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4k tons of potatoes to be given away for free in Berlin
- meindnoch 8mo ago>4,000 tons is almost four million kilograms It is exactly four million kilograms. (Germany uses the SI metric ton)
- Aaronmacaron 8mo agoTIL there are two units of measurement that are both called ton but confusingly are not the same as a ton. One is a tiny bit more than a ton (1.016 tons) and one is a bit less (0.907 tons). Apparently people use the prefixes long and short to differentiate them, at least that part is intuitive.
- jojomodding 8mo agoWell, three, the two you mentioned and the metric ton (1000 kg)
- seec 8mo agoPotatoes have low caloric density (80 kcal/100 g), so the ideal would be to dry them and store them in a sustainable form like ready-to-use mash. At 2000 kcal/day average caloric expenditure, you could feed 1.6 million people for a day. Or 3.2 if it was only half the diet. That's a lot of food indeed! The problem is most of the volume/weight is water; that's not very convenient. In comparison, an equivalent volume of cereals would feed 7 million people and are much easier to store long term, they are very efficient !
- amai 8mo ago4000 tons or 4096 tons of potatoes?
- jandhdhshhh 8mo agoGood on them for going through the trouble to make sure they’re not wasted
- atarian 8mo agoHopefully it’s real this time: https://www.vice.com/en/article/viral-free-potatoes-post-cost-this-farmer-150-tons-of-crops/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/viral-free-potatoes-post-cos...
- Aurornis 8mo agoThis is an interesting example of what happens when the supply and demand curve goes into the extreme ends of the chart: The price of "selling" your product goes negative. It costs money to get rid of it. Negative prices occur from time to time in the electricity market because some types of power plants are slow to ramp up and down. So if demand falls too rapidly, spot electricity prices can negative.
- strongpigeon 8mo agoOil briefly went negative a couple years ago too which was shocking. I thought about “buying” some, but then realized I’d have to set up for the oil to be picked up (or try to sell the contract before it expired).
- zahlman 8mo ago> a couple years ago It was near the beginning of the pandemic, due to the demand shock of everything shutting down. There were probably practical ways to profit off the low prices (assuming the risk of them not recovering), but I never did figure out something that would work for a retail investor.
- buckle8017 8mo agoThe only way to profit was too have a large storage tank.
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- nemomarx 8mo agodid it not come with the barrels? I figured you'd just need a warehouse and a truck. (which is a pretty big ask, of course, and maybe free labor to pick it up up and move it into the truck...(
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- leoc 8mo agosigh Why am I never where the excitement is?
- darth_avocado 8mo agoSam..? Is that you?
- fuzzfactor 8mo agoI would want at least a ton of ketchup with that.
- whiterook6 8mo agoOh, wow--what if Big Ketchup is behind this? Huge, if true.
- nicbou 8mo agoThis is Germany. We might also need mayo, depending on preference.
- wasmainiac 8mo agoWhen life give you potatoes, make vodka… or?
- darth_avocado 8mo agoMake fries and freeze them.
- madduci 8mo agoFries
- cpursley 8mo agoVodka is generally made from grains.
- School-Cotton 8mo agoVodka can be made from anything with fermentable sugars. You’re right that grain vodka is more common but potato vodka is definitely a thing.
- pelagicAustral 8mo agoAkvavit
- tenpies 8mo agoBoil them, mash them, stick'em in a stew.
- amai 8mo agoNew daft punk song: Boil them, mash them, stick'em, stew them... https://genius.com/Daft-punk-technologic-lyrics https://genius.com/Daft-punk-technologic-lyrics
- waldarbeiter 8mo ago"4,000 tons is almost four million kilograms"
- Perz1val 8mo agoLLMs couldn't've written that!
- ihaveajob 8mo agoI guess you're quoting it because it is EXACTLY four million kilograms?
- NitpickLawyer 8mo agoProbably for our freedom unit loving friends, they have a different ton (because why not).
- throwway120385 8mo agoOur freedom tons are built for our particularly large trucks.
- MisterTea 8mo agoBelieve it or not the Europeans run heavier trucks than Americans. Ours just get to be longer.
- localuser13 8mo agoI also like to take potshots at Americans, but come on. It's unlikely that a newspaper called "the berliner" in a article about Berlin included this line specifically thinking about citizens of a far-away foreign country who don't use metric units that often. Occam's razor says that it's actually one of our noble and enlightened European journalists who made that sloppy remark without realising it.
- __MatrixMan__ 8mo agoThey only reported one significant figure, could be as little as 3500. kg or as much as 4499.99999... kg
- dvh 8mo ago3 days ago I paid €0.79/kg in Slovakia.
- lm28469 8mo agoI've seen 26ct in a lidl in Kosice. For reference an empty potatoe mesh bag costs like 15ct each if you buy them as a private person in a store
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- ArtDev 8mo agoIn America, we just let people go hungry while grinding the excess crop back into fertilizer.
