Finally finished Benjamin Lorr's "The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket” and it ... is a good read? That lives up to its ominous title?
It's broken into six parts, which basically go from “Wow, Trader Joe's has a fascinating origin story" to “…I …did not realize so many of the Myanmar people had suffered decades of slavery and inhuman abuse to keep shrimp prices low”
An excellent book about grocery store, but also about the grim mechanisms of capitalism.
Used to be 500g for £3.50; now its 150-200g for £4.50
over 20 bucks a kilo feels not cheap. Chickens, a much larger animal cost less, and are supposed to be actually cared for, rather than extracted from an ocean.
Like most guilt porn, there may be some truth; but what have been the outcomes since "we learned about this" over a decade ago?
@lewiscowles1986 they’re about 50% cheaper than they were in the early 90s, ajusted for inflation. On the long term, the big shift was the global emergence of industrial-scale shrimp farming in the 70s. Before that they were a luxury product that cost more per pound than a good steak.
Production at that scale, at the prices we’re now used to, is tremendously labor intensive but also relies on slave labor.
@eaton
I'm a data person so I just searched to see if I could find what you just asserted, but it seems plain incorrect. 1977 to 2024, inflation adjusted $20 of shrimp back then, would now be $100
As a consumer, you have a 5x increase in costs.
Again, I've looked into shrimp farming; the book you read seems to be the misleading thing here.
@lewiscowles1986 Second, the shift in both price and production levels I referenced is missed if you cut off at 1977. Industrial shrimp farming emerged in the mid 70s, and that change is what transformed it to a commodity protein.
Your earlier comment (that shrimp should be cheaper since they're ‘harvested from the ocean’) is off in two respects: that's not how the shrimp industry has worked for decades, and even if it did, ocean-caught is more rather than less expensive, production-wise.
@eaton I have only been able to find data going back to 1977, if you have more information; I'm willing to receive it. But also how far back are we going to need to go?
I Was pretty sure due to religious objections, shrimp, like lobster being a bottom feeder, would have made it undesirable for all but the servants. Lobster also used to be very cheap, far back enough.
I Obviously don't care about such things as part of my dietary choices; but I would have thought if cherry picking was an issue.
@lewiscowles1986 Third, complaining about the high price of shrimp when it's historically low, both in real terms and when adjusted for inflation, is a perfect demonstration of why the shrimp supply chain, like chocolate and coffee and cotton and a bunch of other commodities, keeps whoopsing its way into horrifying human and ecological costs.
The societal problem of those costs across a bunch of industries, and the difficulty of altering the systems that produce them, are not “guilt porn.”
@eaton
As for the difficulty fixing, stringing up the entire board would be a solution I've seen no evidence has been explored widely. I Don't buy the current approaches are good, and from the position you argue from, it doesn't fill me with confidence of it not riddling the process with small wins and lots of inefficiencies.
@eaton
There is never a good reason for slavery, and I did not ask for that.
Chocolate for example, is very expensive because a few companies have been involved in the harvest and have a stanglehold. Inefficiency and sticking to awful practices is more of a chosen issue than an unavoidable one.
@lewiscowles1986 It’s a bit like saying electronics prices are too high today; they are expensive in comparison to many other things we consider essentials but historically very inexpensive. And even then, often rely on labor practices and environmental impacts we believe are wrong but are unable to alter via individual action.
@eaton
And modern computers, the issue is not the expense. It is what you are able to be sold at what price-point. Top end computers are very competitive, but bottom end computers for the poorest are awful
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