is then exploited by the commercial supply chain in a way which proves Goodhart’s Law.

That's a very interesting example of Goodhart's Law in action, and one that broadens the circumstances when I think about it applying. Thanks.

Give people some credit here. If you took an heirloom strawberry and put it through the wringer of shipping it to idaho in the dead of winter, it will be moldy jam by the end. Farmers markets have heirlooms but just take a look at them: the tomatoes at the bottom of the pile will be all crushed by the ones at the top because this cultivar is not selected for its tensile strength when sitting in a pile in the produce section.

Well most costumers don't buy according to taste because you either can't taste it and compare it in commercial stores, or they don't have much of a choice. A more traditional market or farmers market is a different situation where someone might offer to let you try one or a piece of their fruit knowing their competitions fruit are tasteless and gain customers. In a walmart you can label your fruit as delicious or something, but so can the competition, and you can't really refute it until after they already bought them.

Not sure why this was downvoted. Across the world it is absolutely the case that we optimise for shelf-life and appearance over taste. This becomes especially obvious when you grow your own tomatoes from seed.

I think it's actually even worse than that. You're suggesting that people accept a lesser taste in exchange for the other benefits. As if this is a conscious decision.

I think people don't really taste with any attention at all. They eat in a rush, preoccupied, and the ingredients may be mashed together into some mix. As long as something isn't incredibly off, they'll not consider it a "lesser" taste, this is just how a strawberry tastes.

...until you take the time to demonstrate the vastly superior taste.

BTW, if you haven't tried wild strawberries, I would highly recommend. They are not super sweet, but they have very strong, concentrated flavor, much more so than regular strawberries. Seems to be largely unknown in US, unfortunately?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragaria_vesca

Maybe coming from afar and picked when they're green? Local strawberries in the summer are great, just like local tomatoes. The rest of the year it's much harder to get either one in any variety I can stomach.

If you have the money, take a trip to Japan and you can try the best strawberries in the world. Only $500 each!

https://strawberryplants.org/japanese-strawberry-growing-sec...

This company [0] is producing vertically grown strawberries with insanely high sugar content. They're apparently very good, but I haven't been willing to spend $15 on 6 strawberries.

0: https://oishii.com

When do you buy them? Where I live in Canada there are two options, big tasteless imported (from down south) stuff that's available year round, or tasty local half-the-size stuff that is only available for a few weeks once a year.

Besides farmers' markets, which the others have mentioned, there are smaller produce markets in a lot of areas (they tend to be in strip malls, at least near me). Their whole shtick is having good produce, including berries.

Try getting some Mara de Bois bare root strawberries. I plant them in old paper bags filled with soil and leave them outside.

Sadly the vast majority do not..

And that happened with avocados this year

Avocados take 10 years to start producing. Strawberries are available that growing season. Any wild drop in avocado prices I'd imagine would have to be something changing in the economic playing field (unless it is just a ten year delay from a jump in tree planting).

The Mexican cartels have been squeezing avocado farmers, there is an episode on Rotten (Netflix, I think) about it. Any price swinging makes me wonder how the cartels may have been involved.

They're out of the weed business so like any corporation, they're pivoting to cocaine, human trafficking, and shakedowns on avocado farmers.

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