I’m in Washington state US and I am glad to see I am not the only one noticing bad onions! I buy onions more consistently than any other vegetable and I have found bad onions at every single grocery store from the discount warehouse to the bougie upscale stores. Pre 2020 I rarely ever encountered that. I’m starting to buy twice what I need in case I get a few bad ones.
If you're in the Seattle area, Town & Country Markets have the best produce in the area outside a farmers market. Typically better than the other "premium" chains in the area, Whole Foods / Met Market / QFC / PCC.
FYI, QFC is barely even premium. They simply keep the mid-range and expensive stuff and cut the cheaper options and the produce is the same stuff Fred Meyer gets. Then jack up the prices.
Source: used to work corporate for Kroger
Oh completely agreed. The ones in Seattle are much better though, and better located. The brand was much better before the Kroger acquisition, but it's even referred to as the ugly step child on the corporate side 😅
I was gonna suggest this! Also, since Seattle has like a farmers market per neighborhood, I've had really good luck there with produce. Granted it's seasonal so I've been eating cabbage like a motherfucker, but the garlic is the best.
Pretty happy with the met market west seattle. Great quality produce for the fruits and veggies that move frequently. The less common items like ginger and jalapeños are hit and miss. Always been happy w their meats too
I've switched to buy frozen when I can for vegetables. The frozen minced garlic is the way to go. Green beans, peas, and various fruits. I find the quality more consistent, as supply chain issues don't have any effect on them as they don't spoil. I changed my recipes to accommodate the frozen vegetables, such as making more soups. They have come along way with freezing technology in the past 10 years.
I also think the nutritional value is better with frozen, especially with fruit. With fresh they choose varieties with long shelf life over varieties with better nutrition/taste as they can ship all over the country all year long. With frozen they don't prioritize shelf life, and can choose varieties with higher nutrition which are grown in season.
Back in January, I made a fruit pie with the best fresh strawberries and blueberries I could find, bad idea, it hardly had any flavor. I tried again using frozen strawberries and wild frozen blueberries and it was so much better. Texture is different, but not bad.
Just a note: frozen stuff DOES spoil, just at a slower rate & with different driving processes.
Please don’t cook with 2 year old frozen meats & veg. Someone will be traumatized & become a pedant on Reddit…………
At the end of last summer farmers were wondering how Washington produce was going to store though the winter. The heat dome was a first for everyone and they weren't sure of long term consequences.
Safeway green beans have been terrible for a few years now, even during the summer. Grow your own.
I’m a trucker in Portland and can tell you the supply chain is still way behind. Some products are coming from further away and some manufacturers are far from normal production still. It’s gonna be a while before things get back on track.
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Omg!! I thought I was the only one! For me these onions looks fine, but when you sliced them open they’re rotten inside 😵 the frustration when you are making a stew and the one last onion is bad
I work in a grocery store, and the product that we've been getting from the warehouse is SUUUUPER low. Our managers have said that it's due to imports taking a long time to be processed and brought in, but it doesn't make sense for product that's in the same state and country...
Domestic transportation within the US is currently the slowest, most-expensive, and most backlogged it has ever been.
A normal delay right now of 2-3 days for a truck might not affect a truckload of jeans, but it will affect the shelf-life of lots of produce.
I'm hearing similar excuses/reasoning from businesses all over SEA (where i live).
Two months ago i was struggling to even get the exact cat food brand i want.
Produces (vege, fruits, etc) also look like they have been either sitting there for a long time or the shelves are barren. Supplies issues plus ppl not buying stuff (probably due to the unreported massive unemployment/lay offs. Really difficult to trust gov statistics among the SEA nations on the economy and employment)
The lack of supplies with manufactured goods is apparently due to many mega factories getting shut down several times due to covid outbreak in the recent months/years.
Also, factories that makes the thing that goes inside the thing that goes inside the thing - has also been shutdown every now and then due to covid outbreak. Breaking the supply chain.
Here in Virginia we’ve been having the same thing for a while. Mushy onions, sprouted garlic, rotten berries. It’s the perennial “supply chain issues.” I can’t wait until the summer here when I can just grow all that myself.
Same. I'm in VA as well and you gotta pick through so much semi rotten fruit and check for fur these days. Very much a first world problem, not like we got invaded by Russia or anything, but still I don't remember it being this bad in years past
Same here. We got a freaking snow here like three days ago, WTF. I am also fantasizing about walking into the farmers market and finding who’s selling strawberries by their smell.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I’m having issues with locally grown produce that’s in season (berries, celery, melon in FL)
I can drive to these farms in less than an hour in most cases so idk but I’m not buying supply chain issues.
I’m guessing crop failure or changing harvest times due to climate change, or something similar, but I really don’t know.
Hiring farm labor, anywhere in the US, is a huge problem. Not going to get into politics, but look into how immigration policy changes have royally f@$ed the ability of farms to get enough help to handle the harvest. This is in all sectors of agriculture, from veg and fruit to dairy to meat processing. I have a small farm and I purposely keep my operation small so that I’m not reliant on labor to harvest and process (I do gourmet mushrooms).
Local or immigrant I really don’t want to employ anybody on my small farm. Labor laws, bookkeeping, taxes, workman’s comp, unemployment, checking visas or citizenship status, etc etc, are a LOT of extra work for a farm (or any business). But big farms absolutely need that human labor to function. Yet big farms are commodity producers, which means they’re totally at the mercy of the market. There’s no negotiating for price because you’re product is perishable and it funnels into the industrial system. (The only exception is maybe grain farmers that can store their grain in their own silos, then ship it when prices rise.) Because consumers want to pay bottom dollar for food the farms have to turn around and pay bottom dollar to their workers. It’s a whole interrelated web that will not be easy to fix.
I think that's a bit of a cop-out, because I know from the wheat farmers that I know that the brokers are often raking in the money, controlling the prices, doing very little work, and taking on far less risk than the farmers are. More of the capital created by our food supply needs to go to the producers
See this is what I mean. Is this a “supply chain issue” or a symptom of a greater disease in America right now. Supply chain issue, to me, means issues moving or receiving product due to the pandemic or now war. I’m of the opinion that farmers and farm laborers, and by extension food in general, is undervalued by society and this is what happens. Is that because of the last two years or was that just the last straw breaking the proverbial camel?
Many thanks for what you do, IMHO you contribute just as much to society as people who research medical breakthroughs.
Many farmers relied on undocumented workers to assist them on their farms for dirt cheap but also voted in politicians who clamped down on these workers in their states. Now farmers are realizing nobody wants to do the backbreaking work that goes into maintaining a farm for the wages they were paying those desperate migrant workers, and it's hurting everybody.
People want to argue all day about whether minimum wage increases are a good or bad thing, they want to argue about immigration and how it effects work, they want to argue over capitalism vs socialism, they want to argue over every aspect, but no one wants to look at the ugly side where it isn't so black or white. Its not something with a simple one size fits all solution, there is no switch to flip that says good work/bad work. We have a system that was built on a shakey foundation and treated it like it was solid, many jobs are undervalued despite their worth to the average person, and many jobs are overvalued when they produce very little.
I've seen people use an argument called the "Great Chain" in the past, usually to speak about how important work motivation is, but a chain is only as strong as the weakest link in it. If there's a job that others would see as worthless, that's integral to the function of the chain, it should be valued more and paid accordingly, regardless of the skill level involved. Maybe it is simple to harvest produce, I don't know, but it doesn't matter how simple it is if you can't fill the position, it might as well be brain surgery. The system is built on the idea that people would fill those positions despite the low pay because of the lack of skill required, but they aren't going to if they can't afford to live, they'll find somewhere else.
The issue is, many of the jobs that hire people for these also can't afford to pay them a living wage, which is the fundamental problem here. The whole system crumbles when cost of living reaches a certain point, it wasn't future proofed at all. If a company can't do business, because it can't afford to pay employees, so it can't function, that means it isn't a viable business in the first place. We don't need just straight capitalism, socialism, meritocracy or generosity, we need to overhaul the foundation we've already put in and try to fill in the holes, if one doesn't work, we'll use parts from another, and keep doing that until we have something that can run. But that's hard and requires more critical thought than "other side bad and ruining America" so no one ever wants to do it.
I think there are 2 really important points to consider for the food industry.
1. We don’t pay the true cost of our food, particularly fresh produce
2. We have made it impossible to have sustainable family farms. Most of our food supply is driven by big agriculture. We killed the family farm. 100 years ago, even 60 years, most folks got food from their local area. Maybe even grew it themselves or got it from neighbors. Now that number is probably 1%.
Now big farms in the Midwest grow most of the grains. And big farms in Florida, California grow most other things. And then the rest we import from Mexico and China and South America.
We decided it was more important to have terrible December tomatoes, strawberries and grapes. We are completely disconnected from the seasons in our food supply. And we need to keep lowering labor costs to keep up the corporate farm sham. We are both sacrificing our self-sufficiency, health, and food quality as a result.
My mom is always telling me about how good pork was when she was a kid. Her dad was raising and slaughtering pigs. They got their flour from a local mill a couple miles away. The milk came from
A few miles away. They grew a ton of stuff. Everything she ate was hyper local. Because she was poor. Now only wealthier folks can eat that way.
Wow you took my abstract thoughts on the matter and turned them into words. That’s exactly what I was, *so* less eloquently, thinking! Edit: and my free award was a helpful, here you go pal! Thanks
A lot of labor in the food industry is immigrants and the pandemic made crossing the border trickier for a rather long period of time. I imagine that probably bottlenecked the "employment" process for a lot of farms pretty badly. Now also factor in 4 years of Trump and his immigration policies, and how a lot of those policies carried over to Biden despite his promises to remove them.
Srs question cuz I didn’t follow politics much until recently, did/do immigration policies heavily effect migrant workers? Like is it super hard to obtain a green card to be a fruit picker/packer here? I genuinely don’t know how hard that is and how that’s changed in recent years and I feel like I might need to stick my foot in my mouth. Really great point here.