- jtbayly 8mo agoWe let people go hungry? This is really not a problem today.
- ajjahs 8mo ago[dead]
- sdoering 8mo agoAccording to non profits, 1 in 7 Americans, 1 in 5 American children: https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america
- f1shy 8mo agoIn the site says “FACT - 100% of Counties - Hunger exists in everywhere – no community is untouched” What I pretty much suspected. But that in USA 20% of children don’t get enough? That is a big TIL for my ignorance. A sister comment states some child eat only at school. Boy I thought (in 2 figure percentage) was only 3rd world.
- Aerroon 8mo agoThe figures are a bit misleading. First you've got to understand what food security is: >"at the household level, food security is defined as access to food that is adequate in terms of quality, quantity, safety and cultural acceptability for all household members." (Gillespie, and Mason, 1991).[0] These potatoes being given away might not meet all the criteria for food security either. Eg they might not have all the things that are considered a nutritious meal (but I'm unsure). Second, the website might say "1 in 7 people face daily challenges", but it's probably based on this stat: >An estimated 86.3 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2024, with access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members. The remaining households (13.7 percent) were food insecure at least some time during the year. Ie for the vast majority of these people it's not a daily thing, but something that happens sometimes (but even sometimes is too much imo). And from the report summary: >Children are usually shielded from the conditions that characterize very low food security. However, in 2024, children, along with adults, experienced instances of very low food security in 0.9 percent of households with children, statistically similar to the 1.0 percent in both 2023 and 2022. These 318,000 households with very low food security among children reported that, at times in 2024, children were hungry, skipped a meal, or did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food. I'm not saying food insecurity isn't a thing, but these headlines often paint a different picture than what's really happening. That said, perhaps the reason why food insecurity is relatively low is because these advocacies say what they say. Food security is a bit like server up-time - it's relatively easy to get 99% uptime, but getting to 99.999% uptime is very hard. With food security the numbers are lower though - relatively easy to get 80-90% food security in a developed country but the last 10% are very hard (or at least that's what it seems to me). --- [0] https://www.fao.org/4/x0172e/x0172e01.htm https://www.fao.org/4/x0172e/x0172e01.htm [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=113622 https://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details?pubid=1136...
- SpudEater 8mo agoThis is great news to me.
- honeycrispy 8mo agoSome farmer probably lost a lot of money over this. Our farmers feed us, and generally have thin margins. I see headlines like this and I generally see it as reason for concern as the market not working like it should, and could be a signal of a larger problem down the road.
- lern_too_spel 8mo agoNo, the farmer got paid when the commodities trader bought their harvest on the futures market months ago. The trader lost it all though and ended up giving the potatoes away to the newspaper for free.
- t-3 8mo agoThis is about the yield of a few hundred acres of potato. It's inconsequential in terms of the "market".
- NitpickLawyer 8mo ago> Some farmer probably lost a lot of money over this. The farmer got their money (it was purchased in advance). The company purchasing it didn't pick it up tho, because demand is not there, and they'd likely lose more money on transport and distribution. Which is where the two companies doing this campaign come in - they pay for distribution costs, so the farmer doesn't throw them away.
- buckle8017 8mo agoThese particular potatoes won't be wasted. But other potatoes likely will be. It's not like people are suddenly going to want more potatoes.
- fwip 8mo agoLots of people are price-sensitive to groceries, and will eat more potatoes if some of them are free.
- cperciva 8mo agoThere is some elasticity of demand. Some people will eat more potatoes and less bread or rice. Other people will fill up their cupboards; just because the farmer doesn't want to store these for later doesn't mean that individual consumers won't.
- lkbm 8mo agoA lot of people will have a few more potato-heavy meals if they happen to have more potatoes. This means they'll (presumably) buy a little less of other ingredients for a spell, and maybe we'll end up with more of those going to waste, but it's definitely possible for that not to happen. Seems like a ripple of delayed food purchases of dry goods can be absorbed by reduced production far, far down the line.
- mrzool 8mo agoJoke’s on you, got an air fryer for Christmas and I’m roasting potatoes every day, never bought so many potatoes in my life. They’re absolutely delicious.
- brcmthrowaway 8mo agoIf only they were genetically modified to contain more protein
- LoveMortuus 8mo agoThis would be really cool! Extra points if you can add a more varied nutritional profile.
- admissionsguy 8mo agoIs this what life in Europe has come to?
- foofoo55 8mo agoA farm on the western side of Canada has been doing something similar for years: https://langleyadvancetimes.com/2025/08/09/record-breaking-ugly-potato-day-in-surrey-brings-free-fruit-vegetables-to-30000/ https://langleyadvancetimes.com/2025/08/09/record-breaking-u...
