American farmers destroying food while Americans are hungry and lining up at food banks

[Indus]

Don't you just love our stupidity??

 

[ivwshane]

It’s sounds incredibly wasteful but what can they do? They are producing food commercially for other businesses and it’s not trivial to retool everything from commercial to public consumption.

 

[HomerJS]

It’s sounds incredibly wasteful but what can they do? They are producing food commercially for other businesses and it’s not trivial to retool everything from commercial to public consumption.

Give it to food banks?

 

[Indus]

Or sell in smaller bulk. People are buying in bulk now anyways to shorten the amount of times they venture outside the house.

 

[ivwshane]

Give it to food banks?

That sounds easy enough but then that requires the farmers to pay people to pick their fields which would result in even bigger losses.

 

[UNCjigga]

Give it to food banks?

Who pays for refrigerated transport? Processing? Storage? There’s a reason food banks prefer canned goods.

 

[ivwshane]

Or sell in smaller bulk. People are buying in bulk now anyways to shorten the amount of times they venture outside the house.

It sounds simple but that requires a retooling of existing equipment to do things like make bags smaller, adding consumer approved labels, and creating/coordinating delivery and packaging. That’s not easily done.

Now perhaps if we had a competent president, the federal government would be able coordinated everything, but we don’t.

 

[Xcobra]

Is it really that difficult to just offer it up to whomever is willing to deal with the logistics of it? It does seem crazy/infuriating we just scrap food so easily but I am a bit empathic on having to change around equipment needs. I think a proper system should be in place in situations like these. It sucks a lot.

 

[pmv]

I think 'hate the game not the player' might be appropriate.

It's a system that might as well be designed to encourage such outcomes.

Surely it's also the sort of thing that governments were invented to deal with?

 

[pmv]

At times like this, just as during war, you need some elements of a planned economy.

 

[balloonshark]

We have 2 trillion dollar companies in the US and we can't won't even solve a simple problem to help people who can't leave the house and/or who have no money for food for various reasons.

 

[shortylickens]

We have 2 trillion dollar companies in the US and we can't won't even solve a simple problem to help people who can't leave the house and/or who have no money for food for various reasons.

this is a prime example of why we need to be taxing corporations and making government programs, not slashing their taxes and praying they do the right thing with all that extra money. They won't, and the conservative brainwashing machine has convinced too many people god and the 1 percenters will take care of them.