On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 01:39:35PM +0530, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > >this is also why a fresh carrot is more expensive than a frozen one, > >which is more expensive than a canned one; > > This is not my experience, in any vegetable market I've seen.
it is, in any supermarket in an industrialised country. in a poor country like india, there are a couple of other factor at play: the high cost of capital vs labour (which can push up the relative price of preserved goods to fresh goods) and the resulting lack of capital the closer you get to the fresh food chain. low capital and tight cashflow means that fresh produce suppliers lose their produce much faster (as much as 60% of farm produce in india rots rather than reaching consumers) making them more desperate to sell what remains at a low price in order to sell at all. this is in fact a market distortion, caused by an unnatural distribution of capital, since the loss of so much food should actually drive the price of what remains _up_. as more capital enters the agricultural food chain in india (e.g. reliance grocery stores) what happened elsewhere will occur again: higher capitalisation will lead to a greater supply of fresh food, while also leading to a lower relative cost of preserved produce, though not necessarily in that order. -rishab
