
The world of cheap produce and its consequences - Petiver
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/cheap-food-consequences-bee-wilson-book-review/
======
vorpalhex
One of the points that debates about healthy vs processed miss is that
processed food is selling convenience.

A bag of spinach lasts about a week, fresh meat a few days. Meanwhile a retort
pouch of chili or curry lasts forever and doesn't even need to be
refridgerated. There are unprocessed foods that last almost forever like dried
lentils, rice and oats but most people don't want to eat those things (or at
least not for every meal).

What do poor people tend to eat? Fast food burgers and other high calorie, low
cost meals that are readily available. No prep/cook time, minimal cost (at
least on the surface) and hot and palatable to most.

As someone who cooks all my food from raw ingrediants, that's absolutely a
luxury but it's not a money expensive one, it's a time/management/availability
luxury.

~~~
tkeAmarktinClss
I'm not sure I totally agree about time expense being greater.

Consider most fresh produce is Cheaper than processed food. And it can be
eaten raw (or steamed easily in a microwave)

I think education is the major factor here. Commercials will tell you that
fast food is cheap, despite it not being cheap. And most people aren't aware
how fast you can cook potatoes in a microwave or that kale tastes fine with
dressing.

Edit: Potatoes are high calorie. Top with oil.

~~~
dundercoder
> that kale tastes fine with dressing.

I'm going to have to strongly disagree with you here. I've eaten kale raw,
cooked, dressed, spiced, dehydrated, blended, and it still tastes foul. YMMV

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
When did kale become a thing? I worked in a kitchen two decades ago and its
only use was what we put the chicken wings on. I have no idea how grumpy
lettuce caught on.

------
aaronbwebber
So, it's a fine article, with lots of interesting details about Victorian food
supply....but you could write more or less the exact same article replacing
"cheap food" with "cheap clothes" or "cheap mobile phones" or "cheap any
consumer good" and the stories about Victorian costermongers with Vietnamese
sweatshop workers, or Chinese electronics factory workers, or Honduran coffee
pickers, etc., and the end of the article seems to be arguing for just paying
more for food?

I don't think talking about poverty in modern societies in terms of economic
sectors instead of trying to address it at a societal level is particularly
useful. The point of the article should not be "let's all pay more for food"
it should be "give everyone a UBI and if that means food costs more because
you have to pay people more to work as cooks or strawberry pickers, that's a
_good thing_.

~~~
curation
My takeaway is that is exactly what this article is about - food is one
category along with clothing, phones, material culture - and he is not arguing
about what we pay. Rather, he is describing a facet of the structure of
Western Civilization that requires a de-humanized constantly replenished
underclass to provide us with the cheap good food we want. The fact is we
cannot have this infinite growth within a finite biosphere and his article
explores the relationship between the West and the so-called developing world
and how, though we seem opposite we are the same now, because the
neocropolitics we practice is now burgeoning within the West and the shape of
starvation just has a different mask depending upon context. The book and the
article use a genealogical methodology, which is what is the norm now is this
work. (I am a Critical Theorist).

~~~
dragontamer
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump)

If anything, centralized food production in the modern, western world is
extremely efficient.

The blood of animals is turned into high-grade fertilizer. The bones into soup
stock. Every portion of the animal is shipped off to a country that finds it
tasty (ie: China eats the ears and feet, we Americans eat the belly).

I think we should continuously think about how to optimize our system. But
simultaneously, we need to understand how our system is far, far more
efficient than the historical norms.

\-------------

Today's machines make the processing and harvesting of food incredibly
efficient.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcG0jVuThfs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcG0jVuThfs)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTWpLZ-
Hn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eTWpLZ-Hn8)

Some plants are still processed by hand (IIRC: Strawberries still need to be
done by hand). But for the most part, we're moving towards highly automated,
highly efficient, food producing machines.

The progress of farming and agriculture continues forward today. I think
there's issues in our system that need to be discussed, but the modern day is
clearly far better than the past.

\--------

EDIT: The issues of today's era, is the production, distribution, and
investment of these expensive machines. Who owns the machines? Can small farms
afford these machines? Or will farms centralize into monopolies (who can
afford the machines, pushing the smaller farms out of business?).

"Who owns the machine" becomes copyright and patent law rather quickly. Right
to repair, right to reverse-engineer. Etc. etc.

~~~
adrianN
A major problem with our relentless optimization of food production is that we
don't price in the externalities, like large scale destruction of ecosystems
or the exploitation of workers. Few people argue that we should go back to
pre-modern agriculture (billions would starve!), but I think it's fairly
obvious that our current system is not optimizing a good cost function.

