[bryanrasmussen]

I have heard that Denmark exports their best pigs and leaves the second best for home. Not sure why that should be any truer than what you heard regarding Switzerland and their strategy, but they seem to represent two differing strategies about how to best profit from strong points, it would be nice to figure if either is the dominant one.

Perhaps we can ask Italy what they do with tomatoes and parmigiano.

[mattclarkdotnet]

In two minds as to your sarcasm level. Anyone who has eaten bacon in Denmark or Raclette in Switzerland or a fresh pasta sauce in Italy could testify that the best stays home

[Maxion]

I am so confused as to why everyone is talking about Switzerland, the country, acting in unison when it comes to exports. That's not really how it works... Some Swiss companies are more export focused, others are more domestically focused. There's no single central agency that goes around the country and grades cheese manufacturers and creameries and forces some to export, and others to sell to local grocery store chains...

[shermantanktop]

You sure about that? Swiss agriculture is tightly controlled.

[bryanrasmussen]

I heard it from a Dane, but obviously your taste buds have allowed you to take a statistically meaningful sampling, that's pretty lucky.

The reason why I might give it some credence is twofold

1. I would suppose travel from point X to point Y might lead to degradation of quality and thus the top quality leaving at X might be passable when arriving at Y.

2. I suppose there are different income levels involved, Danes are pretty parsimonious.

I don't think most of them actually care about having the best, they care about having passable quality which is of course much better than a middle class person will have access to in the U.S, but perhaps they export the best and premium because obviously with a world wide market there would be enough really upper-scale rich buyers to make it worthwhile to do so.

I have to say I don't really care much, but I think there may be scenarios in which a large portion of the best quality of a nation's produce gets exported (obviously not all of it, but a large portion) and am interested in that as how economics works.

As far as anecdotes however, my Italian ex-wife said the best Italian food she ever had was at a fancy restaurant we went to in Prague. I thought it was good but I don't much care past a certain point, so I didn't notice. My favorite was a small restaurant in Vomero that just made the same two dishes all day long and all the workers came to eat there. I like Danish pork, but generally stuff like flæskesteg, which historically was yes, a luxury good, but a luxury good for peasants. So I think probably not the best.

Yes definitely anything I have eaten in Danish or Italian dishes in their homeland was better than what I ate in those culinary traditions in the U.S or England, but I doubt that was because I had a great sampling to choose from and could decide what was what based only on my experience.

[cess11]

Most pork they export to Sweden for sale in supermarkets is awful and sold as the cheapest, worst alternative.