Economics

[meridian]

Tonnes of British-grown fruit wasted over shortages of EU workers amid no deal Brexit fears - ITV News

Seasonal migrants from the EU are staying away, fearing a no deal Brexit.

The industry blames the government’s failure to allow more agricultural workers from outside the EU.

We filmed at a fruit farm in Ledbury, Herefordshire, where 87,000 punnets of raspberries were wasted in just a fortnight. It's because they are short of 100 pickers - the majority of seasonal agricultural workers come from Eastern Europe.

- seasonal workers either unwilling (EU) or unable (non EU) to come in and do a tough job for minimum wage
- uneconomic for out of work Brits to do it (travel, accommodation, low wages, loss of job seekers)
- uneconomic for farmers / growers to raise wages without putting prices up
- prices squeezed by large supermarkets so unable to go up by much anyway without being pushed on to the consumer
- consumers used to lower prices, if they go up much then demand drops and the large supermarkets won’t buy as much anyway

No easy solutions, but it’s a fair bet that one or both of food prices rising and farmers going out of business is going to happen over the next couple of years.

[Old Greg]

Tonnes of British-grown fruit wasted over shortages of EU workers amid no deal Brexit fears - ITV News



- seasonal workers either unwilling (EU) or unable (non EU) to come in and do a tough job for minimum wage
- uneconomic for out of work Brits to do it (travel, accommodation, low wages, loss of job seekers)
- uneconomic for farmers / growers to raise wages without putting prices up
- prices squeezed by large supermarkets so unable to go up by much anyway without being pushed on to the consumer
- consumers used to lower prices, if they go up much then demand drops and the large supermarkets won’t buy as much anyway

No easy solutions, but it’s a fair bet that one or both of food prices rising and farmers going out of business is going to happen over the next couple of years.

This is a problem with uncertainty, not with Brexit. As soon as Johnson gets Brexit done, raspberry production will be fully integrated into supply chains for the Empire 2.0 jam export boom.

#getbrexitdone

[Hobosapien]

Easily solved.

Get vegetarians and fruitarians to pick it, paid in produce. Cheaper than them going to the supermarkets.

Get prisoners out in the fields doing manual labour. Good for their mental health, fitness, and appreciation of hard work, giving more chance of rehabilitation than those that immediately go and commit a crime upon release as they aren't mentally able to cope with life outside.

Make those claiming certain benefits that are not exempt through severe disability pay something back by this type of community service.

Bring back the market towns where produce is sold more direct, reducing the reliance on supermarkets.

More left-field (), build homes on the fields with a proportion reserved for allotments where the inhabitants grow their own. Better quality living than those soulless newbuild estates with paltry gardens and outside space. If they want to go a step further, make it truly off-grid as an example to the world how to design fit for the future housing estates.

I started this as a tongue in cheek reply, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense, so tongue is now out of cheek.

I'm available for creative thinking consultancy work covering a myriad of subjects I know little about. That's how innovation really works, don't sweat the detail.

[DealorNoDeal]

The low value of the £ is putting many off coming.

[darmstadt]

Easily solved.

Get vegetarians and fruitarians to pick it, paid in produce. Cheaper than them going to the supermarkets.

Get prisoners out in the fields doing manual labour. Good for their mental health, fitness, and appreciation of hard work, giving more chance of rehabilitation than those that immediately go and commit a crime upon release as they aren't mentally able to cope with life outside.

Make those claiming certain benefits that are not exempt through severe disability pay something back by this type of community service.

Bring back the market towns where produce is sold more direct, reducing the reliance on supermarkets.

More left-field (), build homes on the fields with a proportion reserved for allotments where the inhabitants grow their own. Better quality living than those soulless newbuild estates with paltry gardens and outside space. If they want to go a step further, make it truly off-grid as an example to the world how to design fit for the future housing estates.

I started this as a tongue in cheek reply, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense, so tongue is now out of cheek.

