[quote=“Ermintrude”][quote=“ehophi”]
Since India and Indonesia are other examples of places with cheap food, what countries have highly subsidized and industrialized food production, but still have high food prices? [/quote]
Most of Europe.[/quote]
And Canada.
[quote=“Mucha Man”]
And Canada.[/quote]
Canada has high food prices? I thought it is relatively cheap compares to the US…
[quote=“finley”]Farm subsidies are the thin end of the wedge. The entire food production system, from seeds and genetics, through land management, storage, transport, and retail, is heavily skewed in favour of big business. About 80% of the price you pay at the till is pure profit, spread among many different sticky fingers. The food may be (relatively) cheap, but the ingredients that go into it are virtually worthless. Hence the epidemic of diet-related disease and morbidity in the US, Europe, etc.
Apart from the usual suspects (asparagus, seafood, etc) food in Taiwan is extremely cheap. Eating out is also very affordable, even if you’re on a low income. Can you give examples of “expensive” food?[/quote]
I think in terms of net grocery bills and net daily intake per purchase. The ingredients may be “worthless,” but put together, they make things on which poor people can survive and that not-so-poor ones can choose to enjoy.
In that regard, there’s no comparing American grocery bills to those of Taiwanese grocery bills. Americans get more for what they pay. To show my girlfriend how obscenely large grocery stores are compared to their sizes here (in Taipei), I took a stroll with a smartphone camera and outlined common items and showed their prices. The math was pretty clear. Taiwanese groceries are significantly more expensive.
I’ll give one example (of many) grocery stores that I visited. I’m sure that you can compare that to similar products on your grocery bill and see the difference.
I compared prices of produce, as well, and in terms of net caloric intake (portion sizes per purchase), with the exception of strawberries (then), the US crushed Taiwan in terms of these prices.
Riot prevention is a good reason for some sort of food subsidy.
Did you compare with markets or grocery stores? And also outside Taipei food is even cheaper.
I also angrily disagree with your notion that cheap crap food is somehow a benefit to the poor. It’s not as the related health and weight problems show. It’s very cheap to live healthily off beans and rice and other items you can buy in bulk. Learn to cook and you’ll never go hungry no matter how poor you are. I’ve lived this so don’t tell me I don’t know what it’s like.
Sadly but predictably it was the processed food industry that lobbied to destroy home ec classes that taught cooking back in the 60s.
Poor people are poor for many different reasons, but lack of access to cheap calories is not one of them. The link you posted shows a page of trash. You would die if you tried to subsist on that. Just to demonstrate how badly people are being taken for a ride by these “value” prices, you can buy a whole side of top-quality, pastured beef online for about $7/lb (yes, I know, only about 75% of that is edible meat, and you’d need a freezer to store it in, but the option is there for those prepared to make the effort). In smaller quantities, prime beef is about $12/lb direct from the supplier. Too expensive? Eat less of it. Simple.
I could buy ~10kg of assorted vegetables, eggs, rice, meat, dofu, condiments etc - at the traditional market for NT$700-800. That’s enough for three people to eat very well - three good meals a day for two days (~NT$40/meal), at about NT$11,000/month. I don’t see how that’s in any way unreasonable.
Just remember that whatever trash the food processors have access to - corn, soybeans, and wheat, primarily - the general public can buy at similar prices. If you’re really down on your luck, a sack of quality potatoes (50kg) costs about GBP15-20 in the UK. A similar sack of rice in Taiwan costs NT$1500-2000; maize in season can be bought for next-to-nothing. As MM said, beans and similar items are extremely cheap at the dry goods stores. Buying in this way could probably reduce that 11K bill to 6-7K.
Likewise. The food industry is not helping the poor: they stand accused of egregious crimes against humanity, creating epidemics of deadly diseases, imposing unncessary healthcare costs on governments, and causing environmental destruction and misery in rural communities. They have done precisely nothing to “solve the food problem”, which IMO didn’t even exist in the first place. Anyone who’s ever been a student has been forced to live on a low budget, and eating healthily, cheaply and enjoyable is quite possible. The people who stand to make money out of poverty invest heavily in PR and advertising to ensure you believe otherwise.
Just as a personal example, back in 1993 I was writing a book and trying to gain weight (unrelated goals). I had a 5000 calorie a day diet which was costing me less than US$150 a month as I was buying bulk and cooking all my own food.
Orwell wrote about this back on the 30s. A diet of grains and legumes was affordable by anyone. The poor had bad diets by choice or out of ignorence.