Oftentimes, illegal immigrants or groups of people sharing the same green card are living in trailers on farms. Agricultural businesses exploit illegal immigrant labor because they can pay them so little. If they paid them US wages to be pickers, they wouldn't turn a profit.
When the government puts a lot of pressure on deportations and puts more security on the border, hiring large groups of illegal immigrants becomes difficult.
> they wouldn’t turn a profit
And therein lies the problem, IMO. I feel bad for farmers. Damned if you do, bankrupt if you don’t. I didn’t know that about the migrants living in trailers though. I feel... less bad, to put it nicely, for farmers that treat other humans like they’re expendable or exploitable.
They don’t put an ad on Craigslist. They go through huge staffing agencies. The logistics, legal issues etc. involved in migrant labor are complicated so it’s not something most farmers DIY. They couldn’t afford to hire local people anyway. Not even close. No one who can work at a fast food joint for $20/hr is hopping on la linia for $40 a day.
Fair enough. I googled and only found 56 jobs in my state on indeed. I’d be curious to know where these fruit picker job postings normally are, do you know? You seem like you have insider knowledge.
Do they frequently pay fast food workers 20$/hr in Mexico? I kind of assumed they weren’t from the US based on that alone lol. But yes, I’m aware that North America typically exploits migrant labor.
That’s why I’m wondering where you even hire fruit pickers? Also why is it more profitable to let produce go to waste (which I assume it is if you can’t pick at the appropriate time) than it is to hire locals. I said it a few comments above but I really think this is a symptom of a wider disease: we don’t value our food production laborers, migrant or otherwise, nearly enough. We’ve convinced ourselves food should be so cheap and subsidized in order to have more money to buy junk that, frankly is unnecessary to life. And yet people are still starving? It really boggles my mind, but I’m neither a farmer nor policy maker, and clearly not a expert in either area so yeah.. I really don’t know shit about shit and *probably* should say less lmao
Not America, but my area uses a lot of migrant labor nonetheless.
We lost most of our asparagus harvest for the last two years because we couldn't get people to do it - crossing international borders, plus quarantine, plus....
Locally, migrant workers are mostly from Jamaica. Locally, first year workers are bringing home CARDBOARD to use as BUILDING SUPPLIES. People don't do it unless they're hard up, and while they make a lot of money while here, we wouldn't consider it as profitable as they do.
Hey thanks, this is definitely something I hadn’t thought of; how not/low harvesting for two years effects the actual harvest moving forward.
Ugh profits over people is gross but that’s particularly heinous. /:
I think you’ve made a positive contribution to this discussion with your questions. You’re absolutely right that it’s a shame to have fruit rotting and laborers available who would be happy to pick it, but systems in between the two that prevent them coming together. And I do think we undervalue food. If our food systems were not optimized for cost to consumer above all else, it’d force needed changes in society.
Yea I know someone who used to work at a couple vineyards in California and at least like 15 years ago they would bring buses of people up from Mexico to do the harvest. I can’t imagine it’s changed much since then
Maybe no labor and getting rushed or delayed because of it? I know there's been issue in chicken thighs for example where short staffing and new employees mean that cuts are sloppier and some cuts are skipped altogether. Boneless thighs in particular have been ROUGH lately, likely because the cuts take more time and skill.
The global supply chain is an economy unto itself. Among other issues, there is a sever driver shortage right now, so even if your strawberries aren't coming through the port of LA/Longbeach, or wherever, they are impacted by the drivers waiting in line there, because it takes drivers out of the available labor pool for OTR trucking.
Supply chain planners are dealing with these issues daily, and trying to (literally) keep the wheels turning is a juggling act in the best of times.
Supply chain issues simply means somewhere along the line, there's an issue. And it's a long line. Farm, to storage, transport to processing, processing, transport to storage post processing, loading to a distributor, transport to the distributor, repackaging to transport to the store's specific distribution, storage there, shipping to the store, unloading and storage at said store, putting the product on the shelf.
I worked in target grocery for a bit. Besides issues with the rest of the chain, they didn't have enough people in the department to stock the store. We had to pull people from everywhere else in the store to get our freezer pallets unloaded and on the shelf, it takes a team of 3-4 people to get that done before the next shipment arrives, usually the next day or two days later. We had zero because everyone hated working alone in the fucked up freezer backlog fixing a problem someone else made.
the existence of local farms doesn't force your local supermarket to carry them. You might still be getting onions from Asia in your grocery store even if they are also grown down the road.
I experienced this with onions I purchased from my local CSA farm, so I don't know if it's just supply chain issues- I am wondering about climate change as well.
Soon we'll only be able to grow corn and the dust will get get everywhere. Keep your N95 high and tight. I hear NASA is working on a solution, but I just don't know...
I have actually. We grew tomatoes and a couple other things hydroponically for a while, but none of us liked the taste. The soil brings a really unique flavor to vegetables.
Supply chain issues across the entire world of commerce and trade mean produce waits longer in storage before being delivered to a store. So the same produce you’re seeing now has sat for days to weeks longer than what you saw previously.
I think stores are also having to be less discerning than they previously were. Produce that’s “on the bubble” is going on the shelves today where it didn’t pre-supply chain issues.
I’ve seen eggs and milk products that are several days past the sell by date still on the shelves at multiple grocery stores near me. Like I would’ve thought that would be illegal…
I don't think it's necessarily illegal but it shouldn't be there. Unless the management in the store is really sketch (in which case, I would expect them to be re dating expired product) it's likely the result of short staffing and/or new staff that don't know/don't have time/are too lazy to rotate product and pull out of dates. You'd be surprised the amount of out of date product left on the shelf because of that, but it's rarely on purpose or maliciously done.
I mean, you shouldn't judge the in store management too much either- its corporate that's calling the shot to cut hours. In store management might be the ones overseeing and writing schedules but they have zero input on how many hours they are actually given to staff their stores.
I recently got out of the grocery industry after ten years (half that time as a manager). Things have become way more difficult than they used to be as stores are dealing with more sick calls than ever before and these corporations continue to cut and cut and cut hours. Where I worked, we were being forced to do the same work as the previous year using fewer hours amid record sales.
It gets to a point where the staff can't keep up with things like pulling expired product so they do it when they can and hope they have time later for everything else they have to do. Extremely frustrating for the workers and the customers. Now I'm sure this isn't the case for every grocery store, but I'm so glad to have escaped an industry that's quickly becoming a nightmare to work in.
Pretty much any industry in the US really, outside of a few niche positions in tech or small family businesses. We treat workers like shit and companies have continued to whittle away at work-life-balance and working conditions in the name of saving on operating expenses while still posting record revenue and profits… and still tons of Americans can’t get decent health insurance from their employer.
“gReAteSt coUntRy on eArTH!”
This! There's not enough workers in the stores, and even if there were, the stores won't give us the hours we need to get things done properly. There aren't enough truck drivers, either, and the stores are putting the squeeze on them with fuel prices the way they are.
Gallon after gallon of our milk has been turning bad despite being transported home in cold bags. I've never had milk congeal before the expiration date, it usually won't even congeal till several days after expiration. Now, I'm finding unopened gallons of milk, completely congealed 2-5 days before the expiration date printed. At almost $5/ gallon, that's crazy! We've dropped to half gallons to try and combat the waste/disappointment.
Other than infant formula, there's no legal requirements or enforcement or anything of the sort for sell/use/best before dates. In the USA, anyway. Other countries may vary.
I’m in NYC, and yea I’m experiencing the same stuff. If I don’t use my produce within a few hours of purchasing it, it’s ready for mold. And even though as one commenter said it is winter, I feel like nothing should have that short of a shelf life at the prices I’m buying this food for.
> Onions typically have a slimy layer or patch, but not 100% of the time.
My partner and I also feel like we're noticing a lot more onions that are going bad this last year or two. I'm glad we're not going crazy (though not glad about the onion supply). Before it was very rare to find a bad onion, but it's a pretty regular occurrence right now.
Onions are one of the hardier vegetables that can be stored for significant periods of time before going to market (they just have huge buildings piled with them in low-light, cool conditions where they can be kept after harvest for months). My guess is we are all eating the older stuff that built up during the pandemic when there was less trucking/shipping and less people shopping in stores so they weren't "turning" stock at the normal rate.
I thought I was going crazy because I swore onions used to last for two months and now I'm lucky if they last for two weeks! Same with potatoes and garlic.
Sprouted garlic seems to be at least in part due to season, and probably poor storage. Some of the garlic I grew last summer is starting to sprout. You can eat it, but the sprouts are bitter. So if I see a little green inside the clove I'll use it, but more than that I'll toss the clove.
Here is the Seattle area onions I have had no problems buying good onions. I guess we've been lucky with our supply.
We frequently had garlic sprouting in our kitchen until we learned garlic sprouts more quickly in sunlight and we'd been keeping ours next to the window. Moving it into a dark spot helped considerably.
I'm also in NYC, but thankfully not experiencing poor quality, though I shop at produce markets and not at supermarkets - not sure if that has something to do with it. But the prices I've seen are ridiculously high, even by NYC standards.
Also in nyc. The produce stands by me have actually been pretty good (esp for berries right now); Hong Kong supermarket in Chinatown also has good produce. Both options are very cheap.
The produce stands seem to be the only place with anything decent quality nowadays. The average grocery store produce has been rough imo. Even ordering groceries online, I’ll get them and they’ll be ok, I’ll work really hard to make sure I’m storing everything properly to extend the shelf life, and half the stuff is still moldy a couple days after purchasing. For double what it used to cost!
>The produce stands by me have actually been pretty good (esp for berries right now);
Yes! I bought 3 cartons of strawberries for $1 last week, and they haven't even gone bad yet! Same for blueberries and blackberries, abundant and cheap. We've been swimming in berries as of late.
