Many California growers can’t find buyers as the industry produces more wine grapes than the market wants. Wine consumption is declining globally as people drink less.
It’s harvest time in California wine country, but many growers are struggling to sell their grapes as changing drinking habits have caused demand to plunge. The decline is forcing some growers to tear out vineyards that their families have grown for generations.
Wine sales have decreased by more than 20% over a five-year period, causing prices paid for grapes to drop and prompting California growers to take roughly a quarter of the state’s vineyards out of production. Many growers are having to decide whether to harvest at a loss, leave grapes on the vine or replace vineyards with crops more in demand such as almonds, walnuts, pistachios and olives.
Third-generation grower Bill Berryhill said it means another year of losing money and wasting hundreds of tons of healthy grapes.
The world does not have a shortage of calories. The world has a shortage of getting food to the people who need it, but so so so much food is thrown away. Wine grapes would be incredibly low on the list to try and save. What would help far more is stepping in to help cut down on food waste and increase processes to get food from where it is to the people that do need it.
And fix wealth inequality.
Might have been more true in the past but with wars and droughts and crazy weather, well you can see the effect on food prices.
Except we still have a huge surplus of calories. It would take a LOT more destruction of farms and bad weather for us to actually have a calorie deficit. Wars destroy logistics more than anything else, and logistics are what is needed to get food to hungry people.
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/commodities/articles/jpmorgan-warns-global-food-crisis-183000431.html
https://globalcommunityweekly.substack.com/p/wont-be-short-lived-jpmorgan-warns
https://www.jpmorgan.com/insights/sustainability/climate/food-security-under-pressure
These articles are everywhere. Don’t use the past when when thinking about future conditions.
Every single famine or other food shortage that happens these days is a policy choice. We don’t have to sacrifice to Ceres anymore to ensure a good harvest.
We’ve had mechanized agriculture and on-demand global trade for over a century now.
Even with climate change, food is expensive right now because of things like the War in Ukraine (produces about 20% of the world’s grain and 30% of the world’s sunflower oil) making it difficult to distribute the food that people are still growing in Ukraine.
See my links in other comments.
Food prices are not rising out of scarcity of food.