Walking around the supermarkets in Australia over Xmas when I was there, and sure, they are 2-3x as big as those in Taiwan. But 80% of the offerings were junk food or other processed food. The fresh fruit, veg selection had fewer choices than Taiwan (except for potato with a number of different varieties, and cherry radish). Having bigger supermarkets with more options means little if most of the options are unhealthy.
One you’ve been to Japan or Hong Kong, then returning to Taiwan is embarrassing. It’s definitely NOT a full developed 1st world country like those are. For me the most basic things that need to be worked on:
Make tap water in every city drinkable. Clean water is a basic human right, we’re spending millions in aid to get this in Africa yet Taiwan can’t get clean water?
Flush toilet paper. Dealing with paper bins of your own sh*t is such a disgusting weird habit, and the Taiwan government have admitted that the countries plumbing can handle it just fine (They just don’t want to deal with the fact raw sewage is being flushed in the rivers).
Scooters. They’re destroying the air quality, driving all over the roads killing road safety and parking everyway making everything look like chaos. Start phasing out the older dirtiest ones, enforce driving licenses and helmets for kids.
Sidewalks. Build some proper ones; Why do I have to walk in the street half the time, avoiding traffic? When there are sidewalks they’re full to illegal shops, stalls or parked scooters; these should be cleared.
Clean the buildings. One thing I was amazed by was how clean everything looked in Japan. The scooters here blast everything with soot and dust, but no one seems to have any pride in their house here; how about a wash and clean once a year, and do basic repairs. I think this is down to money-centric culture; why spend money when we don’t need to?
Enforce traffic laws. Nothing says 3rd world more than almost run over some idiot driver, while the police stand there just watching. Again, couldn’t believe how polite drivers were in Japan, stopping proper AT LIGHTS! I forgot what it’s like not having to look left and right to cross when there’s a red light.
On a related note, how about getting rid of the road rule where pedestrians cross while traffic is allowed to turn right through their path. Who’s idea was this? In a civilized country it might work, but here no one gives way and it’s constantly unsafe crossing the street.
Tax evasion. Private companies such as buxibans having 2 books, government turning a blind eye. Greece went bankrupt due to this crap, needs to be sorted.
Food scandals. Don;t often happen in real countries, due to proper inspections and actually people doing their job. Corruption + greed is the issue, plus lack of punishment when caught; bosses should be getting the death penalty for knowingly putting millions of lives at risk like in China.
Actually they happen with great frequency in the west too. Just look at all the recent scandals in the UK where organized crime has been found to be involved in the food production business to skim off profits. Or look up virgin olive oil. Or plastics. Pink slime. Etc etc.
The US Geological survey released a report last week that found dangerous levels of a common agricultural pesticide were found in 75% of air and water samples. Sure you can wash your veggies but you can’t wash the air you breathe.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
That piqued my curiosity so I googled it. The media articles seem to come from this study:
[quote=“Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry”]Pesticides in Mississippi air and rain: A comparison between 1995 and 2007
A variety of current-use pesticides were determined in weekly-composite air and rain samples collected during the 1995 and 2007 growing seasons in the Mississippi Delta agricultural region. Similar sampling and analytical methods allowed for direct comparison of results. Decreased overall pesticide use in 2007 relative to 1995 generally resulted in decreased detection frequencies in air and rain, but observed concentration ranges were similar between years even though the 1995 sampling site was 500 m from active fields while the 2007 sampling site was within 3 m of a field. Mean concentration of detections were sometimes greater in 2007 than in 1995 but the median values were often lower. Seven compounds in 1995 and five in 2007 were detected in ≥50% of both air and rain samples. Atrazine, metolachlor, and propanil were detected in ≥50% of the air and rain samples in both years. Glyphosate and its degradation product, AMPA, were detected in ≥75% of air and rain samples in 2007, but were not measured in 1995. The 1995 seasonal wet depositional flux was dominated by methyl parathion (88%) and was >4.5 times the 2007 flux. Total herbicide flux in 2007 was slightly greater than in 1995, and was dominated by glyphosate. Malathion, methyl parathion, and degradation products made up most of the 2007 non-herbicide flux[/quote]
I cannot access the full article but the abstract above states one sampling site, within three meters of a field during the growing - ie, herbicide spraying - season. It’s not a nationwide study of air and water samples. Unless I’m barking up the wrong tree.
I agree that food safety is a global problem. The fact that Taiwan’s media can report on it with a free hand and the government seems to at least take some token actions each time is a good thing, not a bad thing.
