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Here you go OT, a prime example of the value franchising brings to America:
Note the article's noble position is to warn that this move toward social responsibility could be a business / investment disaster. Let's hear it for franchising and corporate efficiency as you consistently champion! Growth and ever increasing profit for the business-owners of the world above all others! Create and market a total crap product that is destructive to the population but to which they can be easily conditioned into addiction. Make it as brainlessly non-creative in production as possible in order to run at the highest efficiency imaginable -- all with paying the employees so little that they can't survive without also being on government assistance programs ... thereby subsidizing business costs with taxpayer dollars!
If Americans move more towards healthier options there is no reason to believe that McDonalds can't adapt to that environment.
Yes, there sure is reason to believe they can't: it's not in the nature of that business mentality ... which, among other issues of avarice and greed, and as you have been arguing yourself, relies on cheap labor at the expense of society and government.
If Americans move more towards healthier options there is no reason to believe that McDonalds can't adapt to that environment.
If the public would buy healthier food and shy away from McDonald's traditional fare, that is what they would be serving.
McDonald's and other fast food restaurants, have in the past had temporary specials that were healthier food to test the market, but they never sold enough of them to make them profitable and keep them on the menu after the test was over. The general public would not buy them.
McDonald's and other fast food restaurants, are serving what the public wants and will buy.
Just because you think some foods are healthier, does not mean the public in general does. McDonald's and other fast food operations, plus schools are serving what the public wants and will buy. They have tried other things for years, and found out they lost money on them. They are not in business to lose money.
Don't blame McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and the list can go on and on for what they serve. They are selling what the vast majority of the public wants and will buy. If the public wanted healthy food as you call it, there would be chain fast food restaurants selling it. The public does not want it, so the restaurants serve what the majority of the public wants, not what a small minority wants. It is the only way they can stay in business.
Mrs Obama has forced schools to offer what she calls healthier food. Schools are finding that the kids will not eat it, and are going hungry in the afternoon after throwing most of their lunches away. Lots of school districts are going back to more traditional school lunches, so the kids will eat their lunches and be be better able to study and learn.
You write (in bold) as if this was a bad thing ... and as if today's 1.5% agricultural employment is a good thing. Why? You are a salesman. Perhaps you don't like honest dirt under your fingernails. I dunno. But I do know that there is no more noble profession than bringing forth simple food production from the land and sea. It is humanity's most natural and most essential labor. Always has been -- until recently.
I was raised on a ranch/farm, with our property and thousands of acres of leased land to run the cattle on. I have sold, a lot of farms and ranches. I have evaluated a lot of farms and ranches that were for sale but would not sell them to my clients as they were not profitable operations, where between the clients and myself we could not find a way to make them profitable at the price the owners wanted. I have had a lot of dirt under my fingernails over my lifetime.
I for one believe that times have changed. Today, instead of horse drawn equipment, we use huge tractors and specialized machinery. Tractors, that plow and plant large acreages that operate off of GPS systems, that can plant a field with considerably less time and seed involved. We use satellite pictures to evaluate fields to know where more water and fertilizer are needed. Instead of a large number of people running a baler sitting in one location and hauling the hay to the baler, they use one man running a baling machine that travels over the field making large round bales or large square bales, and squats and drops one out the back as soon as the bale is complete. Then they pick them up with another machine, and put them on a truck.
If they had not improved farming methods, and crops, we could not feed the nation with today's population. Being able to do it with a lot less people, is one thing that makes it possible to keep farming today.
If the public would buy healthier food and shy away from McDonald's traditional fare, that is what they would be serving.
McDonald's and other fast food restaurants, have in the past had temporary specials that were healthier food to test the market, but they never sold enough of them to make them profitable and keep them on the menu after the test was over. The general public would not buy them.
McDonald's and other fast food restaurants, are serving what the public wants and will buy.
Just because you think some foods are healthier, does not mean the public in general does. McDonald's and other fast food operations, plus schools are serving what the public wants and will buy. They have tried other things for years, and found out they lost money on them. They are not in business to lose money.