I'm available for creative thinking consultancy work covering a myriad of subjects I know little about. That's how innovation really works, don't sweat the detail.

You only have 26 days left to get that all up and running...

[meridian]

Easily solved.

Get vegetarians and fruitarians to pick it, paid in produce. Cheaper than them going to the supermarkets.

Get prisoners out in the fields doing manual labour. Good for their mental health, fitness, and appreciation of hard work, giving more chance of rehabilitation than those that immediately go and commit a crime upon release as they aren't mentally able to cope with life outside.

Make those claiming certain benefits that are not exempt through severe disability pay something back by this type of community service.

Bring back the market towns where produce is sold more direct, reducing the reliance on supermarkets.

More left-field (), build homes on the fields with a proportion reserved for allotments where the inhabitants grow their own. Better quality living than those soulless newbuild estates with paltry gardens and outside space. If they want to go a step further, make it truly off-grid as an example to the world how to design fit for the future housing estates.

I started this as a tongue in cheek reply, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense, so tongue is now out of cheek.

I'm available for creative thinking consultancy work covering a myriad of subjects I know little about. That's how innovation really works, don't sweat the detail.

It does make sense.

The hard bit is in the first word of many of the sentences though. “Get”. “Make”.

Right wing economics uses the stick (reduced benefits, reduced access to critical services without paying, etc) to try to force people into doing things they don’t want to do given the choice. “The haves” essentially forcing work they don’t want or have to do onto more marginalised people that then don’t have a choice.

Shouldn’t we be working towards a fairer society where people choose to do those things?

To tie it back to Brexit, something like this:

High finance is wrecking the economy and the planet—but it won’t reform itself | Prospect Magazine

Both the FT and even the Business Roundtable fret that hyper-globalisation has gone too far. A “sudden paralysis of both the economic and the political institutions” is a phrase that resonates today in Britain, the US, Hong Kong, Brazil and beyond. Such paralysis arises out of doomed and purely defensive attempts—and in many ways Brexit is a case in point—to protect society from the operation of “free” markets without thinking through clearly and from first principles the rigged way in which many of them operate.

For the Brexiters with good intentions, Brexit is a clumsy attempt to protect local markets from globalisation.

[minestrone]

No easy solutions, but it’s a fair bet that one or both of food prices rising and farmers going out of business is going to happen over the next couple of years.

250 years ago Adam Smith wrote The Wealth Of Nations. Often called The father of Economics he was Professor Of Logic at Glasgow University, I can see the spire from here.

In 2019 the City of London is the financial capital of the world.

Yet, in your little brain there are "no easy solutions" to growing some raspberries and selling them to a buyer.

[NotAllThere]

More left-field (), build homes on the fields with a proportion reserved for allotments where the inhabitants grow their own. Better quality living than those soulless newbuild estates with paltry gardens and outside space. If they want to go a step further, make it truly off-grid as an example to the world how to design fit for the future housing estates.

Dig for victory!

[meridian]

250 years ago Adam Smith wrote The Wealth Of Nations. Often called The father of Economics he was Professor Of Logic at Glasgow University, I can see the spire from here.

In 2019 the City of London is the financial capital of the world.

Yet, in your little brain there are "no easy solutions" to growing some raspberries and selling them to a buyer.

You might have missed the bit about 87000 punnets going to waste.

If, in the modern marketplace and supply chain, it was as easy as “growing some raspberries and selling them to a buyer”, there’s an opportunity there for you to make a bit of dosh. The growing’s already done. Just call the grower, say you’ll pick those 87000 punnets, then sell them to, err, someone. Before they go off.

Cretin.

[minestrone]

You might have missed the bit about 87000 punnets going to waste.

If, in the modern marketplace and supply chain, it was as easy as “growing some raspberries and selling them to a buyer”, there’s an opportunity there for you to make a bit of dosh. The growing’s already done. Just call the grower, say you’ll pick those 87000 punnets, then sell them to, err, someone. Before they go off.

Cretin.

Wut?