When you never hear about food safety issues – THAT is when you should be worried.
Actually they happen with great frequency in the west too. Just look at all the recent scandals in the UK where organized crime has been found to be involved in the food production business to skim off profits. Or look up virgin olive oil. Or plastics. Pink slime. Etc etc.[/quote]
or the horse scandal a little while ago…
Actually they happen with great frequency in the west too. Just look at all the recent scandals in the UK where organized crime has been found to be involved in the food production business to skim off profits. Or look up virgin olive oil. Or plastics. Pink slime. Etc etc.[/quote]
or the horse scandal a little while ago…[/quote]
Anyone mentioned mad cow disease yet?
I chanced upon this and thought of this thread…
taipei543.com/2012/07/25/nightli … est-clubs/
Read the comments. But yeah, nightlife that isn’t a joke wouldn’t be bad.
[quote=“Xeno”]I chanced upon this and thought of this thread…
taipei543.com/2012/07/25/nightli … est-clubs/
Read the comments. But yeah, nightlife that isn’t a joke wouldn’t be bad.[/quote]
That lengthy comment is a collector’s item.
Yeah, I’ve subsisted fine on things like strawberries, avocados, quick-bake pizzas, pasta sauces and negligibly priced pastas, fruit juice from concentrate, etc. I have never been overweight or suffered digestive or coronary issues.
Actually, I had an interesting talk with my brother (who is recovering from leukemia), and one provision to his eating at home is that he’s only allowed processed foods. It turns out that fruits and vegetables are handled by people who don’t wash their hands, and most fruits and vegetables are loaded with fungi that you can’t just wash off. So it seems that doctors have reasons to prescribe diets of the very things you insist will kill the patients if they try.
I compared grocery stores with grocery stores. I live by a day market, and my finding was that many of the products were equally priced at the 全聯福利中心. There’s a reason why people stopped perusing markets as soon as they had the means to do so. One of those reasons is air conditioning. Another one of those reasons is avoidance of insects, or maybe to avoid getting diced vegetables chopped on the cockroach-ridden, smog-coated street by barefoot men while stray dogs walk along the entire market to sniff and lick all of these “healthier” “deals” presented there. If I want that for myself, I have my veritable pick tens of paces away.
It’s been pretty easy to impress Taiwanese people by saying, “I got cheap strawberries in the US, and I didn’t have to get them from the back of someone’s truck, but got them from an air-conditioned building.”
I’m sure that twelve-hour-day-working single moms everywhere took your advice instead of doing what sane ones do, which is to dedicate less time on cooking and more time on education or job training for themselves so that they and their children can have more dietary options that follow increased monetary wealth. Amazingly, some people aren’t content with just staying poor and learning to cook. Now, some people are not motivated to acquire more wealth for themselves or their families; but as that is the case for some people, what possesses you to believe that they’d somehow be motivated to learn to cook?
This is not to say that learning how to cook is a bad thing, but to suggest that poor people would be better off using their few non-working hours cooking is, well, not a very thoughtful claim, economically speaking.
But “I was poor once” must have worked on someone before as a justification for that claim.
How do you know? If you were 20 at the time you might have got away with it. The side-effects of eating a diet like that don’t become apparent until you’re 50-odd.
Anyway, the point is, why buy stuff like that when there are better options available? When I was a student I didn’t buy pasta sauces because I could make a much better one for less money.
Presumably he has a depressed immune system. Most people don’t. For him, it’s the least-bad option. You can’t possibly be arguing that slop from a can is better for you (long term) than fresh food?
oh c’mon. Aren’t you the guy with a PhD in logic? What you’re describing is not an inherent characteristic of food markets. The farmers market in my parents’ village is a regular day out for the local bumpkins: as well as organic veg and artisanal cheeses/bread (all the exact same price as the supermarket, as you said - but far superior quality) you can buy hot dogs, coffee, etc and sit around with your friends. People go to supermarkets because they’re told to. There are all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle social prompts that shuffle them ever-so-gently into those sterile aisles (yes, free aircon is one of those prompts). It’s not because the food is better, or better value.
Fixed that for you.
There’s nothing ‘sane’ about delegating your nutrition to people who just want to make as much money from you as possible. Cooking takes very little time out of your day.
MM’s point, I think, is that if they cook instead of giving all their money to food conglomerates, they might be less poor. There is also such a thing as spiritual poverty. Cooking and sharing good food with your family is inherently rewarding.