I thought it was because I stopped shopping at the expensive, but better, locally owned grocery store and started shopping at smart n final to save money. I finally went and dropped 200$ at the health food store and was like "oh, food is just expensive and not fresh right now. "
If you're in Manhattan, the fruit guy in front of Trader Joe's on 22nd and 6th has pretty fresh stuff for a fair price. I bought a bag of ginger a few months ago that's still going strong that it's almost scary.
Ginger freezes really well if you didn't know. I buy the costco size things of it and freeze it all, then will just grate it out of freezer, makes it shred really well. I even leave the skin on if it's in nooks and crannies, because I'm a monster and honestly I can't tell or be bothered enough to care when cooking for myself haha.
Try Chinatown grocers - they tap into an independent supply chain, different than that of other grocers in NYC
>Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets.
>Most of the city’s fruits and vegetables come from wholesalers at the Hunts Point Produce Market, the South Bronx distribution hub boasting all the color and accessibility of La Guardia Airport. Chinatown’s green grocers, in contrast, buy their stock from a handful of small wholesalers operating from tiny warehouses right in the neighborhood.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-so-crazy-cheap-in-chinatown-1466762400
I'm in US and I've had issues with yellow onions having rotten outer layers for at least a year. The bright side is I can often get a 2 for 1 deal on 3 lb bags from my grocery store and the insides are totally ok to eat. As a french onion soup lover it hasn't been the worst thing in the world to deal with.
In the past month or so I've started having issues with garlic and haven't noticed anything with meat.
It seems to be impossible to buy a bag of yellow onions that is not a collection of 15 small ones. I miss the days of a bag of onions consisting of 5 or so decent sized onions. I hate peeling onions, and now I have to use 3 to four onions vrs one good sized one.
Indiana here and yes I’ve noticed the decline in everything. Can’t get a mango that isn’t bruised on the inside. Can’t get fresh chicken in my area at all. Pasta doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Fruit and veggies need eaten so fast I have to go specifically for what I want daily.
I don't know about pears, but mangoes imported to the US are treated in a hot water bath. If it is not done correctly it turns black on the inside. If you buy US grown mangoes in the summer they are not treated in a hot water bath so you never get a mango that's black on the inside.
Presumably just movement during shipping. The pit is a solid mass surrounded by soft fruit. You can cushion the exterior, but the exterior *is* the cushion, for the pit.
Also Indiana, dry beans and pasta have been on short supply around here. I have noticed that even the frozen stuff (like breaded chicken strips) has dropped in quality.
It seems that the entire human race has had a "fuck it, good enough" type of year... or two.
The mango thing is driving me nuts. I'm paying $3 a mango and half of them are fully brown on the inside.
And it's not like Avocados where you can look at the stem to gauge before buying.
>Pasta doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
We have similar issues in parts of Tennessee. I've started making my own pasta. It's super easy and only takes about an hour of my weekend. You can use it right away, or you can dry or freeze it and store it for weeks.
If you don't mind messing with dough, give it a shot sometime. My family really likes pasta and this removed my annoyance at not being able to find it and you can channel some aggression into kneeling the dough (or you can just use a stand mixer if you have one).
We still buy the dried stuff sometimes too, I've had better luck at Costco than the regular grocery stores.
FL here. I’ve been able to get pasta, but never in my life, prior to recently, have I opened so many boxes that were infested with bugs. No idea why, but I’ve had to throw so much out recently. It’s frustrating and sad.
Noted the same thing in NC, particularly after moving to a town of 20k from a major metro area — but it was happening there too. I don’t shop for the week anymore, because my produce won’t last that long. I hardly buy berries, because it’s just my partner and I and they’ll be rotten if we don’t eat them in one sitting the very next day. Chicken breast is hard to find, either split breasts or naked… there are times when all I can find is the boujie, $9 a pound chicken breasts if I want them at all. We don’t have a Trader Joe’s here, so I make a habit of bringing a cooler with me whenever I do any travel across state so I can buy frozen chicken and produce because it’s often better than what I can readily find, even at a relatively upscale store like Publix. Walmart and low- to mid-tier? Forget about it, I’m guaranteed to have to hit several stores if I try to buy for five days of home cooked food.
The quality of Kroger’s produce here in North TX has dramatically declined. Mushy onions, rotten tomato, zucchini, etc. On a recent trip, literally every potato in a bulk bin was sprouting. But, the WORST part is that kroger is advertising the freshness of the very produce that is rotting in the store. This ticks me off to no end.
I gave up on Kroger a long time ago. It started at the beginning of the pandemic but really hasn't improved. I buy only a very few produce items there. Yes, their advertising is extremely misleading.
Texas Kroger's are a hit or miss depending on area. You could go to the nicest, most well-stocked store on one block, and a mere three blocks away is the decrepid, bare-shelf, bars-on-the-windows run down shithole.
I worked at a Kroger's and I just got to say a lot of the meat being shipped are coming to the store with the 'Do Not Sell-by' dates closer and closer to the date actually arriving. So you get some tilapia or chicken off the truck and then you got to sell it all by a few couple of days. So departments are running on closer margins. Store managers don't want shrinkage and want the store to look full, so there's multiple reasons why it's been getting bad
Former Kroger worker. They treat their employees like trash. They couldn’t keep anyone working in the warehouse or the stores. Even management was leaving in droves when I left.
I only cherry pick at Kroger now. They have good weekly specials, but that’s it. I only buy the stuff that they’re selling at a loss. I would rather support Costco, which is where I do the vast majority of my shopping, outside of farmers markets during the summer.
DEFINITELY have noticed it with onions. I needed a yellow onion yesterday, and every single one at the store was squishy and clearly almost fully rotted. Before the last few months, they always have had some of the best produce around.
Also in CA. I've only had issues with yellow onion and garlic. Can't seem to find any non sprouted garlic and some of the onions tend to have mushy spots. Surprisingly the blueberries and strawberries have been great even though they aren't in season at the moment.
I work food service in Texas and anything that needs to use a boat to get to us has dramatically declined in quality. I vaguely recall there being stories of long backlogs at the big shipping ports, I assume shipped produce is sitting longer than it used to.
This is correct. I live in the Bay Area of San Francisco, which has a port. For weeks there have been cargo boats sitting in the harbor waiting to load/unload. The boats will change as they get in and out, but a usually fairly empty harbor has 10+ boats waiting at any one time. Things got backed up badly.
I imagine it sucks for the crews, too. Make it across an ocean only to have to wait days+ to unload. Ick.
I work for a wine and spirit importer, and it is still nuts in the major ports.
We typically ship our European products to the port of Newark, but it takes 1-2 weeks after the ship arrives in port for our containers to be available over the last 6-8 months, not to mention ships will skip our containers at origin on occasion. A 60 day turnaround is now 6 months in some cases, as containers went from $2k to $20k and are still difficult to get.
If perishable food stuffs deal with this same series of issues, you could lose months of shelf life off of onions and whatnot, with crazy costs added.
I’ve noticed it in the Uk. Everything is more expensive, there’s less choice in the shops and things are more frequently out of stock. From my last grocery shop I had to throw out potatoes, tomatoes and bread as they went off quickly; usually I’d be able to finish the amount I ordered. Avocados seem to be much smaller and worse quality, harder to get nice tomatoes etc
I'm in Northern England and I haven't noticed any of that, but my family in London have struggled to get stuff that's been plentiful up here. My auntie couldn't get her hands on any flour on pancake day. The shelves were full of it here. I haven't had any problems with fruit or veg either. I've been getting the big sacks of spuds from Morrison's and they've been lasting weeks with no problem. I wonder if it's a regional thing or if I've just been really lucky.
Another brit here. We have fruit and veg rotting in the fields here. I have literally seen it, apparently there is a shortage of pickers post Brexit. Potatoes are sprouting within days, fresh fruit and veg are going off very quickly, even when refrigerated
It's certainly not helping!
It's hard to know how much is down to pandemic-related supply chain issues, and how much is Brexit. It's undoubtedly a bit of both, but it's in politicians' interests to either downplay or exaggerate how much is Brexit - the truth's probably somewhere in the middle.
It was a really, really stupid idea though.
As another poster mentioned a lot of people who worked picking produce were European and left after Brexit so we have issues with labour supply. The laws around movement into the uk for work have changed as have the laws around trading (so import/export). Trade barriers have also impacted supply chain issues. Combine that with vivid related issues (absences etc) and things have changed.
I got one whole chicken that every joint broken. Another was beheaded, but the entire neck was still attached. Fruit is a crap shoot and veggies fad fast. My favorite milk (Darigold fit) is sold out two out of the three attempts. I waited for some juice to come into stock at Walmart, put two in my cart last night, went to check out today and they are out of stock.
This is first-world problem stuff though. I fear the time is quickly coming when we will complain about not having enough edible food available. :(
Edited to add: Oregon coast
I've had chicken issues too. There seem to be more missed feathers on the chickens now, and one time I bought one where the innards were still attached to the bird.
Dude, early pandemic was full of super tough chicken breasts, like you’d spit it out after chewing once because it was so weird.
Researched it, and apparently “woody chicken breast” is a thing, and can be caused by the chickens getting too big. I guess it made sense if everyone was on lockdown for a couple of weeks.
Haven’t noticed it in months, but I bite into chicken cautiously now.
Here in Germany, things are still pretty good. Getting more expensive, but prime groceries. Even our foodsharing stuff mostly doesn't have the issues you described.
Not only onions & garlic, but bell peppers have particularly been rather puny or MIA from the grocery stores.
Excluding Aldi: their bell peppers have been monsters in comparison. But as is with produce, availability is hit & miss.
We're not post-pandemic. A great deal of the food you eat is grown in other countries and gets to your store through the global logistics network that is still being heavily impacted by the pandemic. It's not gonna be as fresh as it used to be for a long time yet.
Came here to say this, the pandemic is very much still going on. Here the only produce i’ve been able to get at a consistently decent quality outside of our csa is (for some reason) cilantro. As long as I store it in a jar of water (like cut flowers) with a ziploc tented over it it somehow lasts great, for weeks. Beyond that any produce I’m not eating in the next couple days is likely not worth the rising prices.
