Posted on 05/14/2020 6:36:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
RatRipper wrote:
“Maybe steak restaurants need to open a small meat markets so the distribution won’t be so out of balance. Just a thought. I have a son who works for Longhorn Steakhouse.”
Farm-to-table.
Farmers markets.
Let local farmers and ranchers solve the problems.
American ingenuity will prevail.
Some young farmers in my wife’s family are doing just that, but not with meats, Butchering and packaging causes problems for farmers. That young couple is taking orders over the internet, bagging their produce and labeling each bag with the name of the buyer, hauling to the farmer’s market in Birmingham about 60 miles away for the buyers to drop by and pick up. Early on, it has been a big success for them.
BTW, this young farmer was home-schooled
I appreciate this article. Understanding the connections helps me to put my piece of the picture into context. In America we have long been accustomed to having an amazing selection of foods in the market. Apart from TP, I haven’t seen our all of local markets completely devoid of any critical item at the same time in these past months. Either I’ve found it in another market or made a reasonable substitution. It really is amazing how much the food supply chain has managed to flex and deliver food under the circumstances. I would like to see our states get things rolling to help these farmers (and their livestock) survive.
“and in 2010, eating-out spending surpassed at-home for the first time. At the opening of 2020, Rieley estimates, only “40 percent of what farmers produced may have gone into retail.”
I find that incomprehensible.
So bizarre I can’t even imagine it.
When plotted on a graph I’m sure it tracks directly with the rise in obesity.
Who can afford to eat out that often?
Perhaps this reflects 7-11 hot dogs and McDonalds and Pizza Hut.
Disclosure: I prepare 95% of my meals at home from fresh ingredients.
Super! So nice to see young farmers finding work-arounds. I’ve seen some FB posts for people to buy whole pigs here in PA (Amish). If we had the freezer space, I’d go in with a couple of families, but we just don’t have room. Glad to see it happening. It seems to me that honor boxes should offer sufficient social distancing. They never completely went away in the rural areas. I hope they increase again for fresh produce, flowers, honey, syrup, etc.
I didn’t realize eating out was such a big percentage either. It isn’t the best for health, if only because you don’t have any control over ingredient quality, salt levels, etc. I can see how it would be true though. Lots of people seem to like breakfast sandwiches, donuts, or bagels from fast-food places and mini-marts. Next stop - eat out for lunch during the work day. It may just be the faculty dining room for a teacher, but it still isn’t home cooking. Finally, after a full day of working, commuting and caring for kids and/or elderly parents, nobody feels like cooking dinner. I don’t know where the meals for institutionalized people (e.g. elder care) fit it - probably eating out because it involves large scale institutional purchasing. I think it is an interesting statistic. Do we now work so much that we don’t have time to cook? I think there is a lot of that going on. Now that my husband and I are retired, we cook at home more, eat better (usually!) and spend less.
The sad thing is, that if you forced every single state and federal legislator to read this entire piece, it wouldn’t do a lick of good. They are all stupid people who think they are smarter than everyone else. The first thing they would do is think they could simply legislate a total restructuring of the market. That’s assuming they even give a damn whether we eat or not. And that could be an unwarranted assumption.
The democrats’ goal: make USA like Venezuela.
Along with the obvious need to bring critical manufacturing home from China and, in some cases, from elsewhere. There are additional needs, such as to make sure critical industries aren’t foreign owned, such as with Smithfield, and also that critical industries aren’t over concentrated or over-verticalized.
All these are good for price competitiveness and consumers in regular times, but for any kind of crisis, limits of concentration, such as with the big meat-processing plants, and how even domestic Big Food (e.g., Perdue) make massively indebted serfs of farmers, make our food supply, for example, more vulnerable.
Multiple, smaller suppliers at all levels are good not just for competition and American small business opportunities, but for resilience and national security.
Their slow-walking of reopening, even though there is evidence of infections dropping precipitously at least through the summer are clearly meant to maximize harm by taking through the summer to get close to normal—just when an uptick in infections could be expected in the fall.
We need more rulings like in Wisconsin. And I strongly disagree with Trump’s position that this is all up to the mini-emperor (and anti-trump) governors to take their sweet time slow-walking back our Bill of Rights.
As one who has lived in the country and in the city, I can confirm that honor boxes wouldn’t work in the city.
In some suburbs yes and in others, no.
You can't really believe the farmers are doing these things willingly, can you?
I used to farm and I'm damn sure this is very hard, both physically and mentally on the farmers.
By way of example;
The decision was made more than 293 days ago to send the hogs to market this week. It started with the sows and boars being put together.
Since that time every bit of financing, space, feed, water, transportation, and a whole host of other things were spoken for by these hogs.
When the packing plants are closed, that whole cycle, which is repeated week after week, is thrown into chaos, and something has to give.
The result is more than a years work and planning has to simply be killed and buried instead of providing food for people who want it.
What can they do? If you can't find prompt buyers, you can't afford to keep these tens of thousands of tons of food in storage. Nor can you keep feeding your animals on the hoof as they get older and older. You gonna sell them for prices so low, they can't afford their production costs? You gonna work month after month to get deeper and deeper in debt?
Let the govt. buy up all the surplus and turn it into canned meat and dried milk and blocks of cheese, like they did in my parents' day. Then stop the "Food Stamp" program and distribute only these surpluses to the people who need them.
At least it would be a tiny bit harder to scam that (like people do with EBT cards) for lottery tickets, tattoos and hair weaves.
THAT is the most brilliant suggestion I recall reading on FR in 20 years! (first time I ever bolded the source quote in 2000+ posts!)
You are too kind.
As much as I prefer less Fedgov, your suggestion could be a double fix for farmers and welfare cheats. The gimme types who don't want the food instead of EBT cards, let them starve. Bet the vast majority would take the food. Any food left over, send to skid row missions and charities.
I didn’t read the article (too long), but that will not prevent me from commenting.
EVERYTHING affects EVERYTHING ELSE!
You can’t just throw a monkey wrench (as a plumber I always objected to that term. It’s a “pipe wrench” and I’m not a “monkey”) I digress.
You can’t just throw a giant monkey wrench (societal lockdown) into the mix and think that everything else will just continue as before.
“Unexpected consequences” to the MAX! The reason that “Unexpected consequences” can’t be managed because EVERYTHING affects EVERYTHING ELSE!
As soon as you initiate a solution to a problem, you CREATE several MORE. It becomes EXPONENTIAL!
I read somewhere how people will work it out on there own. They made the point that in Grand Central Station hundreds/thousands of people maneuver the lobby without any help from anyone, without chaos. Different directions, ALL directions, yet everyone finds there own way.
Can you imagine ARROWS on the floor to follow?
“Genius! 30 ft apart one restaurant will only need about a whole parking lot.”
That’s okay. Everyone can leave their cars at home and take mass transit! /s
“Disclosure: I prepare 95% of my meals at home from fresh ingredients.”
You, are the exception, actually more of an anomaly.
Thank you for that bit of sanity.
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