Don't blame McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and the list can go on and on for what they serve. They are selling what the vast majority of the public wants and will buy. If the public wanted healthy food as you call it, there would be chain fast food restaurants selling it. The public does not want it, so the restaurants serve what the majority of the public wants, not what a small minority wants. It is the only way they can stay in business.
Mrs Obama has forced schools to offer what she calls healthier food. Schools are finding that the kids will not eat it, and are going hungry in the afternoon after throwing most of their lunches away. Lots of school districts are going back to more traditional school lunches, so the kids will eat their lunches and be be better able to study and learn.
Thank you for this answer OT. I'm glad you came back to respond. You are entirely validating my observations of you as a champion of anti-social endeavor.
The general public desires this crap food, indeed. They also desire a cornucopia of other drugs that are illegal and restricted as controlled substances. Perhaps we should remove restrictions on all such so that "businesses" can prosper more.
These companies -- the same as who hire cheap labor and oppose minimum wages -- pay top dollar to legions of scientists / chemists to study natural human cravings and find any palatable way to deliver them through powerful, deeply psychological, and convenience-based marketing venues -- and with specific intent to create addictions to their products. Human beings crave salts, sugars, and fats through evolved physiology. However, there is little self-regulation to these natural cravings ... it simply wasn't necessary during millions of years of evolution -- until recent modern times when we have become so skilled in production and delivery of these necessary dietary components in literally lethal concentrations and quantities.
And that's fine with you and corporate culture: Monsanto, DuPont, General Mills, ADM, McDonalds, Burger-King, Wendy's, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, et al. After all, to quote you: "they are not in the business to lose money." But destroying human health is fine -- and do so paying cheap wages that require, effectively, government subsidy of their profiteering.
Good on you OT for being so honest about yourself.
I was raised on a ranch/farm, with our property and thousands of acres of leased land to run the cattle on. I have sold, a lot of farms and ranches. I have evaluated a lot of farms and ranches that were for sale but would not sell them to my clients as they were not profitable operations, where between the clients and myself we could not find a way to make them profitable at the price the owners wanted. I have had a lot of dirt under my fingernails over my lifetime.
I for one believe that times have changed. Today, instead of horse drawn equipment, we use huge tractors and specialized machinery. Tractors, that plow and plant large acreages that operate off of GPS systems, that can plant a field with considerably less time and seed involved. We use satellite pictures to evaluate fields to know where more water and fertilizer are needed. Instead of a large number of people running a baler sitting in one location and hauling the hay to the baler, they use one man running a baling machine that travels over the field making large round bales or large square bales, and squats and drops one out the back as soon as the bale is complete. Then they pick them up with another machine, and put them on a truck.
If they had not improved farming methods, and crops, we could not feed the nation with today's population. Being able to do it with a lot less people, is one thing that makes it possible to keep farming today.
Again I thank you for your response OT. And, again, it proves my point about your positions being anti-social.
I didn't write that you never had dirt under your fingernails ... I wrote that: you don't like it. You are what working class people refer to as a "pencil-neck" ... that is, you like chicken-scratching figures on paper to support selling things for commission.
And yessir, we do indeed now have huge farming machines with GPS and satellite evaluations for dumping toxic quantities of unnecessary fertilizers on unnecessary crops to sell to a public that is essentially sickened by the forms in which they are manufactured and marketed -- by nifty, pencil-neck salesmen who don't like dirt under their fingernails.
And yeppers, it only takes a man here and there to do the work that used to take many. So now one man working can produce food for lots of people out of work. Oh wait, except that people like pencil-neck salesmen and corporate leaders object to entitlement programs to feed the poor and unemployed -- even though they are the ones putting people out of work with their sociopathic obsessions for efficiency and profiteering.
As for being able to feed nations with current population levels: yes we can without these corporate farming methods. There is vast, historically developed and documented scientific wealth on how to grow what is healthy and necessary in subsistence and local, small market gardens. But this is not profitable for the pencil-neck crowd. It is merely healthy and ecologically wise and sustainable. Heaven forbid humanity should live thus, eh OT? Better we should addict the world to wheat and dairy products, salts, fats, and sugars ... and claim that the gross over-consumption of these things is necessary for civilization's progress, rather than responsible for its rot, decadence and decay.