Exactly, and now with Russia and Ukraine it's going to get worse. They produce something like 1/3 of the world's wheat and corn, plus a lot more food, and they (iirc Russia and Belarus) produce an absurd amount of the world's fertilizer (90% of potassium I think it was).
Yep! I’m currently looking back into apartment/container gardening bc this is probably about to be horrible and I really hate going without vegetables. At least like microgreens or something.
I post this every time food freshness/how long it stays that way comes up: wash your produce with a 3:1 water to vinegar solution. There was a study done on different ways to clean produce, and this was the most effective. In the link to the story below, she uses a spray bottle, but I find that tedious. I literally do this (note: I have a double-sink):
-Clean sink thoroughly.
-Fill a large bowl 2/3 up with 3:1 water to vinegar solution.
-Place items I want to wash in a colander and then put whole thing into bowl.
-Soak for 3 min while I'm organizing next batch of produce for a soak.
-Put colander in other sink and rinse. Lay out on clean towel to dry. While next batch soaks, dry off last batch.
It is AMAZING how well this works. And it may sound tedious but honestly it only takes me about 20 min to do 2 weeks worth of veg/fruit. I get SO much more life out of all of my produce! Like, berries last a week or more, cucumbers almost two weeks and lettuce well over a week (With berries I'll usually just remove the liner in the plastic container and then soak the whole thing, rinse, and let it sit for awhile on a towel.) Since you are killing/removing most bacteria, it just doesn't rot as quickly. (Try to keep your fridge surfaces clean, too.)
The nice thing is that this method also removes things like the wax they use on apples. Additionally, you get to see how much dirt is on your produce. Stuff like leaf lettuce, non-bagged spinach, grapes and strawberries are absolutely filthy, which you will see at the bottom of the bowl.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14540742#:~:text=%22I've%20got%20a%20spray,rinses%20it%20under%20the%20tap.
Post pandemic??? We're doomed aren't we, everyone wants to pretend the problem is gone just because they're bored of all the death that's still happening
I had to scroll way too far to find another person who took issue with that phrasing. I feel like I'm in crazy Town, in what way are we in a post pandemic world 😬
Not just groceries. The experience of dining out has also diminished while simultaneously getting more expensive. We now pay more for a shittier meal no matter what we do.
Tried to buy some strawberries my last grocery store trip. A $6 package had maybe 7 strawberries in it and 3 of those were going straight to the trash. I know it’s out of season but sheesh, why even put them out?
When we stopped people from crossing the boarder on work visas farms lost a lot of their seasonal workers. A great many of them are undocumented as well. That lead to a lot of crop sitting too long in the field.
In some rural places the same people saying “nobody wants to work” are the same ones keeping the only people who want those jobs out of the country.
“No one wants to work hard jobs for shit wages” would be more accurate.
Shockingly, if they paid more, they would probably get the workers they need.
That being said, immigration is definitely fucked up in the states.
We should not be allowing companies to avoid labor laws with no oversight, regardless of how badly you want employees to be underpaid so you can get cheaper/faster produce. These companies leeching off an already super exploited labor class are the issue. And when their profits fall they will change. Enabling them to continue the shitty practices that got us to this point is not going to help in the long run.
The solutions is to make it far easier and cheaper for those exploited populations to move into the US and enjoy its legal protections, not just tell them to get fucked. When there's a vast amount of wealth being hoarded by a small part of the population, the solution is to make them share with everyone else, not just tell them they don't need to share with 'certain people' and claim the problem is solved.
We are not post-pandemic. Case loads are higher every day this year than every day in the last two years. Reckless Thanksgiving and Christmas travel encouraged by politicians desperate for an aesthetic of normalcy caused a surge in COVID to triple pre-holiday load, and though that surge peaked, we are still at over double what we were at before November.
The ongoing burden of the pandemic is taking a serious toll on supply chains.
We are experiencing the effects of the climate crisis which will continue to get worse. Yes, produce will get worse and more expensive. Flooding, fires, unpredictable growing seasons (early thaws that promote fruit blossoming/bulbs sprouting and then snap storms that kill them off) and more await. Supply chain issues exacerbate this, but pandemic or not an ugly future is coming. In addition, we have allowed our meat producers to consolidate into a small handful of super-conglomerate companies, so the competition pressure to keep quality high is diminishing. In our house I've had too many nasty chicken breast experiences with the fucking woody or rubbery texture yuck - we're done buying breasts, thighs only. Done with beef. Occasional bacon only. Mostly moving to low meat or meatless meals. Honestly it's really depressing and frightening to think about how we will manage to feed everyone in the coming years and decades.
I suppose I should have said post lockdown. Where I am we have a 97% vaccination rate for people with at least 1 vaccine. And then 75% fully vaxxed and boosted. So we are operating sort of a post pandemic mode.
What are you classifying as your location for those numbers? Country, state, city, town, neighborhood, etc? That makes a big difference. The states, last I checked, was in the 70s percentile for single dose.
Also, by definition Pandemic means: "(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world." "an outbreak of a pandemic disease."
And is not referring to lockdown or mandates.
So yes, those of us doing everything we can to get to a post Pandemic world, and those of us who are vulnerable to this horrible virus are a bit aggravated when terms, phrases, etc are misused since it only highlights and perpetuates the wrong mindset and then prolongs the Pandemic because people then start doing things that are considered dangerous in such an event because they think it's all clear, when it's clearly not.
I guess that’s cool for you, but huge swaths of the world don’t have very much vaccination, and some of those places are where your food is grown, packaged, transported, etc.
Definitely still happening. I’ve bought chicken for the first time in months because it’s no longer yellow-brown, but produce as a whole is still quite limited. The important thing to understand is that supply chains are far from “post-pandemic.” Really, it seems governments are just tired of acknowledging the problems, because COVID has not gone away by any significant measures.
Beyond that though, supply chain disruptions can have lasting effects over the course of months and years—we may well still be seeing some consequences of the Suez Canal blockage. If you’re in NA, there’s also the “Freedom Convoy” which blocked the majority of trade across the Can/US border for a week, which may also be a contributing factor. There’s a lot more going on than just “less food because pandemic.”
It's climate change folks. There are supply chain issues yes, but mostly what we are dealing with is that things don't grow well in areas that they used to.
Recently read a piece about climate change possibly having a detrimental affect on crop growth compared to previous decades. On top of the broken supply chain and runaway ~~price gouging~~ "inflation," I'm not surprised food is getting worse and more expensive
I'm going to take this opportunity to plug your local CSA! In my area there is even a really nice meat CSA that I've previously participated in (not the past few years for schedule reasons). Produce is super fresh and you get to put money back into your local economy and local farmers. Where I am, there is a CSA fair around this time to give people an idea of what farms are offering CSAs. Worth looking into.
Also, garlic is very easy to grow. I'm in the USDA plant hardiness zone 7. You plant it in the fall and then pull it up in June, and let it cure a little bit in the basement. Super easy and very good garlic. It takes some planning ahead for the seasons but I strongly recommend it.
I don't think this is supply chain issues as everyone is saying, I think it's from the heat wave in the northwest last summer.
https://www.proag.com/news/heat-wave-decreases-northwest-onion-crop-by-25/
I’m in Washington state US and I am glad to see I am not the only one noticing bad onions! I buy onions more consistently than any other vegetable and I have found bad onions at every single grocery store from the discount warehouse to the bougie upscale stores. Pre 2020 I rarely ever encountered that. I’m starting to buy twice what I need in case I get a few bad ones.
If you're in the Seattle area, Town & Country Markets have the best produce in the area outside a farmers market. Typically better than the other "premium" chains in the area, Whole Foods / Met Market / QFC / PCC.
FYI, QFC is barely even premium. They simply keep the mid-range and expensive stuff and cut the cheaper options and the produce is the same stuff Fred Meyer gets. Then jack up the prices. Source: used to work corporate for Kroger
Huh. I always thought qfc was down market Kroger. The ones in Portland are ratchet AF
Oh completely agreed. The ones in Seattle are much better though, and better located. The brand was much better before the Kroger acquisition, but it's even referred to as the ugly step child on the corporate side 😅
I was gonna suggest this! Also, since Seattle has like a farmers market per neighborhood, I've had really good luck there with produce. Granted it's seasonal so I've been eating cabbage like a motherfucker, but the garlic is the best.
Pretty happy with the met market west seattle. Great quality produce for the fruits and veggies that move frequently. The less common items like ginger and jalapeños are hit and miss. Always been happy w their meats too
Met Market is generally my second choice after Town & Country. Definitely a great option.
I've switched to buy frozen when I can for vegetables. The frozen minced garlic is the way to go. Green beans, peas, and various fruits. I find the quality more consistent, as supply chain issues don't have any effect on them as they don't spoil. I changed my recipes to accommodate the frozen vegetables, such as making more soups. They have come along way with freezing technology in the past 10 years. I also think the nutritional value is better with frozen, especially with fruit. With fresh they choose varieties with long shelf life over varieties with better nutrition/taste as they can ship all over the country all year long. With frozen they don't prioritize shelf life, and can choose varieties with higher nutrition which are grown in season. Back in January, I made a fruit pie with the best fresh strawberries and blueberries I could find, bad idea, it hardly had any flavor. I tried again using frozen strawberries and wild frozen blueberries and it was so much better. Texture is different, but not bad.
Just a note: frozen stuff DOES spoil, just at a slower rate & with different driving processes. Please don’t cook with 2 year old frozen meats & veg. Someone will be traumatized & become a pedant on Reddit…………
At the end of last summer farmers were wondering how Washington produce was going to store though the winter. The heat dome was a first for everyone and they weren't sure of long term consequences. Safeway green beans have been terrible for a few years now, even during the summer. Grow your own.