~~~
dragontamer
That's why they're called externalities. Laissez Faire capitalism cannot
handle externalities.

Regulation and laws that run counter to pure capitalism are needed. I'm not
talking about going 100% communist here, but anti-trust laws, cap-and-trade,
taxes, and other such regulations can help factor the externality problem into
an otherwise capitalist marketplace.

------
ballenf
> Eggs were no longer a luxury and as the price of imported fruit fell, many
> in the cities started eating oranges and bananas for the first time. They
> could only afford to buy these foods because the costers who sold them kept
> the prices too low to allow themselves a decent life. By the same token, big
> shopkeepers kept food prices down by forcing employees to work long hours
> for low pay.

This seems to turn cause and effect completely upside down. What shopkeeper
would not have preferred higher prices? What "coster" was putting forth any
effort individually to "keep prices too low"?

Both of those parties were undoubtedly striving to sell for the maximum
possible profit. And cheap labor in the large had nothing to do with the
actions or power of any individual shopkeeper. There were just a lot of hungry
people willing to work for next to nothing because next to nothing to eat is
slightly better than nothing to eat.

------
intrepidhero
This wasn't the clearest argument I've heard but I agree with the conclusion:
"In the end, cheap food is a symptom of a bigger problem: an economic system
in which some lives are treated as less valuable than others."

Now what I'd really like to see are more serious discussions of solutions.

~~~
bufferoverflow
I disagree with the conclusion. Fast food is not actually cheap. If you go to
a supermarket and get a bag of rice / lentils, it will be an order of
magnitude cheaper, if not more. The problem is 1) culture and 2) taste.
Burgers do taste better than lentils.

------
ed25519FUUU
Big agriculture could learn something from lowly modern homesteads.

I'm constantly surprised at the modern science (and old, forgotten science!)
being deployed by regular homesteaders. In particular, employing the
beneficial symbiosis of animals and plants. The pigs till and root up the soil
and manure the land, the root crops go in next year, then grazing and rest.

Digest plants as animal manure are healthier for the soil than simply
composting them, according to many people. Sounds crazy but we have remember
that animals and plants evolved together in the same space.

The whole system becomes a closed loop where the inputs and outputs of the
farm are closely monitored. Pest and disease are kept at by with careful
rotation. Nothing is wasted, and the fertility of the soil and health of the
animals (and humans) _improve_ over time from this relationship.

If you're interested in watching this first hand, I recommend "100 days of
growing food" playlist by youtube homesteader Justin Rhodes:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDm5OA-
TZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpDm5OA-TZE)

~~~
bluGill
Small farms have a lot to learn from big ag. No till and cover crops increase
soil organic matter. Modern Chemicals and genetics kill weeds without needed
massive amounts of CO2 (fuel or human labor, either way the energy goes to
CO2) emissions.

~~~
ed25519FUUU
Agreed! I actually think the entire industry is moving forward in really
amazing ways, and it's entirely science based. The amazing of science that
goes into improving the soil on a modern farm is amazing.

------
troelsSteegin
Related reading, on the social cost of cheap goods today: "The True Cost of
Dollar Stores", in the current New Yorker [0].

What is the underlying system? In my interpretation, these low price vendors
have succeeded in a market that is foremost cost-sensitive, both in terms of
price and time. Eventually competition was priced out and now "dollar deserts"
exist in poor neighborhoods. These vendors ignore "externality"
accountabilities, in the Dollar cases in particular spending for customer and
employee safety, in keeping with minimizing cost. The resulting situation, as
illustrated in the article, I'll say is one of immoral public jeopardy. In
these locales consumers and employees have no alternatives. It gets worse,
because the vendors extract wealth from the communities without reinvestment.
The margins, from a community perspective, are exploitative.

What are the characteristics of this system? A subsistence market cannot price
safety and dignity into the cost of its goods. Margin-maximizing vendors can
ignore it. Regulation and policy processes act slowly and undervalue safety,
not to mention dignity. And returns for new entrant competitors are too low to
make these markets a priority. I think this illustrates an systems cycle with
a very few "winners" and many, many more losers.

The New Yorker article is an argument that the very least, Family Dollar and
Dollar General, as businesses, should be ashamed of their conduct. That's a
starting point. When you move onto interventions and incentives, to say
specifically "what should the new policies be?", I don't know.

[0] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true-
cost-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/06/the-true-cost-of-
dollar-stores)

------
dragontamer
> At least the new cheap foods of Victorian times – such as fish and chips and
> imported oranges – added more protein and nourishment to the working-class
> diet. The cheap foods of today add mostly an excess of refined starches,
> oils and sugars.

Anyone who visits the grocery store knows that the cheapest item is a can of
corn.

I just visited my grocery store yesterday. A 101 Oz. can of corn was on sale
for $5. 101 Oz. of peas was $5. Etc. etc. The cheapest foods are canned
vegetables, by far. 16 Oz cans are 60 cents (store brand) to $1 (brand-name)

People eat refined starches, oils, and sugars, because its tasty. But if you
actually were buying the cheapest thing in the supermarket, you'd be buying
corn, peas, potatoes, green beans, kidney beans, tomato paste.

By weight, corn and peas are cheaper than bread ($2 per pound of bread, $1 per
pound of corn / peas / carrots). You can create a very sustainable, and
healthy, diet off of $2 or cheaper food items.

