(RP from Matt Holten)

“As cost-of-living pressures mount amid high inflation and low wage growth, the major supermarkets are selling single avocados for between $1.60 and $1.80.

So why just not lower the price to drive up demand? Because it still wouldn’t be worth it for farmers, according to Kochi.

“The cost of putting that stuff in a package, including the labour and the cost of packaging and the cost of transport is just not worthwhile,” he said.

“So the option is just to dump it.

“It’s not only cheaper (to throw it away), you just can’t afford to put the labour into packing.

“It doesn’t pay to put the money into packing the fruit or to pay someone the freight costs to send it down to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.”

Cute… thanks capitalism.

Is avocado toast the problem? I think not.

  • T34 [they/them]
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    fedilink
    232 years ago

    "There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

    • @TheConquestOfBed
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      2 years ago

      Saw the title, was about to post <Insert Grapes of Wrath Quote Here> and there it is already typed out for me.