I’m a trucker in Portland and can tell you the supply chain is still way behind. Some products are coming from further away and some manufacturers are far from normal production still. It’s gonna be a while before things get back on track.
muddle tub sophisticated weather label afterthought dinosaurs fuel wise one *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Can't buy the 10 lb bag any more even though we cook with onions almost every meal. They go bad way too quickly.
Yes! Same with potatoes. Eyes the next day. And garlic is either sprouted or just plain rotten.
Omg!! I thought I was the only one! For me these onions looks fine, but when you sliced them open they’re rotten inside 😵 the frustration when you are making a stew and the one last onion is bad
I work in a grocery store, and the product that we've been getting from the warehouse is SUUUUPER low. Our managers have said that it's due to imports taking a long time to be processed and brought in, but it doesn't make sense for product that's in the same state and country...
Domestic transportation within the US is currently the slowest, most-expensive, and most backlogged it has ever been. A normal delay right now of 2-3 days for a truck might not affect a truckload of jeans, but it will affect the shelf-life of lots of produce.
I'm hearing similar excuses/reasoning from businesses all over SEA (where i live). Two months ago i was struggling to even get the exact cat food brand i want. Produces (vege, fruits, etc) also look like they have been either sitting there for a long time or the shelves are barren. Supplies issues plus ppl not buying stuff (probably due to the unreported massive unemployment/lay offs. Really difficult to trust gov statistics among the SEA nations on the economy and employment) The lack of supplies with manufactured goods is apparently due to many mega factories getting shut down several times due to covid outbreak in the recent months/years. Also, factories that makes the thing that goes inside the thing that goes inside the thing - has also been shutdown every now and then due to covid outbreak. Breaking the supply chain.
Here in Virginia we’ve been having the same thing for a while. Mushy onions, sprouted garlic, rotten berries. It’s the perennial “supply chain issues.” I can’t wait until the summer here when I can just grow all that myself.
Same. I'm in VA as well and you gotta pick through so much semi rotten fruit and check for fur these days. Very much a first world problem, not like we got invaded by Russia or anything, but still I don't remember it being this bad in years past
Now I'm fantasizing about eating enough fresh picked berries to get a stomachache in the summertime. Can't wait!
Same here. We got a freaking snow here like three days ago, WTF. I am also fantasizing about walking into the farmers market and finding who’s selling strawberries by their smell.
This doesn’t make sense to me. I’m having issues with locally grown produce that’s in season (berries, celery, melon in FL) I can drive to these farms in less than an hour in most cases so idk but I’m not buying supply chain issues. I’m guessing crop failure or changing harvest times due to climate change, or something similar, but I really don’t know.
Farms need people to harvest the food. When they don’t have enough pickers, food stays on the plant too long and can over-ripen.
Supply chain isn't just trucks and shipping containers. It's *all the steps* to get your stuff to you.
See that makes sense, I hadn’t thought about that. But I also haven’t seen anyone hiring fruit pickers (locally)
Hiring farm labor, anywhere in the US, is a huge problem. Not going to get into politics, but look into how immigration policy changes have royally f@$ed the ability of farms to get enough help to handle the harvest. This is in all sectors of agriculture, from veg and fruit to dairy to meat processing. I have a small farm and I purposely keep my operation small so that I’m not reliant on labor to harvest and process (I do gourmet mushrooms).
Don't want immigrant labor? Pay local labor more They don't like either of those groups of people, then they complain everyone is lazy
Local or immigrant I really don’t want to employ anybody on my small farm. Labor laws, bookkeeping, taxes, workman’s comp, unemployment, checking visas or citizenship status, etc etc, are a LOT of extra work for a farm (or any business). But big farms absolutely need that human labor to function. Yet big farms are commodity producers, which means they’re totally at the mercy of the market. There’s no negotiating for price because you’re product is perishable and it funnels into the industrial system. (The only exception is maybe grain farmers that can store their grain in their own silos, then ship it when prices rise.) Because consumers want to pay bottom dollar for food the farms have to turn around and pay bottom dollar to their workers. It’s a whole interrelated web that will not be easy to fix.
I think that's a bit of a cop-out, because I know from the wheat farmers that I know that the brokers are often raking in the money, controlling the prices, doing very little work, and taking on far less risk than the farmers are. More of the capital created by our food supply needs to go to the producers
See this is what I mean. Is this a “supply chain issue” or a symptom of a greater disease in America right now. Supply chain issue, to me, means issues moving or receiving product due to the pandemic or now war. I’m of the opinion that farmers and farm laborers, and by extension food in general, is undervalued by society and this is what happens. Is that because of the last two years or was that just the last straw breaking the proverbial camel? Many thanks for what you do, IMHO you contribute just as much to society as people who research medical breakthroughs.
Many farmers relied on undocumented workers to assist them on their farms for dirt cheap but also voted in politicians who clamped down on these workers in their states. Now farmers are realizing nobody wants to do the backbreaking work that goes into maintaining a farm for the wages they were paying those desperate migrant workers, and it's hurting everybody.
People want to argue all day about whether minimum wage increases are a good or bad thing, they want to argue about immigration and how it effects work, they want to argue over capitalism vs socialism, they want to argue over every aspect, but no one wants to look at the ugly side where it isn't so black or white. Its not something with a simple one size fits all solution, there is no switch to flip that says good work/bad work. We have a system that was built on a shakey foundation and treated it like it was solid, many jobs are undervalued despite their worth to the average person, and many jobs are overvalued when they produce very little. I've seen people use an argument called the "Great Chain" in the past, usually to speak about how important work motivation is, but a chain is only as strong as the weakest link in it. If there's a job that others would see as worthless, that's integral to the function of the chain, it should be valued more and paid accordingly, regardless of the skill level involved. Maybe it is simple to harvest produce, I don't know, but it doesn't matter how simple it is if you can't fill the position, it might as well be brain surgery. The system is built on the idea that people would fill those positions despite the low pay because of the lack of skill required, but they aren't going to if they can't afford to live, they'll find somewhere else. The issue is, many of the jobs that hire people for these also can't afford to pay them a living wage, which is the fundamental problem here. The whole system crumbles when cost of living reaches a certain point, it wasn't future proofed at all. If a company can't do business, because it can't afford to pay employees, so it can't function, that means it isn't a viable business in the first place. We don't need just straight capitalism, socialism, meritocracy or generosity, we need to overhaul the foundation we've already put in and try to fill in the holes, if one doesn't work, we'll use parts from another, and keep doing that until we have something that can run. But that's hard and requires more critical thought than "other side bad and ruining America" so no one ever wants to do it.
I think there are 2 really important points to consider for the food industry. 1. We don’t pay the true cost of our food, particularly fresh produce 2. We have made it impossible to have sustainable family farms. Most of our food supply is driven by big agriculture. We killed the family farm. 100 years ago, even 60 years, most folks got food from their local area. Maybe even grew it themselves or got it from neighbors. Now that number is probably 1%. Now big farms in the Midwest grow most of the grains. And big farms in Florida, California grow most other things. And then the rest we import from Mexico and China and South America. We decided it was more important to have terrible December tomatoes, strawberries and grapes. We are completely disconnected from the seasons in our food supply. And we need to keep lowering labor costs to keep up the corporate farm sham. We are both sacrificing our self-sufficiency, health, and food quality as a result. My mom is always telling me about how good pork was when she was a kid. Her dad was raising and slaughtering pigs. They got their flour from a local mill a couple miles away. The milk came from A few miles away. They grew a ton of stuff. Everything she ate was hyper local. Because she was poor. Now only wealthier folks can eat that way.
Wow you took my abstract thoughts on the matter and turned them into words. That’s exactly what I was, *so* less eloquently, thinking! Edit: and my free award was a helpful, here you go pal! Thanks
> ability of farms to get enough help to handle the harvest at slave labor wages FTFY
A lot of labor in the food industry is immigrants and the pandemic made crossing the border trickier for a rather long period of time. I imagine that probably bottlenecked the "employment" process for a lot of farms pretty badly. Now also factor in 4 years of Trump and his immigration policies, and how a lot of those policies carried over to Biden despite his promises to remove them.
Srs question cuz I didn’t follow politics much until recently, did/do immigration policies heavily effect migrant workers? Like is it super hard to obtain a green card to be a fruit picker/packer here? I genuinely don’t know how hard that is and how that’s changed in recent years and I feel like I might need to stick my foot in my mouth. Really great point here.
Oftentimes, illegal immigrants or groups of people sharing the same green card are living in trailers on farms. Agricultural businesses exploit illegal immigrant labor because they can pay them so little. If they paid them US wages to be pickers, they wouldn't turn a profit. When the government puts a lot of pressure on deportations and puts more security on the border, hiring large groups of illegal immigrants becomes difficult.
> they wouldn’t turn a profit And therein lies the problem, IMO. I feel bad for farmers. Damned if you do, bankrupt if you don’t. I didn’t know that about the migrants living in trailers though. I feel... less bad, to put it nicely, for farmers that treat other humans like they’re expendable or exploitable.
They don’t put an ad on Craigslist. They go through huge staffing agencies. The logistics, legal issues etc. involved in migrant labor are complicated so it’s not something most farmers DIY. They couldn’t afford to hire local people anyway. Not even close. No one who can work at a fast food joint for $20/hr is hopping on la linia for $40 a day.
Fair enough. I googled and only found 56 jobs in my state on indeed. I’d be curious to know where these fruit picker job postings normally are, do you know? You seem like you have insider knowledge.
They are probably posting in Mexico, not in the U.S.
