What you are describing holds true only if the buyer values the higher quality, which is true for coffee.

But if you can send the cheap stuff and get the same price why not do that and keep the high quality items for the local market?

Southern Europeans export their tasteless tomatoes to Northern Europe because people there don’t value tasty tomatoes that much. So southern Europeans keep the good vegetables for themselves.

> Southern Europeans export their tasteless tomatoes to Northern Europe because people there don’t value tasty tomatoes that much. So southern Europeans keep the good vegetables for themselves.

It's the other way around. The problem is that mass-market tomato varieties have been selected and bred for a long shelf life - which led to them losing taste because breeders didn't care about taste, only about durability [1]. And the flavors aren't the only thing that went away, the second breeding focus on yield led to tomatoes that don't have as much sugar any more because there's only so much sugar a single plant can make.

So if you want to ship tomatoes to Nothern European countries that actually last a few days of display time on the shelf before going bad, you'll want to breed varieties with less taste. If you were to ship tasty tomatoes, probably half the shipment would go bad before ever reaching the store.

And that's not just valid for tomatoes, it's valid for all sorts of agricultural products - including meat. You're only going to get the truly good stuff if you go local and pay the surcharge for varieties and breeds that are "less efficient" to grow but yield more flavor.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-tomatoes-got-bla...

>What you are describing holds true only if the buyer values the higher quality, which is true for coffee.

what I describe holds true because I didn't fall into the trap you are trying to dig me out of.

I said: the sellers profit maximize. What you are saying only makes a difference in who they sell to... in order to, as I said, profit maximize.

Fun fact: The Netherlands exports tomatoes to Spain and Italy!

Southern European summers have become too hot to grow tomatoes, so during the summer they have to be imported. The native ones are only available during the winter - when they are indeed exported back up as well.