- dathinab 8mo agothis might cause major financial damage to "traditional local markets"(1) and similar in Berlin and Brandenburg close to it (depending on what kind of potatoes this are, like quality, taste, how the cook (hard, soft), etc.) (1): Kinda a bit like local farmer markets, but also very different. the problem isn't the giving away stuff for free part but the scale of it I mean giving free stuff to people in need is always grate, irrelevant of scale. Giving it to people which can easily afford it on small scale is just fine too. Giving it to people which can easily afford it on gigantic scale and it's only slightly hurting the bottom line of some huge cooperation, then who cares. But giving away a product people might have bought from smaller local businesses in very larger amounts (more then what such small 1-2 person businesses sell in multiple month), that is where your "charitable" action might cost people their job and you might do far more harm then good. now Germans are picky about their potato and the chance that 4k Tons of free potato are the kind of potato you find in "local traditional markets" is pretty slim. So this might all just be very hypothetical.
- elcapitan 8mo agoThey are giving this away in portions of 1t, which isn't practical for normal consumers (unless they manage to pool somehow), so this won't have much of an effect on the normal consumer market. It's mostly directed at aid organizations, social stuff etc. From the original pages FAQ: > Wie viele Kartoffeln bekomme ich? > Jede Abnahmestelle erhält ca. 1 Tonne (1.000 kg) Kartoffeln.
- dathinab 8mo agothanks
- usrusr 8mo agoThat FAQ is directed at organizations willing to act as a _distribution point_. So mostly charities who think they can spare the time and effort. I guess a better written FAQ would put it "Wie viele Kartoffeln bekommen _wir_?", making it more visible that it's directed at organizations. I just sampled a few of the distribution points already acknowledged and those do look like they will be passing them on to individual consumers.
- bell-cot 8mo agoWhile this give-away sounds cool... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_bank#Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_bank#Germany https://www.wfp.org/countries/ukraine https://www.wfp.org/countries/ukraine
- mytailorisrich 8mo agoUltimately this may just move the wastage somehwere else: people may get those for free instead of buying them, leading to waste in supermarkets/shops. Or they might take more than they need because it's free and end up throwing them away. It seems that they acknowledge that they are doing thus because there is a supply glut so potatoes will go to waste in any case... Ultimately this give away is a waste of efforts, too. Sometimes there is just nothing to be done...
- bondarchuk 8mo agoTo be honest it sounds like you (and some other commenters) are just rationalizing because the concept of giving stuff away for free is too much at odds with your world view. Maybe some is going to waste but surely less than would go to waste if they destroyed all of these.
- mytailorisrich 8mo agoCan we not start with the personal attacks and the assumptions about other's "worldviews"? Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
- nemomarx 8mo agoIt might be a lossy savings, but I would think at least some percentage of people who take the free potatoes weren't going to buy them and will eat some of them. So maybe you get 5-10 percent less total waste for the labor time, pessimistically? And hopefully more.
- luxuryballs 8mo agoThey should take them to France so they can become… you know the rest, but now I wonder how much weight the oil would add to 4k tons of potatoes.
- wiether 8mo agoI know some people call them "French fries", but history is arguing between France and Belgium for their origin. And nowadays, Belgians eat way more of them per capita than they do!
- gigatexal 8mo agothis is awesome, potatoes are so good for you
- bee_rider 8mo agoUnless there’s some funny unit issue going on (I know there are short and long tons…), it looks like Germany consumed around 5000KT of potatoes in 2022. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/potato-consumption-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/potato-co... > A farm in Saxony has been left with 4,000 tons of potatoes in what Berliner Morgenpost is calling “a story about the absurdities of our food system”. I dunno; it doesn’t seem too absurd, better to have too many than too few potatoes.
- Glawen 8mo agoI'm having hard time to visualize it, can you convert them in adult elephants and TV Tower height? Bear in mind I only saw asian elephants in zoo.
- Xylakant 8mo agoA ton is a big bag (yes, they get delivered in bags and that’s the name for them), which is pretty exactly a cubic meter. 4000 tons is hence a 2x2meter tower, 1km high. Or 20mx20m, 10m high.not sure how high you can stack TV towers or Asian elephants. The conversion is left as an exercise to the reader.
- uniq7 8mo ago> which is pretty exactly a cubic meter That would be if we were talking about water (and at 4ºC if we want to be "exact"), but potatoes have a different density and cannot fill the space entirely due to their irregular shapes. Are you saying that those two things cancel themselves out and the result is that 1 cubic meter of potatoes is "exactly" 1 tone?
- seec 8mo agoThey are not as volumetrically efficient, but it's probably not too far from the approximation plus 10-15% I think. Potatoes are mostly water.
