Friday, May 7, 2021

The Apples Story

 I sat last night and watched MEX (the economics show on HR...public TV for Hessen).  So this one segment came up.

Here were two young German ladies (mid-20s) and they were out shopping....mostly for fruit and vegetables.  They started off at some village square open-market.

They walked up and wanted to know about the products (potatoes for example) and WHERE they came from.  What they wanted to find were local/regional products.  

As they progressed around the square....example after example came up....products like green Granny Smith apples from New Zealand, which were deemed 'evil' because it takes a lot of C02 to bring them to Germany.  Regional red apples?  Pushed big time as the replacement product to buy.

So this hype went on for about six minutes.  

Five years ago, they would have gone to great length to get you to buy fresh fruit/vegetables and how to recognize freshness.  

Three years ago, they would have explained 'out-of-season' and 'in-season'.

Now the hype is to get you to refuse to buy any product that is from outside of the EU....because of the amount of C02 required to bring the product here.

By the end of August....most grapes are finished off in Germany, France and Italy.  Then you start to notice.....grapes in the grocery which are from Peru, South Africa, or India.  The market exists for products all-year round now.

A silly hype?  I sat and thought about it.  In old DDR (East Germany).....you went to your village grocery and there was one single basket of crappy apples (bruised-up).  You didn't criticize anyone....you just felt lucky that you could buy two crappy apples.  They might have been from Turkey, or Romania, or even Russia.  

Today?  You've got tons of choices and nothing is crappy or bruised....but you have these people selling you an agenda that you should only buy C02-friendly apples....only produced within 100 to 200 km of the store.  

Getting regular Germans to buy into this agenda?  I would suggest it'll be a hard sale.

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