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”
We have shown no regard for climate protesters (progressives) and remove them by force wherever they show up, because we can’t have them threaten the status quo.
Meanwhile our fucking farmers, being sustained by substantial government money against all reason, throw a hissy fit when the government has to cut it unexpectedly because our supreme court decided that the world dying of climate change is not enough reason to take on a bit of debt and denied their budget.
And we let them.
Being frankly, support local farmers is important, specially with all the uncertainties of climate changes. I also think that governments should help and incentivize criation of alternatives, just increasing the diesel price would not make a farmer use a hoe instead. For me this kind of solution is just government not helping at all but putting the weight in a specific groups.
I’m all in against lobby and things like that but we need strong governments leading the energy transformation, not the private sector, specially weak markets like farming can’t do this alone, only large landowners.
So… what am I going to eat without local farmers?
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.
Not how markets work.
Huh, If i do my maths again.
No farmers, no local production. So you have to pay for importing ( yes it cost something ) The normal “Bread” costs now instead of 1€, 1€ + the import costs. Because WHO else would pay for it.
1+1+1=3 Thats how it works
No farmers would increase the price until someone sees enough benefit to become a farmer.
Just like how it has always worked.
With the milk price? Its an open market. If local farmers doesnt provide cheal enough products. Companies look elsewhere.
Like with most other markets we have, price goes up, opportunity for people to go into the market or to expand goes up too.
If bread gets more expensive, might be worth for me to sell bread too and build up production.
Most of us also don’t need to pay repairs for 700.000€ machines.
Thats already included in the calculation. After paying employees, taxes, repairs, and other costs, they still have alot more than most of us will ever make.
Besides, they already get money from the government when they had a bad year.
Private profits, public losses.
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).
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.
looks like germany is a similar case.
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.
Nope, what you’ll get is more import, and strategic dependency on food producing countries.
Yea I mentioned that, no? We keep local farmers going not because it’s the cheapest thing to do but so we have an independent means of producing food, otherwise we would be dependent on imports and also suffer the resulting geopolitical power loss.
Exactly.
Plant farmers are part of the solutions for sure, but there are going to be a lot of changes.
Removing these subsidies will not stop farming in Germany. It’s a small setback to an already very pampered industry. Please don’t parrot these “no farmers no food” slogans, the existence of farmers is not under threat.
Imported goods from far away countries, that gets delayed because the climate protestors blocked the road. And this in a endless cycle.
https://ourworldindata.org/food-choice-vs-eating-local
Transportation is the bit colored in red.
I am just looking at the beef vs coffee. I assume this is by weight. I drink too much coffee but the amount I use in a day has to be a small fraction of the amount of beef I have eaten in a single meal.
It’s an interesting way to look at it.
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.
There’s a link under the image that details what and how this works
We are helping them to reduce their emissions. With diesel subsidies removed, a farmer has an economic advantage when saving fuel vs a wasteful competitor.
Reduce farmers ahh yes then their fields get built upon and they cant go back. Congrats you reduced local emissions to 0 but increased the rate of imports from far away countries.
Reduce emissions, not farmers.
You are the only one that probably understands that.
I mean supporting our local farmers benefits both, the environment and the people around them with jobs.
With the “progressives” arent they called “klimakleber” if so i have no regards on them too, blocking roads for cars or even emergency services i have no tollerance on that, they are literally killing people with their behaviour.
We all know that there is a climate change, but with that behaviour no one will ever do anything, because like said just the name is saying everything.
No one has been doing anything before the klimakleber, so if all they lead to is no one doing anything, that’d still be fine.
But in reality it does help. More extreme forms of protest shift the point of reference and as such help other forms get taken seriously. Even if I have mixed feelings about it, ultimately it’s probably a good thing.
Also to my knowledge the Klimakleber have always left space for a Rettungsgasse…
Huh, not in my region then. Could be Klimakleber extreme. Probably all glued themselves and could stand up for because of it.
I think we have both different understandings, the Klimakleber is for me a laughing stock.
They should rather do something productive for the environmnet, and not buy extra warning jackets, glue that is probably bad for the environment and forcing cars to idle and get people angry about the klimakleber.
Bomb a pipeline, got it.
😳
Regarding the klimakleber, obviously they should let emergency services pass. However, what else do you think they should do, if not peacefully be inconvenient? Everything else is already illegal here, or has no reach.
The situation is dire, our ecosystem is collapsing and everyone under 60 right now is very likely to feel the dramatic consequences of that. We need to make drastic and uncomfortable changes in our way of life and economic system to prevent the worst, and people do not want to hear this, they just want to go on. If there is one thing Germans fear it’s change.
The thing is you are going not to convince anyone by inconvinience. Thats sadly the hard truth. Be a good modle and dont buy stuff you dont need, eating local sourced food, dont drive unecessary and hope that today not a klimakleber blocks your way, so that you have to idle unnecessary. Push repairability, reusability and long lasting products. Dont buy a new iphone every year.
Dont buy the coffee out of the the furthest possible country.
And so that you know, the internet runs on electricity! So every click you do here produces emissions.
The fact you are here arguing proves it works. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if they didn’t glue themselves to something.
We would be arguing something less important.
Wow we prove it with mentioning . Do we prove aliens if we mentioning them too? Klimakleber went up in the funny charts because of that everyone knows and is annoyed by them.
So you’re saying the farmers protests, which inconvenienced many people and raised emissions by wasting fuel driving around tractors with no real purpose, are wrong too? Got it!
At least they are doing it right. And let emergency vehicles through. + they dont fly to the place where they want to protest.
It must be quite tiring trying to justify to yourself the same means if only they meet your ends.
I am not justifying myself, its just a fact that we need farmers jk for food. And its just confirming for me with klimakleber you cannot talk.
Oh sorry. Forgot we totally don’t need a stable climate for food.
Btw, read your comment again and try to find the part where you are justifying. You’ll get there, I believe in you.
Edit: not a Klimakleber btw, just can’t stand the hypocrisy.
Both are blocking the roads. One protest is regarding our all future without personal gain, the other one is about profit margins. Both are blocking the roads, all the same
One is protesting because they feel like it, the other wants to say if you do that we leave our jobs and you will not have local farmers anymore.