Fafhrd on 23/4/2008 at 01:46
Quote Posted by The Phenomenon
Sugarcane based ethanol is far far FAR more efficient, but thats not what farmers are planting.
Sugarcane also requires a pretty specific climate to grow, and that climate is not in the American Midwest. The point of using ethanol is energy independence, not trading dependence from one country to another.
Which is besides the point, because any way you slice it, using ethanol as a fuel source equates to using land that was once used for growing food for eating to quite literally growing food for burning.
Zygoptera on 23/4/2008 at 04:31
Quote Posted by The Phenomenon
But really are you serious? Do I need to explain to you what happens if say the american agriculture markets crash because of cheap imports? People lose jobs. And while the outside party is dumping their excess supply on your market yeah consumers get to buy cheap grain products or whatever for a while (if the savings even ever reach the consumer), but when that supply spike is over what do you have left? Nothing because your local businesses all went tits up and you have that many extra people to add to your unemployment statistics. Oh and then prices go up.
Supply and demand basics.
Ahem. Supply and demand basics mean that shortages, by definition, prevent the sort of dumping you seem to be implying because there
isn't the stuff to dump in the first place, if you have the stuff to dump you can make a lot more money by
not dumping and there is no conceivable way that dumping can actually achieve anything, let alone drive anyone out of business. In a glut market or for small markets you might have a point, but it ain't a glut market and neither the US nor Europe are small.
We haven't had agricultural subsidies for twenty odd years and somehow we still have an agricultural sector. Oddly enough, not only do we produce lots of the stuff cheaply, we also do it very efficiently, so much so that when they ran 'carbon miles' on NZ's products in the UK ours- despite traveling around the world- actually used
less resources than home grown UK equivalents. If a small, not hugely wealthy, producer which is stuck thousands of miles away can produce stuff cheaply and efficiently without subsidies there is no reason why either the US or Europe cannot do the same. As it is they simply encourage greed, porkbarelling (no, call a spade a spade, it's out and out vote buying) and wastage, and the utterly fucktardical situation where you get the World Bank mandating that countries with starving populations grow
coffee, chocolate and bananas rather than food crops because they can buy cheap subsidised staples from the US and Europe. And, of course, those poor bastards will as ever be the ones to really suffer when this elaborately constructed house of cards tumbles down, since they literally will not be able to feed their people.
Oh yeah, I have a vested interest. My country's GDP would probably double overnight if agricultural subsidies went, but that'sa measure of exactly how much subsidies distort everything rather than anything else. Also, I feel slightly odd agreeing with Stronts. I hope I'll survive the experience.
aguywhoplaysthief on 23/4/2008 at 05:51
Key point:
Quote:
[...]large chain retailers seem more prone to shortages and limits than do smaller chains and mom-and-pop stores, perhaps because store managers at the larger companies have less discretion to increase prices locally[...]
If the stores were allowed to raise the price of their product as high as the market would bear, then those without the means would be forced to switch from rice to another comparable product, and the 1st-world rice "shortage" wouldn't make this sort of news.
Ko0K on 23/4/2008 at 07:52
I don't know about comparable, but in a related news article I read that more Liberians are eating spaghetti now that most of them can't afford rice. If you google "rice" and "shortage" you get quite a few articles mentioning global shortage of rice.
Well, I guess that's one more item to add to things to invest in, along with oil and gold.
SD on 23/4/2008 at 08:00
Quote Posted by Starrfall
Your market emits too many greenhouse gasses and so it sucks.
I used to think that, until I realised that food miles were a grossly inaccurate way of calculating environmental impact. It's frequently much more enviro-friendly to grow crops in a warmer climate with barely any fertiliser and traditional harvesting methods than it is to try and grow the same crop in a temperate climate with all the excess time and energy you have to invest in it.
Quote Posted by Ghostly Apparition
you are spectacularly misinformed. I wouldn't know where to start, your post is so full of erroneous information.
Helpful hint: there isn't anything erroneous in there, just a different opinion.
Quote:
Btw, what makes you think the farmers aren't good at farming? Thats seems a very condescending comment.
If you're getting your ass handed to you by a Chinese peasant, you should probably just give up and do something else.
Quote Posted by The Phenomenon
Yes governments put these restriction in place to make their people pay more for things :wot:
Not quite what I was saying. Tariffs and subsidies are there to protect uncompetitive native produce at the expense of more competitive imports. A knock-on effect is that, yes, you pay more for your food, but the main purpose is to ensure farmers are rewarded handsomely for being unable to compete in a free market. It's like watching a De La Hoya-Klitschko fight, but tying Klitschko's hand behind his back so he can't win.
