Couple of Ag sector reports out of Australia here and here.
Potato growers in Western Australia's south-west say a potato giveaway in Perth has left them unable to sell hundreds of tonnes of their own produce.And:
The sad reality this summer is tonnes and tonnes of mangoes have ended up on the scrapheap for no reason other than their appearance. A loss of juicing contracts and a bumper season in the Mareeba-Dimbulah district resulted in tons of blemished fruit, that won't make the premium grade, being thrown out.Real surpluses everywhere! Oil! Nat Gas! iPhone6!
Just not enough "money" around to buy the abundant produce it seems. After all; "We're out of money!" as they say. We have mangoes and potatoes coming out of our ears and "no money!".
Moron rule continues unabated.
That's a problem inherent to "markets" and commodity production. Delivering that produce to where it was needed would entail a loss.
ReplyDeleteRight. We've run out of tokens that merely show the accounting record of any distribution. Meanwhile, the real wealth, which has already been produced is left sitting undistributed.
ReplyDeleteMarkets are highly efficient wrt means but they are not necessarily effective wrt to goals other than maximizing firm profit under current conditions. Profit maximization is not a comprehensive goal for a society, and economies are the material life-support system of a society.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a problem with anybody claiming that there is "not enough money." The article says the problems are with distribution and processing channels and logistics.
ReplyDeleteIf a producer grows something in location A and there are consumers in location B who are willing to pay the producers an agreeable price for that product, that doesn't matter if there are no cost-efficient way of getting the product from A to B.