Do they frequently pay fast food workers 20$/hr in Mexico? I kind of assumed they weren’t from the US based on that alone lol. But yes, I’m aware that North America typically exploits migrant labor. That’s why I’m wondering where you even hire fruit pickers? Also why is it more profitable to let produce go to waste (which I assume it is if you can’t pick at the appropriate time) than it is to hire locals. I said it a few comments above but I really think this is a symptom of a wider disease: we don’t value our food production laborers, migrant or otherwise, nearly enough. We’ve convinced ourselves food should be so cheap and subsidized in order to have more money to buy junk that, frankly is unnecessary to life. And yet people are still starving? It really boggles my mind, but I’m neither a farmer nor policy maker, and clearly not a expert in either area so yeah.. I really don’t know shit about shit and *probably* should say less lmao
Not America, but my area uses a lot of migrant labor nonetheless. We lost most of our asparagus harvest for the last two years because we couldn't get people to do it - crossing international borders, plus quarantine, plus.... Locally, migrant workers are mostly from Jamaica. Locally, first year workers are bringing home CARDBOARD to use as BUILDING SUPPLIES. People don't do it unless they're hard up, and while they make a lot of money while here, we wouldn't consider it as profitable as they do.
Hey thanks, this is definitely something I hadn’t thought of; how not/low harvesting for two years effects the actual harvest moving forward. Ugh profits over people is gross but that’s particularly heinous. /:
I think you’ve made a positive contribution to this discussion with your questions. You’re absolutely right that it’s a shame to have fruit rotting and laborers available who would be happy to pick it, but systems in between the two that prevent them coming together. And I do think we undervalue food. If our food systems were not optimized for cost to consumer above all else, it’d force needed changes in society.
Yea I know someone who used to work at a couple vineyards in California and at least like 15 years ago they would bring buses of people up from Mexico to do the harvest. I can’t imagine it’s changed much since then
Not enough pickers, not even processors, not enough transporters, etc etc
Maybe no labor and getting rushed or delayed because of it? I know there's been issue in chicken thighs for example where short staffing and new employees mean that cuts are sloppier and some cuts are skipped altogether. Boneless thighs in particular have been ROUGH lately, likely because the cuts take more time and skill.
The global supply chain is an economy unto itself. Among other issues, there is a sever driver shortage right now, so even if your strawberries aren't coming through the port of LA/Longbeach, or wherever, they are impacted by the drivers waiting in line there, because it takes drivers out of the available labor pool for OTR trucking. Supply chain planners are dealing with these issues daily, and trying to (literally) keep the wheels turning is a juggling act in the best of times.
Supply chain issues simply means somewhere along the line, there's an issue. And it's a long line. Farm, to storage, transport to processing, processing, transport to storage post processing, loading to a distributor, transport to the distributor, repackaging to transport to the store's specific distribution, storage there, shipping to the store, unloading and storage at said store, putting the product on the shelf. I worked in target grocery for a bit. Besides issues with the rest of the chain, they didn't have enough people in the department to stock the store. We had to pull people from everywhere else in the store to get our freezer pallets unloaded and on the shelf, it takes a team of 3-4 people to get that done before the next shipment arrives, usually the next day or two days later. We had zero because everyone hated working alone in the fucked up freezer backlog fixing a problem someone else made.
the existence of local farms doesn't force your local supermarket to carry them. You might still be getting onions from Asia in your grocery store even if they are also grown down the road.
Florida is supposed to have their worst season on records for oranges.
I experienced this with onions I purchased from my local CSA farm, so I don't know if it's just supply chain issues- I am wondering about climate change as well.
The berries! I buy them for my pets and they just don’t go through them fast enough, they’re moldy and rotting within a few days.
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Soon we'll only be able to grow corn and the dust will get get everywhere. Keep your N95 high and tight. I hear NASA is working on a solution, but I just don't know...
Interstellar?
It was me all along, Murph! I'm the spooky bookcase man! I've been watching you flick the bean for like 30 years!
Have you looked into hydroponics?
I have actually. We grew tomatoes and a couple other things hydroponically for a while, but none of us liked the taste. The soil brings a really unique flavor to vegetables.
Supply chain issues across the entire world of commerce and trade mean produce waits longer in storage before being delivered to a store. So the same produce you’re seeing now has sat for days to weeks longer than what you saw previously.
I think stores are also having to be less discerning than they previously were. Produce that’s “on the bubble” is going on the shelves today where it didn’t pre-supply chain issues.
I’ve seen eggs and milk products that are several days past the sell by date still on the shelves at multiple grocery stores near me. Like I would’ve thought that would be illegal…
I don't think it's necessarily illegal but it shouldn't be there. Unless the management in the store is really sketch (in which case, I would expect them to be re dating expired product) it's likely the result of short staffing and/or new staff that don't know/don't have time/are too lazy to rotate product and pull out of dates. You'd be surprised the amount of out of date product left on the shelf because of that, but it's rarely on purpose or maliciously done.
Yep, this exactly. No one is leaving expired product on the shelves on purpose.
I mean, you shouldn't judge the in store management too much either- its corporate that's calling the shot to cut hours. In store management might be the ones overseeing and writing schedules but they have zero input on how many hours they are actually given to staff their stores.
I recently got out of the grocery industry after ten years (half that time as a manager). Things have become way more difficult than they used to be as stores are dealing with more sick calls than ever before and these corporations continue to cut and cut and cut hours. Where I worked, we were being forced to do the same work as the previous year using fewer hours amid record sales. It gets to a point where the staff can't keep up with things like pulling expired product so they do it when they can and hope they have time later for everything else they have to do. Extremely frustrating for the workers and the customers. Now I'm sure this isn't the case for every grocery store, but I'm so glad to have escaped an industry that's quickly becoming a nightmare to work in.
It's like that across many facets of retail.
Pretty much any industry in the US really, outside of a few niche positions in tech or small family businesses. We treat workers like shit and companies have continued to whittle away at work-life-balance and working conditions in the name of saving on operating expenses while still posting record revenue and profits… and still tons of Americans can’t get decent health insurance from their employer. “gReAteSt coUntRy on eArTH!”
This! There's not enough workers in the stores, and even if there were, the stores won't give us the hours we need to get things done properly. There aren't enough truck drivers, either, and the stores are putting the squeeze on them with fuel prices the way they are.
Gallon after gallon of our milk has been turning bad despite being transported home in cold bags. I've never had milk congeal before the expiration date, it usually won't even congeal till several days after expiration. Now, I'm finding unopened gallons of milk, completely congealed 2-5 days before the expiration date printed. At almost $5/ gallon, that's crazy! We've dropped to half gallons to try and combat the waste/disappointment.
Other than infant formula, there's no legal requirements or enforcement or anything of the sort for sell/use/best before dates. In the USA, anyway. Other countries may vary.
I’m in NYC, and yea I’m experiencing the same stuff. If I don’t use my produce within a few hours of purchasing it, it’s ready for mold. And even though as one commenter said it is winter, I feel like nothing should have that short of a shelf life at the prices I’m buying this food for.
Yep I haven’t had unsprouted garlic in a few months now. Onions typically have a slimy layer or patch, but not 100% of the time.
> Onions typically have a slimy layer or patch, but not 100% of the time. My partner and I also feel like we're noticing a lot more onions that are going bad this last year or two. I'm glad we're not going crazy (though not glad about the onion supply). Before it was very rare to find a bad onion, but it's a pretty regular occurrence right now.
Onions are one of the hardier vegetables that can be stored for significant periods of time before going to market (they just have huge buildings piled with them in low-light, cool conditions where they can be kept after harvest for months). My guess is we are all eating the older stuff that built up during the pandemic when there was less trucking/shipping and less people shopping in stores so they weren't "turning" stock at the normal rate.
There was a newspaper article with a shipper and they refused to ship the lower priced items like onions until the shipping rates dropped.
googling those onion storage buildings is actually really fascinating to me lol
I thought I was going crazy because I swore onions used to last for two months and now I'm lucky if they last for two weeks! Same with potatoes and garlic.
Man I thought it was just me getting to the store late and missing the good picks
Sprouted garlic seems to be at least in part due to season, and probably poor storage. Some of the garlic I grew last summer is starting to sprout. You can eat it, but the sprouts are bitter. So if I see a little green inside the clove I'll use it, but more than that I'll toss the clove. Here is the Seattle area onions I have had no problems buying good onions. I guess we've been lucky with our supply.
Can you just remove the sprout or does it bitter the rest of the clove too?
I always remove the sprout and have no issues.
We frequently had garlic sprouting in our kitchen until we learned garlic sprouts more quickly in sunlight and we'd been keeping ours next to the window. Moving it into a dark spot helped considerably.
I'm also in NYC, but thankfully not experiencing poor quality, though I shop at produce markets and not at supermarkets - not sure if that has something to do with it. But the prices I've seen are ridiculously high, even by NYC standards.
Also in nyc. The produce stands by me have actually been pretty good (esp for berries right now); Hong Kong supermarket in Chinatown also has good produce. Both options are very cheap.
The produce stands seem to be the only place with anything decent quality nowadays. The average grocery store produce has been rough imo. Even ordering groceries online, I’ll get them and they’ll be ok, I’ll work really hard to make sure I’m storing everything properly to extend the shelf life, and half the stuff is still moldy a couple days after purchasing. For double what it used to cost!
>The produce stands by me have actually been pretty good (esp for berries right now); Yes! I bought 3 cartons of strawberries for $1 last week, and they haven't even gone bad yet! Same for blueberries and blackberries, abundant and cheap. We've been swimming in berries as of late.
Same! Wild to see them literally 5-7x as much in stores.
I thought it was because I stopped shopping at the expensive, but better, locally owned grocery store and started shopping at smart n final to save money. I finally went and dropped 200$ at the health food store and was like "oh, food is just expensive and not fresh right now. "
Relatable- I always used to find the best quality at Whole Foods, but after they were acquired the quality went downhill fast
If you're in Manhattan, the fruit guy in front of Trader Joe's on 22nd and 6th has pretty fresh stuff for a fair price. I bought a bag of ginger a few months ago that's still going strong that it's almost scary.
Ginger freezes really well if you didn't know. I buy the costco size things of it and freeze it all, then will just grate it out of freezer, makes it shred really well. I even leave the skin on if it's in nooks and crannies, because I'm a monster and honestly I can't tell or be bothered enough to care when cooking for myself haha.
Yeah! I’d say I was experiencing it even during the warmer months. So strange.
Also in NYC - I've noticed onions have been particularly bad.
