BOUSSY-SAINT-ANTOINE, France (AP) — Truck driver Jeremy Donf understands French farmers are struggling and he wants to support local food producers. But like many consumers, buying French produced food isn’t always an option.
Customers pay too much money and farmers get too little. I wonder where the money goes. 🤔
Honestly, the farmers don’t get too little. The problem is that all the good products they produce gets exported, while lower quality gets imported to put in supermarkets.
This happens all around Europe. The meat you buy in stores are not local, and have traveled thousands of kilometers to get there.
The farmers are businessmen and don’t like to adapt for a better climate. They are managers of their own company and don’t want to hurt their bottom line.
The farmers are businessmen and don’t like to adapt for a better climate.
That is not the sentiment I got from media reports over the last years. Usually farmers do want to produce eco-friendly, but they can’t market their stuff at a higher price.
The problem is that all the good products they produce gets exported, while lower quality gets imported to put in supermarkets.
This sounds like a populist claim. Where would the “good products” get exported to? What even is “higher quality” and “lower quality” in meat?
For fun, I checked the packaging info on ground meat I bought today. It reads, translated:
Born in Germany
Fed in Germany
Slaughtered in Germany
Processed in Germany
I live in the Netherlands, and almost all our meat gets exported to Germany. Most our store bought meat comes from eastern Europe. In fact it’s our most exported product in volume, not in value.
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What even is “higher quality” and “lower quality” in meat?
Low quality is typically achieved by industrialised farming with the goal of raising the animals as quickly as possible, the criterion for “ready for slaughter” being just the weight. This leads to meat which contains a large amount of water, which will come out the moment you cook it, leaving you with a whole lot less meat once you’re done. Taste wise it tends to be underwhelming, too. Low quality pork from pigs fed with a disproportionate amount of fishmeal can even have a distinctly fishy taste.
I know what you’re getting at here, but there are a lot of valid answers to this question.
- Fuel, tractors aren’t known for their efficiency. Whatever price hikes you’re getting at the petrol station they probably pay too.
- Climate, doesn’t matter how much more consumers are paying if half your crop has been destroyed by drought/floods/heat.
- Fertalizer, See: Russo-Ukraine war
- Transit, this is mostly a UK thing (“brexit bonus”) , but any country with supply chain disruptions associated with the current global recession is going to have this issue to some extent or another.
I’m buying potatoes and the fuckers are sprouting a week later. How are my fucking onions rotten after two weeks?
The reason these veggies exist is because we could keep them the whole fucking winter
You could keep some varieties of potatos and onions (ask the potato and the onion sellers at the farmers market, which ones they recommend for that) the whole winter. Stored in a root cellar/earth cellar (not in the kitchen).
We live in different times! Nobody tells you to buy more fresh produce than you need for the next couple of days.
Nope, the problem is how the supermarket and all the middle mans store them in the meantime.
For example I still have onions and potatoes from my vegetable garden, which were grown up from commonly available potatoes and onions from the supermarkets, without basically any problems. Same for some other vegetable (jerusalem artichoke, pumpkins and the like)
People did keep them during winter, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t sprout. ;)
Store them somewhere cold and dark. Makes them behave for a good bit longer.
