no joke food prices have been so high in brazil like a bottle of soybean oil was costing like 25 brazillian bucks earlier this year (used to be 12 brazilian bucks before the pandemic) and we produce so much of this stuff like literally destroying the amazon so rich fuckers can plant soy there and we can't even get normal priced soy products here
In South Africa sunflower oil is now more expensive than coconut oil because of the Ukraine war and how fucked global capitalism is. We have plenty of sunflower farms in SA, it's our third largest crop by yeild, and coconuts only really grow in tropical costal areas of the country, but then the prices end up the way they are. Also can't get normal priced sunflower oil despite producing a ton of it.
IT FUCKIN SUCKS SO MUCH people keep saying "but you see the problem is that the economy is not good and it is more profitable for the big farmers to export as they will be payed in dollar" AS IF I CARE ABOUT THE BIG FARMERS (and also the ammount of farm subsidies brazil has means a single big city pays more taxes than the whole farming sector so i am kinda paying for these dudes to profit real cool stuff)
really good system of resource allocation for sure!
the Agriculture lobby is really powerful here and they always repeat "WE FEED THE COUNTRY" as their main argument to their importance and it is so frustrating like they don't The Rural Landless Worker Movemente, it is called MST - basically actual farmers that grow crops that occupy farming land from Big farmers that have not been used (the brazilian constitution has some stuff about the social value of land that means that both urban and rural land can be occupied and given to the people using it as long as it has been abandoned for like 10 - 5 years depending if it is a rural or a urban space, it gets really complicated if i go further than this into how this works) and other smaller producers are who feed us like it is a lie they destroy the rainforest so they can do more meat and more soy and we don't even get to eat it, like rural land reforms are just such a fucking needed thing in this country and it just can't happen because they are so powerful, like Lula was a big Land reform guy but it just will not happen politically he had approval ratings in the 80% and he couldn't do it
In South Africa sunflower oil is now more expensive than coconut oil
mayos also sharted out buckets of propaganda in the 1960s against saturated fat, because the industrial seed oil manufacturers were out of a job after WW2 (the oils were used for war machines). The secondary reason being that you can't grow coconuts in the US, apart from Florida (a lot of snack foods from before the 1950s used coconut oil by default, before the war messed up trade).
some of this was partially true (too much butter/animal fat is bad for you), but much of it was utterly false (like falsely equating butterfat with ALL saturated fats), when it's been shown that coconut oil is not equivalent to butter, and that butter's problems come mainly from its chain length rather than its degree of saturation
I know this is very serious and depressing but the phrase "25 brazilian bucks" took a moment for me to process that Brazilian was not a large number name
no joke food prices have been so high in brazil like a bottle of soybean oil was costing like 25 brazillian bucks earlier this year (used to be 12 brazilian bucks before the pandemic) and we produce so much of this stuff like literally destroying the amazon so rich fuckers can plant soy there and we can't even get normal priced soy products here
In South Africa sunflower oil is now more expensive than coconut oil because of the Ukraine war and how fucked global capitalism is. We have plenty of sunflower farms in SA, it's our third largest crop by yeild, and coconuts only really grow in tropical costal areas of the country, but then the prices end up the way they are. Also can't get normal priced sunflower oil despite producing a ton of it.
Most efficient system everybody!
IT FUCKIN SUCKS SO MUCH people keep saying "but you see the problem is that the economy is not good and it is more profitable for the big farmers to export as they will be payed in dollar" AS IF I CARE ABOUT THE BIG FARMERS (and also the ammount of farm subsidies brazil has means a single big city pays more taxes than the whole farming sector so i am kinda paying for these dudes to profit real cool stuff)
really good system of resource allocation for sure!
Let's go get paid in USD while our people starve, truly the best humanity has to offer!
the Agriculture lobby is really powerful here and they always repeat "WE FEED THE COUNTRY" as their main argument to their importance and it is so frustrating like they don't The Rural Landless Worker Movemente, it is called MST - basically actual farmers that grow crops that occupy farming land from Big farmers that have not been used (the brazilian constitution has some stuff about the social value of land that means that both urban and rural land can be occupied and given to the people using it as long as it has been abandoned for like 10 - 5 years depending if it is a rural or a urban space, it gets really complicated if i go further than this into how this works) and other smaller producers are who feed us like it is a lie they destroy the rainforest so they can do more meat and more soy and we don't even get to eat it, like rural land reforms are just such a fucking needed thing in this country and it just can't happen because they are so powerful, like Lula was a big Land reform guy but it just will not happen politically he had approval ratings in the 80% and he couldn't do it
mayos also sharted out buckets of propaganda in the 1960s against saturated fat, because the industrial seed oil manufacturers were out of a job after WW2 (the oils were used for war machines). The secondary reason being that you can't grow coconuts in the US, apart from Florida (a lot of snack foods from before the 1950s used coconut oil by default, before the war messed up trade).
some of this was partially true (too much butter/animal fat is bad for you), but much of it was utterly false (like falsely equating butterfat with ALL saturated fats), when it's been shown that coconut oil is not equivalent to butter, and that butter's problems come mainly from its chain length rather than its degree of saturation
https://sciworthy.com/is-coconut-oil-really-better-for-you-than-butter/
I know this is very serious and depressing but the phrase "25 brazilian bucks" took a moment for me to process that Brazilian was not a large number name
to be fair that is a pretty funny thing it did not even cross my mind before you said it