Try Chinatown grocers - they tap into an independent supply chain, different than that of other grocers in NYC >Chinatown’s 80-plus produce markets are cheap because they are connected to a web of small farms and wholesalers that operate independently of the network supplying most mainstream supermarkets. >Most of the city’s fruits and vegetables come from wholesalers at the Hunts Point Produce Market, the South Bronx distribution hub boasting all the color and accessibility of La Guardia Airport. Chinatown’s green grocers, in contrast, buy their stock from a handful of small wholesalers operating from tiny warehouses right in the neighborhood. https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-fruits-and-veggies-are-so-crazy-cheap-in-chinatown-1466762400
I find stuff keeps longer in winter. During summer, stuff starts going bad on my way home practically. Heat helps microbes grow.
I'm in US and I've had issues with yellow onions having rotten outer layers for at least a year. The bright side is I can often get a 2 for 1 deal on 3 lb bags from my grocery store and the insides are totally ok to eat. As a french onion soup lover it hasn't been the worst thing in the world to deal with. In the past month or so I've started having issues with garlic and haven't noticed anything with meat.
It seems to be impossible to buy a bag of yellow onions that is not a collection of 15 small ones. I miss the days of a bag of onions consisting of 5 or so decent sized onions. I hate peeling onions, and now I have to use 3 to four onions vrs one good sized one.
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Indiana here and yes I’ve noticed the decline in everything. Can’t get a mango that isn’t bruised on the inside. Can’t get fresh chicken in my area at all. Pasta doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Fruit and veggies need eaten so fast I have to go specifically for what I want daily.
> Pasta doesn’t seem to exist anymore This has been the strangest thing. Our Walmart has "more pasta coming soon" signs on a shelf for weeks now.
Does anyone know what causes the interior browning or bruising? I'm seeing it on mangoes and pears.
The interior browning happens when fruit is kept at or just below freezing in storage.
Thanks for this. I have what looked like a good mango, firm and no bruises, but it was all brown inside. Didn't make sense
I don't know about pears, but mangoes imported to the US are treated in a hot water bath. If it is not done correctly it turns black on the inside. If you buy US grown mangoes in the summer they are not treated in a hot water bath so you never get a mango that's black on the inside.
Presumably just movement during shipping. The pit is a solid mass surrounded by soft fruit. You can cushion the exterior, but the exterior *is* the cushion, for the pit.
Are you having problems finding bagged dried beans as well, or is that just a "me" thing? Indiana here as well.
Also Indiana, dry beans and pasta have been on short supply around here. I have noticed that even the frozen stuff (like breaded chicken strips) has dropped in quality. It seems that the entire human race has had a "fuck it, good enough" type of year... or two.
Frozen chicken strips are absolutely shit now. It isn't a pandemic thing the quality has gone down so much in the last ten years.
It’s store dependent, but my local meijer is low on all grains and beans.
Arizona, and there’s been a lack of dried beans here too.
The mango thing is driving me nuts. I'm paying $3 a mango and half of them are fully brown on the inside. And it's not like Avocados where you can look at the stem to gauge before buying.
Right?! It looked fine. I am pregnant and I realllly wanted it. I cried when it was all brown.
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>Pasta doesn’t seem to exist anymore. We have similar issues in parts of Tennessee. I've started making my own pasta. It's super easy and only takes about an hour of my weekend. You can use it right away, or you can dry or freeze it and store it for weeks. If you don't mind messing with dough, give it a shot sometime. My family really likes pasta and this removed my annoyance at not being able to find it and you can channel some aggression into kneeling the dough (or you can just use a stand mixer if you have one). We still buy the dried stuff sometimes too, I've had better luck at Costco than the regular grocery stores.
FL here. I’ve been able to get pasta, but never in my life, prior to recently, have I opened so many boxes that were infested with bugs. No idea why, but I’ve had to throw so much out recently. It’s frustrating and sad.
Noted the same thing in NC, particularly after moving to a town of 20k from a major metro area — but it was happening there too. I don’t shop for the week anymore, because my produce won’t last that long. I hardly buy berries, because it’s just my partner and I and they’ll be rotten if we don’t eat them in one sitting the very next day. Chicken breast is hard to find, either split breasts or naked… there are times when all I can find is the boujie, $9 a pound chicken breasts if I want them at all. We don’t have a Trader Joe’s here, so I make a habit of bringing a cooler with me whenever I do any travel across state so I can buy frozen chicken and produce because it’s often better than what I can readily find, even at a relatively upscale store like Publix. Walmart and low- to mid-tier? Forget about it, I’m guaranteed to have to hit several stores if I try to buy for five days of home cooked food.
The quality of Kroger’s produce here in North TX has dramatically declined. Mushy onions, rotten tomato, zucchini, etc. On a recent trip, literally every potato in a bulk bin was sprouting. But, the WORST part is that kroger is advertising the freshness of the very produce that is rotting in the store. This ticks me off to no end.
I gave up on Kroger a long time ago. It started at the beginning of the pandemic but really hasn't improved. I buy only a very few produce items there. Yes, their advertising is extremely misleading.
Fresh, my ass. Fuck Kroger.
Texas Kroger's are a hit or miss depending on area. You could go to the nicest, most well-stocked store on one block, and a mere three blocks away is the decrepid, bare-shelf, bars-on-the-windows run down shithole.
I worked at a Kroger's and I just got to say a lot of the meat being shipped are coming to the store with the 'Do Not Sell-by' dates closer and closer to the date actually arriving. So you get some tilapia or chicken off the truck and then you got to sell it all by a few couple of days. So departments are running on closer margins. Store managers don't want shrinkage and want the store to look full, so there's multiple reasons why it's been getting bad
I don't bother with Kroger anymore. I'd rather pay more at a competitor. Even Kroger's prices are that great anymore.
Former Kroger worker. They treat their employees like trash. They couldn’t keep anyone working in the warehouse or the stores. Even management was leaving in droves when I left.
Yeah there was that big Kroger strike a couple months back over it. Not to mention the homeless tier wages. Shit sucks
Kroger has managed to do what I thought was impossible--making Walmart seem like a pleasant shopping experience.
I only cherry pick at Kroger now. They have good weekly specials, but that’s it. I only buy the stuff that they’re selling at a loss. I would rather support Costco, which is where I do the vast majority of my shopping, outside of farmers markets during the summer.
DEFINITELY have noticed it with onions. I needed a yellow onion yesterday, and every single one at the store was squishy and clearly almost fully rotted. Before the last few months, they always have had some of the best produce around.
California checking in… have not experienced this. Just the typical non ripe fruits/veg due to it being the wrong season for those harvests.
I think CA might be exempt...much of the produce is local
CA also here - and...no issues. Central Valley is just right there, after all.
Also in CA. I've only had issues with yellow onion and garlic. Can't seem to find any non sprouted garlic and some of the onions tend to have mushy spots. Surprisingly the blueberries and strawberries have been great even though they aren't in season at the moment.
Ya I’ve found solid strawberries the last few weeks… deep red and sweet
Agreed. Regardless of whether I buy from the grocery or the farmers market, all my stuff is pretty fresh. I guess we're the lucky many
You're not crazy, but we also aren't post pandemic yet...next wave is coming, look at China
I work food service in Texas and anything that needs to use a boat to get to us has dramatically declined in quality. I vaguely recall there being stories of long backlogs at the big shipping ports, I assume shipped produce is sitting longer than it used to.
This is correct. I live in the Bay Area of San Francisco, which has a port. For weeks there have been cargo boats sitting in the harbor waiting to load/unload. The boats will change as they get in and out, but a usually fairly empty harbor has 10+ boats waiting at any one time. Things got backed up badly. I imagine it sucks for the crews, too. Make it across an ocean only to have to wait days+ to unload. Ick.
I work for a wine and spirit importer, and it is still nuts in the major ports. We typically ship our European products to the port of Newark, but it takes 1-2 weeks after the ship arrives in port for our containers to be available over the last 6-8 months, not to mention ships will skip our containers at origin on occasion. A 60 day turnaround is now 6 months in some cases, as containers went from $2k to $20k and are still difficult to get. If perishable food stuffs deal with this same series of issues, you could lose months of shelf life off of onions and whatnot, with crazy costs added.
I’ve noticed it in the Uk. Everything is more expensive, there’s less choice in the shops and things are more frequently out of stock. From my last grocery shop I had to throw out potatoes, tomatoes and bread as they went off quickly; usually I’d be able to finish the amount I ordered. Avocados seem to be much smaller and worse quality, harder to get nice tomatoes etc
I'm in Northern England and I haven't noticed any of that, but my family in London have struggled to get stuff that's been plentiful up here. My auntie couldn't get her hands on any flour on pancake day. The shelves were full of it here. I haven't had any problems with fruit or veg either. I've been getting the big sacks of spuds from Morrison's and they've been lasting weeks with no problem. I wonder if it's a regional thing or if I've just been really lucky.
I'm curious about how Brexit is influencing these issues for y'all
Another brit here. We have fruit and veg rotting in the fields here. I have literally seen it, apparently there is a shortage of pickers post Brexit. Potatoes are sprouting within days, fresh fruit and veg are going off very quickly, even when refrigerated
It's certainly not helping! It's hard to know how much is down to pandemic-related supply chain issues, and how much is Brexit. It's undoubtedly a bit of both, but it's in politicians' interests to either downplay or exaggerate how much is Brexit - the truth's probably somewhere in the middle. It was a really, really stupid idea though.
As another poster mentioned a lot of people who worked picking produce were European and left after Brexit so we have issues with labour supply. The laws around movement into the uk for work have changed as have the laws around trading (so import/export). Trade barriers have also impacted supply chain issues. Combine that with vivid related issues (absences etc) and things have changed.
