Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by zwieback 1634 days ago
Nonsense - you can get everything from trash to exceptional quality food, depending on the store you buy it from. Not disputing your point that small farmers have it hard but on the consumer side there's lots of choice.
2 comments

> Nonsense - you can get everything from trash to exceptional quality food, depending on the store you buy it from. Not disputing your point that small farmers have it hard but on the consumer side there's lots of choice.

When money is of no concern to you, sure. But reality is many people can't even afford to buy organic foods.

Food in general was more expensive before the Green Revolution, back when food usually was organic and came from small farms.

Here's a 1922 document showing American retail prices of food from 1913 to 1920:

https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/files/docs/publications/bls/bl...

Take a look at eggs, for example (page 21 as numbered in scans, 27 in the PDF). In 1920 egg prices fluctuated between $0.528 and $0.924 per dozen. Adjusting that price by consumer price index, it's something like $7.02 to $12.29 per dozen in current dollars. Back then people were forced to produce their own food, spend a larger portion of their income on food, or simply go without. Poverty that would force someone to eat cheap eggs now would force them to eat no eggs back then.

I just looked up the eggs I buy: Vital Farms pasture-raised eggs through Amazon Fresh. Currently $7/dz. They come with a url and farm id code you can use to see a live web cam of the hens that laid the eggs in the pack you're holding.
Consumers can throw less food in the trash and they'd be able to afford more