Quote:
But really are you serious? Do I need to explain to you what happens if say the american agriculture markets crash because of cheap imports? People lose jobs.
You say that as if the only thing a farmer can do is farm. I say why don't we leave farming to those who can actually produce a good without relying on the taxpayer to bail them out.
American agricultural markets will never "crash", incidentally. Some crops (oranges, maple syrup) are things that the Americans will always be able to do well. Some people will always pay that little bit extra to "Buy American".
Quote:
These restrictions are called economic protections for a reason.
You say this as if I don't know that. I'd rather not protect someone's profits at my expense.
Starrfall on 23/4/2008 at 15:18
Quote Posted by SD
I used to think that, until I realised that food miles were a grossly inaccurate way of calculating environmental impact. It's frequently much more enviro-friendly to grow crops in a warmer climate with barely any fertiliser and traditional harvesting methods than it is to try and grow the same crop in a temperate climate with all the excess time and energy you have to invest in it.
That makes sense for bringing stuff into a place like Britain then, but probably not for everything, there's gotta be something yall can grow well. (Like chavs lol)
It also probably doesn't apply to those of us who already live in the warmer climates where they grow the food. ;) And as California is already concerned with making sure specialty crops (basically everything that isn't a staple is a "specialty crop") don't get pushed out by staple crops we don't really have the same issues as the states that don't have such a diversified production so we'd survive (and probably thrive) if the big subsidies were dropped.
But the broader point though is that you can't just call free market when the market is so inefficient. Most people probably don't think about how much energy it takes just to get the food to them, and most people probably (until recently, maybe) wouldn't think of things like whether China produces food in a way we find acceptable. (Although you probably won't find much lead in food, hopefully...) People aren't thinking that the cheap prices they're paying might only be possible because the farmers involved are barely scratching out a living (or may be sharecroppers who are subject to the mercy of bigger packers. Most people probably don't even know where any of their food comes from. And because they're not even
thinking about these things and are likely only focused on price, the market is flawed unless we think those issues wouldn't make a difference to the consumers.
It would be different if people were considering those things and then deciding they aren't important enough to outweigh a cheaper price - that would be the market working perfectly. But I doubt anyone actually thinks about this stuff at all. I certainly don't think about all of that when I'm at the store.
catbarf on 23/4/2008 at 22:27
Quote Posted by SD
I'd rather not protect someone's profits at my expense.
Very well summarized. It really boils down to artificially increasing profits so that local farmers can make money from a job that is now redundant with far cheaper options overseas.
Ghostly Apparition on 23/4/2008 at 23:45
Quote Posted by SD
Not quite what I was saying. Tariffs and subsidies are there to protect uncompetitive native produce at the expense of more competitive imports. A knock-on effect is that, yes, you pay more for your food, but the main purpose is to ensure farmers are rewarded handsomely for being unable to compete in a free market. It's like watching a De La Hoya-Klitschko fight, but tying Klitschko's hand behind his back so he can't win.
In the real world, as more imports replace domestic goods, they consume a larger fraction of available domestic wages, If new forms of production are not found in time, the nation will go bankrupt, and internal political pressures will lead to debt default, extreme tariffs, or worse.
Moderate tariffs would slow down this process, allowing more time for new forms of production to be developed.
(That was from the wikipedia definition of Tariffs)
As for your comment on getting your ass handed to you by a chinese peasant. You're comparing apples to oranges. A byproduct of the thinking that free trade is great is the drive toward outsourceing jobs because there will always be some chinese willing to do your job for 2 dollars a day.
Then it will be YOU who is getting your ass handed to you by a peasant. Not only are products cheaper to make overseas, but labor is cheaper too.
You may think its great that products are cheap to buy, but it won't matter when your job gets outsourced,because then you won't have to money to buy them.
SubJeff on 24/4/2008 at 00:09
Whilst I want to agree with SD, because I dislike the way subsidising causes a raw deal for people from the 3rd world who are trying to export, in truth almost anyone in the UK could be replaced by a Chinese guy who would work harder and better for less. It's nothing to do with our farmers being naff - things cost more here. Have you been to China? Food there, to us, is incredibly cheap. All costs are cheaper. Look at our petrol ffs. The situation is messed up but if we want to live the way we do...
