Business As Usual
Caption:
spoiler
A “hypocrisy” type meme with two images:
Top: photo of a military squad, all geared up, standing ready next to an armored vehicle. Caption: “Germany against scientists sitting in protest for climate”
Bottom: photo of a bunch of military personnel playing while wearing clown makeup. Caption: “Germany against farmers wanting to lynch government members because diesel subsidy needs to be cut”
I don’t know about Germany, but in the Netherlands people also kept giving that “no farmers no food” argument even though we produce much more than we actually eat. Most of our food is for export.
I try to buy local produce too to reduce climate impact. Tax imported foods then and use that money to subsidize local farmers if really necessary, but I would rather see them modernize instead of being kept afloat by taxpayer money.
It’s a tricky subject because objectively, shipping food that could be produced locally from the other side of the world is basically an eco-crime, and degrades our quality standards. Then, throwing endless subsidies at local farmers (who, turns out, have a notably higher standard of living than the average German already) isn’t appropriate either.
In my opinion it comes down to the fact that farming / food production shouldn’t be left to the private sector (nor should infrastructure, natural resources, healthcare and industrial means of production, but that’s veering off topic).
the right side of this bar chart: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01605-8#Fig3
Yeah it states all of them needs farmers that care for them. And if farmers dont want to do it anymore all of it goes to 0 because there is no food.
Do you not understand basic economics?
Food is pretty much a non elastic commodity. People must have it to live, so the demand is quite fixed regardless of price.
So as soon as the food production drops low enough that prices rise so high that it is profitable on its own, people will be farming again.
Right now we keep local farming artificially afloat through subsidies for strategic reasons. This is necessary because food from elsewhere would be cheaper to import than to produce it here, and the subsidies allow local produce to compete with those cheap prices.
That being said, I am definitely not in favor of importing low quality industrial trash from the other side of the globe either; local farming is better for the environment and provides higher quality product.
We just need to find a better way than throwing money at already well off farmers just so they pretty please keep doing their job.
There was a funny post on reddit about a family of farmers calculating their worth, trying to justify their hissy fit, turns out they make more than most of us and have significant wealth in property value and ability to have substantial passive income if they didnt wanted to be farmers anymore.
But then, we should help them even more to stay farmers, or they will not to choose to do so and cripling the local environment => less food produced => more imports => more cost of living and more polution.
Imported goods from far away countries, that gets delayed because the climate protestors blocked the road. And this in a endless cycle.
Yeah it still shows, that those red parts could have been almost 0. Your point is probably to eat only vegan i guess. Just a question about the diagramm, would it take in if all of them are import ( via airplane ) or are they all calculated if they are in the same country?
Idc about those tbh, my choice stands, we should help the local farmers and help them reduce their emissions.
