Comment by metaphor

Comment by metaphor 6 months ago

Consider water spinach[1]---a.k.a. swamp weed in Florida, but also known as kangkung amongst Asian households---to which the USDA apparently classifies as a "noxious weed". It can be prepared for consumption in many ways, but I especially love it in a Filipino sour soup dish called sinigang[2].

If you want to buy this "noxious weed" in Florida (or anywhere in CONUS, for that matter), you'll need to skip Walmart and make a trip to your local Asian produce store, where it can be found profitably sold for pennies on the dollar. Why? At face value, the ethnic majority simply don't consume this green, and in any case, its natural supply far outstrips market demand, making it far less attractive for most sellers to justify retaining inventory.

Now consider pythons that have invaded the Florida Everglades. Suppose the market for this were to flip in a similar way that beef oxtail has: a cut of "trash" meat historically shunned by the ethnic majority (but favored by certain ethnic minorities and the poor for its low cost and exceptional flavor) which has seen a major market repricing upward driven by the popularity of certain ethnic dishes. Or how short ribs (kalbi) and skin-on pork belly (samgyupsal) have seen significant upward repricing and market availability as KBBQ restaurants grow in popularity throughout the country (fire suppression equipment and commercial fire code compliance being primary enablers around my locality).

In the case of beef/pork cuts, the market simply recognizes value and prices are set consistent with supply/demand...it's just optimizing margins on an existing large scale process.

But would such a scenario really work out when the source of meat is an invasive species that Florida is looking to wholesale exterminate? I mean if the market wins, the state has a problem; and if the state wins, it's difficult to imagine how the market naturally materializes. Gator tail in the South is the closest proxy equivalent I can think of, but for all intents and purposes, it's a novelty dish which has hardly gained market traction at scale.

I don't know...random food for discussion, so to speak.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipomoea_aquatica

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinigang

aspenmayer 6 months ago

Maybe look at market for other foraged products like ginseng and truffles to see what might happen? Those are supposedly difficult to farm, but I don’t see why pythons would be.

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metaphor 6 months ago

Not sure I follow. Are you suggesting farming pythons as a prospective solution?
Assuming this is the case (that would likely mitigate the mercury bioaccumulation hazard), it may be doable, but that would only make business development sense if an addressable market actually exists.
I say "may" because it's unclear what a notional python farmer would feed such a carnivore that's both cost-effective at scale and isn't a disease vector itself. Corn is the answer for chicken, pigs, and (unfortunately) cows. In Japan, farmed unagi are fed a highly nutritious semi-solid paste that's relatively expensive...but demand for unagi in Japan alone is absurdly high and priced accordingly, with cultural significance providing additional market support.
I imagine the incentive to create a market for python meat would be primarily driven as a way to combat its invasive status in Florida...to which consuming farmed python does nothing to address this underlying root environmental issue.

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- aspenmayer 6 months ago
  
  I agree that farming wouldn’t address the environmental issue. I was mentioning farming because you mentioned supply chains. Snakes are picky about what they eat, but they eat mice, and there are already live mice supply chains, so that is probably the cheapest way to feed them: just outsource it. I think that snakes are already farmed in other Gulf states where alligators are farmed, so I don’t think there’s room for much innovation here. It was just food for thought for you and others.
  I don’t think that marketing the snake as a delicacy would do anything but increase the demand for the snakes. When incentives have been advertised and paid for invasive species in the past, breeders immediately started cashing in, so there are limits to how much nudging you can do, and how you can do it, or you will have rewarded bad behavior and perhaps created negative externalities that did not exist before.
  I was trying to explore the idea of farming them and what would happen if consuming them became popular, which is likely farming them unless prohibited, which would probably be cheaper than catching them. If the wild ones are higher in mercury, then farmed ones might be worth less even though they are healthier, due to potential subsidies to promote eradicating them and charges due to it being a wild caught novelty menu item. This could create perverse incentives leading people to adulterate farmed pythons to pass them off as wild ones. I think the entire idea is fraught and isn’t as simple as a comment thread might make it seem, not that I think you are minimizing the issue. I just don’t know if any individual comment can do the issue justice, so it’s hard to explore the issue in bite size pieces.
  
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  metaphor 6 months ago
  
  Great points and in full agreement. Thanks for broadening my perspective!
  
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