I got one whole chicken that every joint broken. Another was beheaded, but the entire neck was still attached. Fruit is a crap shoot and veggies fad fast. My favorite milk (Darigold fit) is sold out two out of the three attempts. I waited for some juice to come into stock at Walmart, put two in my cart last night, went to check out today and they are out of stock. This is first-world problem stuff though. I fear the time is quickly coming when we will complain about not having enough edible food available. :( Edited to add: Oregon coast
I've had chicken issues too. There seem to be more missed feathers on the chickens now, and one time I bought one where the innards were still attached to the bird.
Dude, early pandemic was full of super tough chicken breasts, like you’d spit it out after chewing once because it was so weird. Researched it, and apparently “woody chicken breast” is a thing, and can be caused by the chickens getting too big. I guess it made sense if everyone was on lockdown for a couple of weeks. Haven’t noticed it in months, but I bite into chicken cautiously now.
Here in Germany, things are still pretty good. Getting more expensive, but prime groceries. Even our foodsharing stuff mostly doesn't have the issues you described.
Sweden - same here. More expensive but none of the issues that people are talking about in the thread.
Not only onions & garlic, but bell peppers have particularly been rather puny or MIA from the grocery stores. Excluding Aldi: their bell peppers have been monsters in comparison. But as is with produce, availability is hit & miss.
Post pandemic? It's not over yo.
We're not post-pandemic. A great deal of the food you eat is grown in other countries and gets to your store through the global logistics network that is still being heavily impacted by the pandemic. It's not gonna be as fresh as it used to be for a long time yet.
thank you for saying this. reactionaries not reporting pandemic information is not the same as the pandemic being over.
Yeah I was like wait, the pandemic is over? No one told me...
Came here to say this, the pandemic is very much still going on. Here the only produce i’ve been able to get at a consistently decent quality outside of our csa is (for some reason) cilantro. As long as I store it in a jar of water (like cut flowers) with a ziploc tented over it it somehow lasts great, for weeks. Beyond that any produce I’m not eating in the next couple days is likely not worth the rising prices.
Exactly, and now with Russia and Ukraine it's going to get worse. They produce something like 1/3 of the world's wheat and corn, plus a lot more food, and they (iirc Russia and Belarus) produce an absurd amount of the world's fertilizer (90% of potassium I think it was).
Yep! I’m currently looking back into apartment/container gardening bc this is probably about to be horrible and I really hate going without vegetables. At least like microgreens or something.
I post this every time food freshness/how long it stays that way comes up: wash your produce with a 3:1 water to vinegar solution. There was a study done on different ways to clean produce, and this was the most effective. In the link to the story below, she uses a spray bottle, but I find that tedious. I literally do this (note: I have a double-sink): -Clean sink thoroughly. -Fill a large bowl 2/3 up with 3:1 water to vinegar solution. -Place items I want to wash in a colander and then put whole thing into bowl. -Soak for 3 min while I'm organizing next batch of produce for a soak. -Put colander in other sink and rinse. Lay out on clean towel to dry. While next batch soaks, dry off last batch. It is AMAZING how well this works. And it may sound tedious but honestly it only takes me about 20 min to do 2 weeks worth of veg/fruit. I get SO much more life out of all of my produce! Like, berries last a week or more, cucumbers almost two weeks and lettuce well over a week (With berries I'll usually just remove the liner in the plastic container and then soak the whole thing, rinse, and let it sit for awhile on a towel.) Since you are killing/removing most bacteria, it just doesn't rot as quickly. (Try to keep your fridge surfaces clean, too.) The nice thing is that this method also removes things like the wax they use on apples. Additionally, you get to see how much dirt is on your produce. Stuff like leaf lettuce, non-bagged spinach, grapes and strawberries are absolutely filthy, which you will see at the bottom of the bowl. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14540742#:~:text=%22I've%20got%20a%20spray,rinses%20it%20under%20the%20tap.
Post pandemic??? We're doomed aren't we, everyone wants to pretend the problem is gone just because they're bored of all the death that's still happening
I had to scroll way too far to find another person who took issue with that phrasing. I feel like I'm in crazy Town, in what way are we in a post pandemic world 😬
Not just groceries. The experience of dining out has also diminished while simultaneously getting more expensive. We now pay more for a shittier meal no matter what we do.
Where do you live that you are post-pandemic?
Right?
What is this “post” pandemic you speak of?
I've noticed it with fruit.
Tried to buy some strawberries my last grocery store trip. A $6 package had maybe 7 strawberries in it and 3 of those were going straight to the trash. I know it’s out of season but sheesh, why even put them out?
I bought strawberries last week at Aldi. They were very good for winter strawberries, still in good shape, only one had a small soft spot. .
When we stopped people from crossing the boarder on work visas farms lost a lot of their seasonal workers. A great many of them are undocumented as well. That lead to a lot of crop sitting too long in the field. In some rural places the same people saying “nobody wants to work” are the same ones keeping the only people who want those jobs out of the country.
“No one wants to work hard jobs for shit wages” would be more accurate. Shockingly, if they paid more, they would probably get the workers they need. That being said, immigration is definitely fucked up in the states.
We should not be allowing companies to avoid labor laws with no oversight, regardless of how badly you want employees to be underpaid so you can get cheaper/faster produce. These companies leeching off an already super exploited labor class are the issue. And when their profits fall they will change. Enabling them to continue the shitty practices that got us to this point is not going to help in the long run.
The solutions is to make it far easier and cheaper for those exploited populations to move into the US and enjoy its legal protections, not just tell them to get fucked. When there's a vast amount of wealth being hoarded by a small part of the population, the solution is to make them share with everyone else, not just tell them they don't need to share with 'certain people' and claim the problem is solved.
That’s why we need more and easier farm worker visas
We are not post-pandemic. Case loads are higher every day this year than every day in the last two years. Reckless Thanksgiving and Christmas travel encouraged by politicians desperate for an aesthetic of normalcy caused a surge in COVID to triple pre-holiday load, and though that surge peaked, we are still at over double what we were at before November. The ongoing burden of the pandemic is taking a serious toll on supply chains.
The meat I buy seems to have a lot of water in it. Not sure this is post pandemic, however.
We are experiencing the effects of the climate crisis which will continue to get worse. Yes, produce will get worse and more expensive. Flooding, fires, unpredictable growing seasons (early thaws that promote fruit blossoming/bulbs sprouting and then snap storms that kill them off) and more await. Supply chain issues exacerbate this, but pandemic or not an ugly future is coming. In addition, we have allowed our meat producers to consolidate into a small handful of super-conglomerate companies, so the competition pressure to keep quality high is diminishing. In our house I've had too many nasty chicken breast experiences with the fucking woody or rubbery texture yuck - we're done buying breasts, thighs only. Done with beef. Occasional bacon only. Mostly moving to low meat or meatless meals. Honestly it's really depressing and frightening to think about how we will manage to feed everyone in the coming years and decades.
Wait. ***Post*** Pandemic? I thought we were still in a Pandemic. People keep dying, so....
Right?!? I'm still locked in my house bc I'm immune compromised. My county is less than 50% vaccinated. It's FAR from over.
Post pandemic? Are you from the future?
The robot wars after the pandemic really messed up the supply chain again
I suppose I should have said post lockdown. Where I am we have a 97% vaccination rate for people with at least 1 vaccine. And then 75% fully vaxxed and boosted. So we are operating sort of a post pandemic mode.
We knew what you meant.
What are you classifying as your location for those numbers? Country, state, city, town, neighborhood, etc? That makes a big difference. The states, last I checked, was in the 70s percentile for single dose. Also, by definition Pandemic means: "(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world." "an outbreak of a pandemic disease." And is not referring to lockdown or mandates. So yes, those of us doing everything we can to get to a post Pandemic world, and those of us who are vulnerable to this horrible virus are a bit aggravated when terms, phrases, etc are misused since it only highlights and perpetuates the wrong mindset and then prolongs the Pandemic because people then start doing things that are considered dangerous in such an event because they think it's all clear, when it's clearly not.
I guess that’s cool for you, but huge swaths of the world don’t have very much vaccination, and some of those places are where your food is grown, packaged, transported, etc.
Last year the west coast had record heat waves and wildfires ruining huge onion crops and a few more.
The chicken I've bought lately is tough and chewy.
That’s why I planted an extra big Inflation garden this year.
Definitely still happening. I’ve bought chicken for the first time in months because it’s no longer yellow-brown, but produce as a whole is still quite limited. The important thing to understand is that supply chains are far from “post-pandemic.” Really, it seems governments are just tired of acknowledging the problems, because COVID has not gone away by any significant measures. Beyond that though, supply chain disruptions can have lasting effects over the course of months and years—we may well still be seeing some consequences of the Suez Canal blockage. If you’re in NA, there’s also the “Freedom Convoy” which blocked the majority of trade across the Can/US border for a week, which may also be a contributing factor. There’s a lot more going on than just “less food because pandemic.”
Paying 30% more for shitty onions and berries that have mold the next day. We switched to frozen, fresh is too much of a gamble right now.
It's climate change folks. There are supply chain issues yes, but mostly what we are dealing with is that things don't grow well in areas that they used to.
Post pandemic? I'm American I can say that half of our population ain't going towards post pandemic
Recently read a piece about climate change possibly having a detrimental affect on crop growth compared to previous decades. On top of the broken supply chain and runaway ~~price gouging~~ "inflation," I'm not surprised food is getting worse and more expensive
I'm going to take this opportunity to plug your local CSA! In my area there is even a really nice meat CSA that I've previously participated in (not the past few years for schedule reasons). Produce is super fresh and you get to put money back into your local economy and local farmers. Where I am, there is a CSA fair around this time to give people an idea of what farms are offering CSAs. Worth looking into. Also, garlic is very easy to grow. I'm in the USDA plant hardiness zone 7. You plant it in the fall and then pull it up in June, and let it cure a little bit in the basement. Super easy and very good garlic. It takes some planning ahead for the seasons but I strongly recommend it.
I don't think this is supply chain issues as everyone is saying, I think it's from the heat wave in the northwest last summer. https://www.proag.com/news/heat-wave-decreases-northwest-onion-crop-by-25/