The logical endpoint of that train of thought is that we should devote all our waking hours to ‘job training’ and outsource all non-essential activities to other people.
How do you know? If you were 20 at the time you might have got away with it. The side-effects of eating a diet like that don’t become apparent until you’re 50-odd.[/quote]
I’ve consistently eaten these things (in moderation) for my entire life. People who have ruined themselves on processed foods don’t do it by eating one or two of these pizzas every week. They do it by eating them for every meal.
If you can, that’s to your benefit, assuming that you’ve considered the opportunity costs. If it took you an extra hour to make the pasta sauce, while an extra hour of work could buy however much acceptable pasta sauce, you’d need to consider which one constitutes the greatest measured gain or the least measured loss.
You can factor “spiritual benefits” into this kind of calculation, as well. But you will want to keep this equation in mind: Your pasta sauce costs you the price of ingredients plus the time not spent earning money in making the pasta sauce. If that total cost is more than that same amount of time earned in wages minus the cost of buying a pasta sauce that you would regard as on a par with the one that you make, it makes no sense, economically speaking, to make pasta sauce yourself. How much is this “inherent spiritual reward” actually worth?
Presumably he has a depressed immune system. Most people don’t. For him, it’s the least-bad option. You can’t possibly be arguing that slop from a can is better for you (long term) than fresh food?[/quote]
That depends on what’s in the slop. The argument can’t be this: The food’s in a can, and cans don’t come from nature, so the food must not be natural.
oh c’mon. Aren’t you the guy with a PhD in logic? What you’re describing is not an inherent characteristic of food markets. The farmers market in my parents’ village is a regular day out for the local bumpkins: as well as organic veg and artisanal cheeses/bread (all the exact same price as the supermarket, as you said - but far superior quality) you can buy hot dogs, coffee, etc and sit around with your friends. People go to supermarkets because they’re told to. There are all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle social prompts that shuffle them ever-so-gently into those sterile aisles (yes, free aircon is one of those prompts). It’s not because the food is better, or better value.[/quote]
I am a logic nerd, but not the only one, and I’m not accusing every day market of having every one of these inherent features. However, they often have a few of them, and grocery stores avoid them much more readily. I may have gone to supermarkets in the past because I didn’t know of other alternatives, but it only takes a handful of strolls down the produce markets here (or even farmers’ markets in the US) to see why supermarkets are preferable to outdoor fruit stands.
Fixed that for you.
There’s nothing ‘sane’ about delegating your nutrition to people who just want to make as much money from you as possible.[/quote]
There is if you are a discerning consumer. If you direct your dollars toward the healthiest affordable product, you contribute to food companies’ reacting positively to a shift in consumer demand. However, you may actually find that, for many people, nutrition simply isn’t such a concern that they would do anything to alleviate it, even if they could afford to do so. Food companies don’t thrive on prescriptive dietary regimens. They have to respond to what consumers in the marketplace actually want.
Not cooking takes even less time out of your day.
MM’s point, I think, is that if they cook instead of giving all their money to food conglomerates, they might be less poor. There is also such a thing as spiritual poverty. Cooking and sharing good food with your family is inherently rewarding.
The logical endpoint of that train of thought is that we should devote all our waking hours to ‘job training’ and outsource all non-essential activities to other people.[/quote]
That’s exactly what you should do! You don’t still sew your own clothes, or raise and kill your own livestock in your backyard, or build your own means of transportation, do you?
I’m aware of the concept of opportunity cost, and I think it gets applied far too liberally - I’ve explained why below.
The immediate economic consideration is not the only one that matters, nor is money the only valid metric for measuring “worth”. We live in a world where people want everything quantified, but “spiritual reward” can’t be quantified (either as $ or anything else) so people dismiss it as irrelevant. There’s also the very measurable cost of keeping someone alive after they’ve wrecked their metabolism with junk food. The per-capita cost of treating fat, unhealthy people is much larger than any saving they might have made buying “cheap” food. Like most modern industry, the food industry gets the government (or the general public) to foot the bill for the externalities it creates.
No, of course. But in reality most food that comes in cans is full of additives. Even when the food itself is wholesome (say, tomatoes or beans) I’d question the wisdom of using a valuable non-renewable resource (steel) to preserve food that wouldn’t need preserving if people did more cooking. And, again, the externalities are pushed under the rug.
