Food Is Not A Commodity \ stacker news ~food_and

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203 sats \ 12 comments \ @kr 17 May food_and_drinks

When food is deemed a commodity, agriculture is easier to finance, supply chains are more efficient, and people have more choice.

But it also incentivizes farmers to produce food for the lowest possible cost. Quality doesn't matter when it's all sold for the same price.

The result is food that is always available for low prices, but tastes bad, expires fast, and isn't nutritious.

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0 sats \ 9 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 May

So, I think you’re partially correct, but also what you’re doing is extrapolating your preferences onto other people.

There are higher quality foods on the market and, if more people wanted them, there would be even more.

The truth is that you and I are strange and our preferences are not reflective of most people.

40 sats \ 8 replies \ @kr OP 17 May

What you’re doing is extrapolating your preferences onto other people.

Wrong.

There are higher quality foods on the market and, if more people wanted them, there would be even more.

It's not this simple. Commoditizing food isn't just about pricing it the same. It's also sending all food through the same safety and supply chain "pipes". Federal regulators have strict rules for how to process food, and it often requires farmers to make decisions that lead to lower quality food, whether they like it or not.

Beef is a good example. Within 1 hour of killing a cow, it must be in a federally inspected cold room. A grass-fed cow's body has less fat, it cools down quicker, and the rapid cooling causes the meat to be less tender than grain-fed beef.

Those are commodity rules designed with the assumption that grain-feeding is the only way to raise cattle, and those regulations limit the quality of food a farmer can produce.

The truth is that you and I are strange and our preferences are not reflective of most people.

Also wrong.

0 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 May

No doubt my three sentences omitted some detail and nuance, but it is true that most people do not pay the premiums for the better quality foods available in the same grocery stores they already shop in, much less seek out the higher quality providers that do exist. I'm not sure what the evidence is to support a hypothesis that most people are willing to pay such premiums.

You won't find a bigger advocate of removing government food regulations, but I don't think that's the central issue here.

37 sats \ 6 replies \ @kr OP 17 May

Why would one pay premiums for a “commodity” product?

You’ll never know the difference between the chicken or the broccoli in store A vs store B.

You don’t have access to the factories that produced them, you don’t get insight on the production methods, you don’t know what date your food was harvested.

And the reason you don’t get access to the information that differentiates two products is because regulators have a much easier job if all food is treated equal. Everyone stores and ships and packs their food in the same way, everyone adheres to the same safety standards, and farmers have a single, highly liquid market in which they can sell their food for reliable prices.

This made a lot of sense in the 20th century, but it hurts anyone trying to differentiate and produce better food. If you’re going to sell in a grocery store, your incentive is to be the low-cost producer, not the high-quality producer.

The highest quality food is found at local farms. This isn’t a personal preference, this is fact. The food is harvested that day, it doesn’t spend a week flying around to processing plants, farmers have real accountability to their customers, and you can observe growing conditions with your own eyes. The more time a tomato spends in transit, the less nutritious it is when you buy it.

This is why so many Michelin star chefs directly source their food from local farms.

But the local farms who choose not to fit the mold of commodity food production, often have their production levels capped, and their production prices are higher for using different processing systems. For example, a farmer in Canada can choose to raise exotic, more flavorful breeds of chicken, but once they produce more than 6,000/year, they must buy quota rights from the government which allows them to produce a set number of chickens for a set price.

So the exotic chicken breed that takes twice as long to mature, produces half as many eggs, but makes for higher quality and tastier food isn’t produced at scale. It just doesn’t make sense when every step along the food production chain values all chickens equally.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 17 May

None of that is what I'm disagreeing with, though. You're right about the logistics/regulatory system favoring what you're calling "commodity" foods and I agree with you about their low quality.

You are overstating your case, though. There are different production modes on the market (organic, for instance), so we can observe willingness to pay premiums for quality. We can also observe how many people are willing to pay for products with better ingredients (seed oils vs olive oil, for instance). And, many people live in places with regular farmers' markets, where they could (if they cared to) buy directly from a local farmer.

Everything I see points towards what I'm saying about preferences. Most people prefer cheap to quality. The entrenched logistics system largely rose up around the varieties of crops and animals that delivered the cheapest prices to consumers, because that's what consumers were buying.

40 sats \ 4 replies \ @kr OP 17 May

we can observe willingness to pay premiums for quality

wrong. you don’t even know what is different about the organic apple and the non-organic apple. the non-organic one may in fact be of a better quality if it were analyzed for taste or nutrition. but in the grocery store, you have absolutely no idea.

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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @ifnix05 17 May freebie

You're absolutely right. Food is a basic human right, not just a tradable good. When we treat food purely as a commodity, we risk prioritizing profit over people, which leads to hunger, exploitation, and environmental harm. We need systems that value food for its role in sustaining life and communities—not just for market value

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 17 May

You have options depending on where you live. Those who produce with quality will end up charging more regardless of the price of that commodity.