Food /
Polish v Western farm produce? [14]
Poland has a lot of small scale, old fashioned, production.
I find this to be a huge visual difference when I drive an hour from here (Poland) across the boarder to Slovakia.
There are big co-operatives in Slovakia, I think co-ops has the connotation of communist here in Poland.
So you get lots and lots of small thin strips of fields here, whereas in Slovakia they have joined them together in some places.
I often see a cow with a few metres of rope nailed to a field, it is very strange for an Irishman.
I still don't understand why people don't make a boarder and just let the cows walk around? probably money but it just seems strange to me.
As for quality and nutriotional value, the imported stuff is possibly genetically modified, chemcially fertilised, preserved and prettified, but even so shouldn't it cost much more at the retail end than locally produced stuff.
It could be that the mass production farms sell their produce for less when the fulfil their quota?
I know the U.S. and Europe sell some African countries their surplus of food for less than the local farmers can.
Effectively destroying local farming livelihoods.
So for an example a farmer produces 10 million tons of corn, if he sells it in his own country, the price of corn would go down, so he sells 4 million tons to his own country and can sell the extra 6 million tons at rock bottom prices abroad.
If they don't sell the surplus they destroy it by burning it.
The old supply and demand business practice, it isn't fair but that seems to be the way things are done.