I certainly agree that farmers need to get their act together regarding marketing and distribution. The main reason farmers slave away under the jackboot of supermarket capitalism is that they voluntarily capitulated, instead of creating new ways of getting food to people. The tragedy is that it could have gone either way, and they chose that way. When I was a kid there was a grocer and butcher who drove around with a delivery van selling food from local market gardens. Everyone bought milk from the milk delivery service (with a fleet of electric vehicles!). These disappeared. They’re now re-emerging, but the entrenched supermarket oligarchy is not going to take that lying down; it would have been ten times easier if they’d recognised the competitive threat in the first place, and organised to do something about it, and the consumer would have benefited. But like they say, you can’t get there from here.
I think these statements are untrue. If your thing is logic, mine is psychology, and studying that subject blew my belief in free will out of the water. The majority of our behaviours are a mechanistic reaction to environmental or bodily prompts. I still don’t think we’re automatons - there’s something in there that gives us each a personality and an appearance of free will - but most of our decisions are made for us. The food industry provides what it wants to provide, and then tells consumers that’s what they want. Even a cursory examination of their business practices makes this abundantly clear.
The most fascinating part is that people are quite capable of holding contradictory opinions: for example, people will insist that they hate cruelty in factory farms, but they have to put up with it because “they can’t afford anything else”. Their actual belief is that factory farms are bad. The implanted belief is that There Is No Alternative. What happens is that people buy factory-farmed meat for a variety of behavioural reasons, and then construct a justification for it. The obvious justification (the one that pops into their heads first) is that they “can’t afford” the expensive one. The supermarkets reinforce this belief with advertising. It thereby becomes “fact”. The reality is that “poor” people could easily afford top-quality, ethically-reared meat if they got their act together (collaborated with neighbours), or if farmers got their act together (helped neighbours collaborate), or if they ate slightly less of it. But they’ve been told that they shouldn’t do that. So they don’t.
Really? I can envisage a scenario where this might be true: for example, if there were a local eatery which catered to the neighbourhood, and everyone got together for an evening meal cooked by a local chef, using fresh ingredients from local smallholders. That would be extremely efficient, and a proper application of the concept of opportunity cost. Such establishments do exist (“underground restaurants” or “supper clubs”). However, getting food from a supermarket involves the use of a car (which absorbs the entirety of a minimum-wage salary) or a great deal of time and effort. It doesn’t matter if the food is prepared or not; if you calculate out the actual costs, cooking time is a minor consideration.
Specialisation is certainly a good thing, but the rule of diminishing returns applies (or the Pareto principle, which is basically the same thing). There comes a point where outsourcing increases your total costs, and I think that point is quite high up the curve. Example: most development economists insist that third-world farmers should not attempt self-sufficiency; instead, they say, they should use “modern methods” (i.e., chemicals) to grow cash crops, and then use the money to buy other things they need. The underlying theory is that the farmer should “stick to what he does best” and let other people handle the other stuff. They overlook two things:
Firstly, the route to market for farm products is a costly one: getting food from the fields to the consumer’s plate accounts for about 80% of the food price in The West, and about 90% in third-world shitholes where a “road” looks something like a muddy river. So the farmer might sell a tonne of rice for US$350, of which $200 is the cost of inputs and marketing. If he takes his $150 to the food market, he’ll find rice retails for $1/kg, and other vegetables in the $1-$3/kg range. The net result, for all his hard work, is perhaps 100kg of food. Obviously, he’d keep some rice back for himself because it’s much, much more cost-effective. So why not do the same with other things? The conversion efficiency from rice->money->other goods is so poor that even sewing and butchery is best done at home. In practice, what happens is that the farmer realises quite quickly it’s a mug’s game, but decides to just keep all the rice, and never bothers diversifying (or can’t afford to). End result: entrenched poverty, malnutrition, and soil degradation. Well done, Mr Economist.
Secondly, farmers aren’t oxen; there is no one thing that they do best. They’re quite capable of learning all sorts of things, and growing a field of rice year after year after year is hardly a fullfilling lifestyle.
The situation of the urban poor is different, but I suggest the underlying principle is the same. Converting (say) your telephone answering skills to cash and thence to outsourced cooking is almost certainly less efficient than using your own labour directly to cook, or even to sew your own clothes or butcher your own meat. Reason: most people can learn to cook (or sew, or butcher) with minimal training investment. It’s not a skill like vehicle-building that nobody could practically attempt by themselves. I’m sure you’re also familiar with Bertrand Russell’s answer to the pin factory, which is quite relevant here: so much of life’s drudgery these days is made easy for us that we have plenty of time for “indulgences”, like cooking.