Yes, there sure is reason to believe they can't: it's not in the nature of that business mentality ...
"That business mentality" is to make money and if demand shifted to healthier options that is where the money would be and McDonalds would quickly adjust their offerings....
Quote:
Originally Posted by oldtrader
McDonald's and other fast food restaurants, are serving what the public wants and will buy.
What the public wants is influenced by the marketing efforts of the fast food industry, it goes beyond that as well. The fast food industry crafts its foods to be addictive which keeps people coming in.
Any shift towards healthier options is going to require the joint effort of the food industry and government. If both don't act, then the national economy will suffer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oldtrader
Don't blame McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, and the list can go on and on for what they serve.
I'll stop blaming them once they stop spending hundreds of millions a year on marketing their junk to kids and adults alike.
As for as kids rejecting healthier foods, that is to be expected, once you get them hooked they are going to want the "good stuff". But since when has society listened to the whims of kids when crafting national nutritional policy?
As for being able to feed nations with current population levels: yes we can without these corporate farming methods. There is vast, historically developed and documented scientific wealth on how to grow what is healthy and necessary in subsistence and local, small market gardens.
Boy is that a wild pipe dream.
This type of farming, will not feed over 300,000,000 people plus export to where they are using the type farming you are talking about and people would starve without us exporting food.
Lets take the Silicon Valley as an example. Where are they going to find the land to feed the people there with local, small market gardens. Not possible. Or Los Angeles, or New York City, etc., etc. If you can find property to farm in those areas, it is going to be so expensive you could not possibly farm local small market gardens to feed the people.
Where would they grow the wheat to make the bread and cereals for all those people? Where would the flour mills be, to process this wheat into flour and cereal?
In a a typical year they are growing 56.5 million acres of wheat. That is about one acre per every 6 people in the USA. Over 97,000,000 acres grows corn. Another 75,000,000 acres or so for soybeans. Overall, farmers planted 319,200,000 acres to major crops this year.
Some parts of the country have land and climate suitable for one type of food growing, and other areas are suitable for other crops. You can't grow all the types of food people eat in any one area of the country. Processing the crops into food such as flour mills, etc., are located around the country where the food is available to process. Freezer and canning plants, as an example are located where the food is grown.
There are over 70,000 farm operations professionally growing crops in the USA. Many of those are thousands of acres in size. Try growing the food to feed the USA in local small market gardens. IMPOSSIBLE, as any thinking person knowing anything about farming will tell you.
Better we should addict the world to wheat and dairy products, salts, fats, and sugars ... and claim that the gross over-consumption of these things is necessary for civilization's progress, rather than responsible for its rot, decadence and decay.
The cultivation of wheat goes back at least 10,000 years.....though more likely 20,000~30,000 years. Dairy is thousands of years sold. Sugars and fats have been around well, since animals existed. These foods, in themselves, have nothing to do with how the modern agricultural and food industry has evolved. Probably shouldn't tie your paleo-man diet ideas with your commentary about industry...just a thought.
Lets take the Silicon Valley as an example. Where are they going to find the land to feed the people there with local, small market gardens. Not possible. Or Los Angeles, or New York City, etc., etc. If you can find property to farm in those areas, it is going to be so expensive you could not possibly farm local small market gardens to feed the people.
I'm sure null will have something long-winded to same about this, but large metro areas aren't a necessity of life. And, well, didn't you decide to leave one of these metro areas because the pollution which occurs because you have so many people living in a small dense area?
People can spread out in smaller cities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oldtrader
In a a typical year they are growing 56.5 million acres of wheat. That is about one acre per every 6 people in the USA. Over 97,000,000 acres grows corn. Another 75,000,000 acres or so for soybeans. Overall, farmers planted 319,200,000 acres to major crops this year.
.
And much of that is going to be rather inefficiently used to transform those grains into meat, dairy and processed products (oils, corn syrup, etc). Far before modern technology, small farms were rotating grain and legume crops and supporting fairly large cities doing it. I imagine we'd have no trouble doing it again with far better technology and science.
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