- 8mo ago
- olieidel 8mo agoBerlin is a great place to observe policies with good intentions, yet negative second-order effects. Distributing free potatoes will likely cause waste somewhere else, as e.g. people will buy less potatoes in supermarkets. The waste just becomes less visible as supermarkets dispose of food every day. Another current exhibit is the prohibition of using salt for removing snow and ice from the pavements because it's "bad for plants and the ground water". While that is true to some degree, the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order effects: Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt. I see people slipping on snow-compacted ice almost every day. How many trees have to be saved to make it worthwhile for more people breaking their bones? You can apply for an exemption though, e.g. if you plan to use salt on a driveway to a hospital. Processing fees for such an exemption are up to 1.4k€ [1]. The rent cap is another one. But let's go there another day.. [1] https://www.berlin.de/umwelt/themen/natur-pflanzen-artenschutz/artikel.164455.php https://www.berlin.de/umwelt/themen/natur-pflanzen-artenschu...
- NedF 8mo ago[dead]
- port11 8mo agoThe ban on salt isn’t silly, for a long time pebbles were good enough to prevent black ice, and perhaps even more effective than ice. Donating potatoes that were about to go to waste might cause waste elsewhere, but what you propose is that we never give food away unless we can be absolutely sure it won’t cause waste in another sub-system. That’s a tall order. These potatoes were going to be waste anyway.
- dietr1ch 8mo agoGood point on the second order concern, but I'd get potatoes and keep non-perishable food for later. Assuming the exact same weight or available caloric intake will be wasted is too simplistic.
- palmotea 8mo ago> Another current exhibit is the prohibition of using salt for removing snow and ice from the pavements because it's "bad for plants and the ground water". While that is true to some degree, the Berlin policy conveniently ignores all second-order effects: Sidewalks are more slippery, more people get hurt. Rigorously considering second-order (and greater) effects is a massive undertaking, though. Like: how do you even know how many more people will slip and get hurt without salting sidewalks and how much the damage the salt does to "plants and ground water," without many careful and expensive research projects? And then there's the challenge of weighing such completely disparate things: how many injuries are healthier plants worth? Basically is seems easier said than done.
- CalRobert 8mo agoI prefer to think of it as 4 kilotons.
- meatmanek 8mo ago4 gigagrams
- rpozarickij 8mo ago> 4,000 tons I did some math out of curiosity to better visualize this amount in my head. If we assume that a typical serving of potatoes in a meal where potatoes are an important part is 200g, then with 4 million kg of potatoes you can make 20 million of such meals (1/4 of Germany's population).
- t-3 8mo agoOr ~1600k small sacks of potatoes. About one sack per two people in Berlin, which is probably around roughly one per household.
- woah 8mo agoDistributing (trucking, rent and employees at grocery stores, etc) the potatoes costs more than growing them. Even if they are available for free at the farm, the market price in the city cannot go below the cost of distribution without grocery stores and shipping companies working for free, which they have no reason to do. These are already some of the lowest-margin businesses out there. In this case, it seems that Berliner Morgenpost and Ecosia are doing shipping and distribution for free, for PR reasons or maybe as some kind of charitable volunteering project. It's nice of them to volunteer their time, but it seems strange to talk about “a story about the absurdities of our food system”. Are they saying that it is absurd that a newspaper doesn't permanently turn into a money-losing grocery distributor?
- wiether 8mo agoThe story from Morgenpost: https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article410886475/gruene-woche-berliner-morgenpost-verschenkt-vier-millionen-kilo-kartoffeln.html https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article410886475/gruene-woc...
- politelemon 8mo agoIch bin ein Berliner
- nicbou 8mo agoThat’s fun! The distribution points are too far from me, and getting the free potatoes would be completely impractical, but I am sure some people will benefit.
- tomaytotomato 8mo agoThat could be a big potato battery bank? According to google a 200g potato give off about half a volt (0.5v) and 0.2mah 4000 tonnes = 4,000,000 kg = 4,000,000,000 g num potatoes = 4,000,000,000 / 200 = 20,000,000 potatoes volts = 20,000,000 x 0.5v = 10,000,000 volts (10megavolts) current would stay the same at 0.2mah I am not an electrical engineer, what could we do with this?
- Evidlo 8mo agoThinking about wattage is more useful. We'd get about 2MW so you could run 20k-ish homes (1kW average across a day) for a short time until the potato energy is depleted. You'll also need to buy the metal electrodes.
- barbegal 8mo agoThe energy comes from the metal electrodes not the potato. Potato is just an electrolyte carrying current between the cathode and anode.
- agilob 8mo agoI think it might better to produce alcohols from it and then burn the liquids and gasses.
- axel479343 8mo agoThis is so sad. I'm sure there is some way to turn them into biofuel. Instead they are just a snack to people that will not even appreciate it
- jmpman 8mo agoI’ve wondered if something like this would drive down inflation in the US food supply.