~~~
bluedino
People like to say the poor eat fast food because it's all they can afford,
but the truly poor don't eat McDonald's, You're still spending $3-4 a meal at
the least, if not $7-8.

They have to do $0.50/meal, so they eat potatoes, rice, beans, etc.

------
devmunchies
I was thinking this was going to be about mass produced fruits and vegetables
and how they actually have less nutrients (vitamins, minerals) than
generations past.

------
tonyedgecombe
We get cheap food thanks to tractors, combine harvesters, selective breeding,
insecticides, herbicides and fertiliser.

Low wages are a problem but they aren't really related to how cheap our food
is. The cheapest supermarket near me is Aldi but their pay is quite generous
compared to their competitors.

~~~
sumedh
You forgot govt subsidies.

------
newyankee
I wonder if there is a resource that classifies most foodstuffs (raw and
processed) by nutrient content, cost, degree of processing, growing condition
etc. Something that is essentially the wiki of food but arranged in a way that
makes SQL like queries possible across a range of variables.

~~~
bluGill
The usda has one, though I'm not sure what format it is in. Several projects
source it.

------
11235813213455
It's really a spirit, way of life, most people are consumerists sadly, if they
own money, they 'need' to spend it

On my side, I rarely think about money, I just buy what I need, that's not
much (about 100€/month in total for everything)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
If you want to see an example of the opposite approach, look at Norway. It is
infamous for how expensive its food is, but that has meant, among other
things, small farms are profitable.

------
sokoloff
Tl;dr: Food consumers care about price. That’s been true since at least
Victorian times. Selling items in a competitive market can be tough for
vendors but good for consumers.

Price matters.

~~~
zwieback
The final point is a little more subtle: low prices for commodities are
especially bad for producers in developing countries - farmers in those
countries have a hard time making a profit competing with mechanized
agriculture in developed countries. So it's good for consumers only if the
overall development level is high.

~~~
ballenf
And the lesson there seems to be protectionist policies make sense for
developing nations.

~~~
TimPC
It's very complicated, some of the greatest successes in catching up to
'developed nations' have relied on open markets and others have been far more
protectionist. Protectionism has huge negatives in exchange for the benefit of
being able to have a local industry in an area that's not disrupted by global
markets. With a few exceptions, said industry is unlikely to become globally
competitive and mostly competes for the market of the country it's in which
may be a tiny portion of the global market. In contrast, industries honed by
competition may be able to compete in the global marketplace, but are largely
restricted by the practices that make them competitive there which tend to
involve cheap labour for lower prices. If there were very clear answers here
we would have seen far more countries following them to develop.
Unfortunately, the truth is it's an extremely complicated case by case
decision where it's very hard to know the right answer in general. We tend to
see a strong bias for open markets on the right and protectionism on the left,
which further complicates things as neither solution seems to capture the
whole problem.

------
dempedempe
What do you say to people who respond to stories about exploited labor with,
"But they have a better life now than they did before!"?

~~~
bluGill
Well do they or not? If their life is better rejoice for them. Help their kids
take the next step better.

Someone who grows up in a mud hut with no education and no idea where the next
meal comes from cannot be made into an engineer easily. But if you can get
them enough to eat they can take their kids out of the child labor market and
send them to school to learn. It might be a few generations, but that is
normal. Me and my sister are the first to finish college in my family on
either side, more cousins have since followed. We started on farms generations
back, but have moved on as technology advanced.

