Norway also protects farmers with tariffs and subsidies but it doesn't have the same bad effects here because it is targeted at maintaining agriculture and human presence in otherwise unpopular locations (high in the mountains, in the north, along difficult coastlines). Where there is a farm there is a need for a mechanic, a doctor, a dentist, all of these people need a petrol station, someone to maintain and build houses, and so on, so it keeps a community alive and makes the country more resilient against external changes. It also counters, to some extent, the drift to the big cities that all countries seem to experience. And one welcome result is that a very large proportion of the food I eat here is produced in Norway.

There is certainly room for improvement but while I would like it to be cheaper I don't want the country flooded with the kind of race to the bottom crap that depresses wages in other countries.

It probably works here because we have few very large farms and strict, and strictly enforced, environmental legislation.

> And one welcome result is that a very large proportion of the food I eat here is produced in Norway.

This is only the last step. Most of the animal feed is bought outside of Norway and from the wheat we do produce only 15% is of high enough quality to be used for humans [1], the rest is animal feed. The wheat that is used for humans have to be treated since it's too moist.

Norway is _far_ from self sufficient and will never be. The farmers (5% of the population) have received subsidies that are equivalent to the deposits to the sovereign wealth fund since the fund was started, that is to say if we didn't subsidise them we could have had a fund that was twice the size.

The general quality of the food in the stores is also very bad compared to other countries with the exception of pork and sheep meat.

There is nothing to gain as a nation from subsidising our farms the way we do except for the 5% that actually receive all this money. It would be much better for the society to let countries that have areas that can produce food properly do that and just buy it from them instead.

All in all I wish we went the NZ route, let the farms go bankrupt if they can't produce something that people want at the price they will pay it and restore the land to the nature.

[1] https://brodogkorn.no/fakta/matkorn/

Yeah something has got to give. Irrespecitve of Consumer Purchasing Power; Norway has the most expensive food prices in Europe[0].

[0] Norwegian Bureau of Statistics, 06.08.2019, https://www.ssb.no/en/priser-og-prisindekser/artikler-og-pub...

> The general quality of the food in the stores is also very bad compared to other countries with the exception of pork and sheep meat.

The variety/selection is poor, prices are high, but the quality is better than the average in much of Europe. Including Germany and very much all of Eastern Europe. Gastritis is mostly unheard of in Norway.

Lidl went bust here trying to sell their crap they can do away with elsewhere, even at bottom prices.

> It would be much better for the society to let countries that have areas that can produce food properly do that and just buy it from them instead.

And then you have your whole nation dependent on Foreign Policy. I think we need tech to improve local food production to a level that is at least self sustainable ( so their citizen don't starve ) and have extras either produced local or imported.

Indeed, Norway protects farmers in order to ensure agriculture is kept alive, as well as keeping remote areas habitable. I think that's a good precaution. However, Norwegian farms are very inefficient compared to for example Dutch farms. And given that energy is very cheap in Norway, they could have built a lot more greenhouses.

As a foreigner living in Norway, I can say the food in the supermarkets is quite bad compared to what you get elsewhere. And while the onions, cabbage and root vegetables that are in the shelves are produced in Norway, most of the other products actually come from elsewhere, mainly from the Netherlands and from Spain. Just check the country of origin labels next time you do shopping. I know I am often wrong in my assumptions of where food is coming from.

For much of the produce (e.g. fruits and berries) you have both imported and Norwegian versions. Some of them are only seasonal here however, and you certainly ain't getting Norwegian bananas any time of the year.

> I don't want the country flooded with the kind of race to the bottom crap that depresses wages in other countries.

This isn't how economics works. higher demand for foreign food raises wages in foreign countries. When the US and European protected agriculture sector floods international markets with cheap, subsidized goods that is what destroys the livelihoods in developing countries A small historical lesson:

https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/september-2002/how...

"Agricultural subsidies in developed countries reduce world prices, and thus the incomes of African farmers. World Bank studies suggest that US subsidies alone reduce West Africa's annual revenue from cotton exports by $250 mn a year. The EU also heavily subsidizes its farmers. The EU, which by the dictates of comparative advantage would be a net importer of many agricultural products, is the second largest exporter (after the US) of agricultural produce."

But does more of the food in NZ ends up being imported ? Food importations have a large impact on the environment because tankers emits a shot-ton of CO2, which is not the case for locally produced food.

> But does more of the food in NZ ends up being imported ?

Depends on the product. Our manufacturing base has been gutted by laissez-faire capitalism (Mondelez and the Cadbury factory being a recent example https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/103965900/popular-dunedin-a...), so most heavily processed foods are imported from Australia.

And 1 of the 2 supermarket chains (Progressive Enterprises) in our cosy duopoly will import other foods from Australia as suits them - but that's because they're an Australian firm and offload excess stock to the NZ market.

In terms of vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy products etc., they're only imported when there's a margin in doing so - for example, we used to have a lot of cheap pork from overseas countries that didn't have to adhere to the same animal welfare practises as local pork producers.

>But now our agricultural sector is competitive on the world stage against subsidised and protected competitors.

You referring to Fonterra?

Not just Fonterra. British farmers routinely demand higher tariffs on our lamb, for example.

Intersting. I don't see the need on tariffs though , the British and NZ lamb taste quite different. That is why I said most of the production aren't really good in Sales and Marketing.