There was an article on Greece in my newspaper. Greek farmers drown in potatoes. Big buyers offer 10 cent a kilo and sell it at 80 cents themselves. They can buy potatoes cheap in other countries... Now a system is being set up which is growing in size everyday where the farmers sell their potatoes to the people themselves for 23 cents. Who wins, who loses?
No idea about this plan but it does require local distribution infrastructure at the least. Buy local and all of that .... if it happened on a big scale with food, people might have more money available to buy other stuff, so it could be good for the economy.
I think the article is saying that the conventional routes of trade are failing and new ones or old ones forgotten are being adopted again. Anyway it is good they are dynamic.
I would say that you want distribution network that is big enough to capture benefits from economy of scale. That benefit should be weighed against the monopolistic power incumbents hold, balance out these two. The fact that this kind of small scale distribution, that is mentioned here, is gaining grounds shows how bad things are in Greece. Monopoly and economic rents are choking the economy to death. My impression is that this kind of thing is prevalent for all production in Greece, from commodities to workers.
I tend to agree but it is strange.... Farmers going out of business and letting their crops rot because of foreign low cost imports means times are good and farmers getting to sell their products at double the price they would get from the large chains means times are bad.
âCutting out the middle manâ is a brake trough just like any technological advance. The middle man came to existence because there was a vast distance between the consumer and the producer. The modern age (electronic, internet, ) has shrank such barrier and we are experiencing less business for the middle man.
http://blogs.wsj.com/eurocrisis/201...root-as-recession-bites/?mod=google_news_blog Customers queue to buy cheap sacks of potatoes sold directly by farmers at cost price in the northern Greek town of Thessaloniki on March 2.