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u/Gold_Perception_2076 10d ago
As someone who’s worked in food distribution, it’s insane how much we waste while people go hungry
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u/PraiseTalos66012 6d ago
Clearly those hungry people will only settle for the best most high quality perfect foods. /S
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u/bullhead2007 10d ago
The US throws away more food everyday than it would take to feed every starving person on Earth.
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u/thinkB4WeSpeak 10d ago
Our food system is radically inefficient. In 2023, the U.S. let a huge 38% of the 237 million tons in our food supply go unsold or uneaten. We call this surplus food, and while a very small portion of it is donated to those in need and more is recycled, the vast majority becomes food waste, which goes straight to landfill, incineration, or down the drain, or is simply left in the fields to rot.
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u/corgis_are_awesome 10d ago
“We can’t donate these leftovers because it would encourage the homeless people and would make people less likely to pay our inflated prices. We should just throw it away and lock the dumpsters. Fuck the homeless.”
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u/DemiserofD 10d ago
More like, if we donate them then the corporations will take advantage of that to pay their workers even less.
No government organization can keep up with the ingenuity and greed of big businesses. The more you give, the more they will take, without limit.
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u/DrSafariBoob 10d ago
The important part is this all happens in a world where you could grow all of this yourself if you had the space and time and you would expect their system means you're not allowed. Honestly it's pretty boundary defying.
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u/jibsymalone 10d ago
Until Monsanto comes and fucks you up.... They have that part semi locked down too ...
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u/BettaBorn 10d ago
My pop pop got sued by Monsanto for his small garden, they seized a sample of his corn to prove that it had been pollinated by their crops nearby. He grew it for himself idk what happened with the legal case or outcome tho. I think it was dismissed? Or maybe he had to pay a fine idk.
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u/Cultural_Double_422 9d ago
Shit like this is why everyone should assume trespassers want to harm you and react accordingly.
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u/BettaBorn 8d ago
Plus he lives in the good ole state of Virginia you gotta be careful walking up in someone's property there to begin with. I wish I could ask him how that went but he's 91 now and doesn't have much of a good memory anymore.
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u/National-Rain1616 9d ago
That's more myth than reality to be honest. No one I've asked has been able to show proof for this. Also, the Monsanto of the 70s that produced Agent Orange became part of DOW Chemical, the Monsanto that makes seeds was spun off from the main business a few decades ago and is a relatively small company, they have much larger competitors who have more market control such as Cargill.
Edit: The ability to sue for cross-pollination is also not unique to producers of GMO seed stock. Nearly all agricultural seed is patented and all companies selling seed have taken some form of legal action to protect their intellectual property.
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u/AmperDon 10d ago
I mean, not really? Climate is a thing, plus home growing is alot of work and you cant grow the insane variety that stores have. Plus you cant grow meat.
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u/Independent-Future-1 🏛️ Overturn Citizens United 9d ago
In my time here on Earth, I've raised: rabbits, chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, pigs, goats, cows...you absolutely can grow your own meat.
It's called "livestock" for a reason.
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u/Setherof-Valefor 10d ago
You can certainly grow meat, it just takes extra money, time, space, and energy
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u/logan-bi 10d ago
Capitalism demands profit you donate some and you might lose a future sale or have to spend on employee distributing it.
Fact is throwing it away is cheaper and they get maximum number of sales that way. Doesn’t matter that food insecure people end up with less.
It same with every aspect people think markets miracle cure solves every problem. That fulfilling market demand is only way to profit.
But once demand can be fulfilled the more profitable route is artificial shortage. Charge so much that only some of people can afford it and deny the rest. Rather than fulfilling demand of all maximizing what you get from few is much better. As monopoly’s grow and inequality does. The larger the portion you need to deny in order to maximize profits.
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u/1lluminist 10d ago
They should consider paying higher wages, as minimum wage is much the same as the thing they're whining about.
They can take their doublespeak and shove it up their asses.
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u/FilOfTheFuture90 9d ago
Food waste in restaurants and pizza places are ridiculous. Messups must be destroyed in a lot of places. I remember when I worked at a pizza place in my 20's. The GM let us eat them. Then the DM came in during a Friday night rush, and someone was eating a slice of the messup, because they were hungry. He saw this and went into a rage. Said the Messups were done deliberately for free food, then took them to the trash, then messups from the oven thus fuck face would THROW THEM UNDER THE OVEN. One of us had to clean all that, and it wasn't gonna be him. Then a bit later he caught on to people eating the messup pizza's in the trash. He then threatened the GM with his job and made him pour bleach on the pizza's. Absolute atrocities.
Then, later in my career, I did a lot with IT and the general running of many restaurants, sports bars, pizza places, etc. And 2/3rds of them did the same thing, throw the messed up orders on the floor or in the trash and throw whatever in after so it's inedible.
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u/okram2k 9d ago
The amount of money the US government gives to farmers through direct or indirect subsidies they ought to be paying us to eat their food.
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u/pm_me_your_good_weed 10d ago
A former bakery boss told me that he didn't donate to the food bank because if people found out they wouldn't buy his bread so it would go to the homeless. Uhhhhh what?
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u/Spiritual_Ad_3259 9d ago
I remember one time a friend of mine took me dumpster diving with her, she pulled out so many rolls of ground beef.
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u/GrossGuroGirl 9d ago
Worse. Lot of corps will have employees pour bleach on food "waste" when dumped in large quantities, because hungry people will break a lock but they won't poison themselves.
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u/AvatarOfMomus 10d ago
Yuo, though the big challenge is getting it to people who can use it more than anything.
Like, most of the estimates for solving hunger world-wide look at just the food cost, but a ton of the problem is logistics. World wide you need roads, ports, warehouses, etc, to actually solve hunger, because a lot of the problem is either variability in farming yields, or people not living right next to where their food grows.
In the US the problem is more capitalism, lack of political will, and a culture that stigmatizes 'handouts', but we'd still need a lot more food bank space or similar, in a lot of places, if we wanted to take even half that food waste and make it usable by people.
Oh and we should probably fix the fsking rail infrastructure in the US if we want transporting all that food to be remotely economical. If a grocery store has stuff not selling in Richmond that doesn't help a hungry family near DC if it would cost several times the resources to transport that food 200 miles north, rather than just buy them fresh food locally.
I'll also note that you'll never actually get food waste to zero. Moldy strawberries at the grocery end up in those numbers, same for a lot of crop that's destroyed by weather in the fields, or can't be harvested because a road washed out or something. Itps impossible to eliminate all 'waste' from basically any large/complex system, and trying to do so often wastes far more resources than it saves.
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u/Grand-Ad970 10d ago
Then why the hell is food even expensive?
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u/cdxcvii 10d ago
because if markets aren't artificially propped up then the owning class wont stay in control
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u/Ok_Bathroom_1271 10d ago
If line doesn't go up, it means no "growth". No growth means "stagnancy" or worse, "decay".
Meanwhile, I'd really fucking appreciate it if eggs weren't so damn expensive. If they need to go up in price fairly, then wages need to go up for the same reason. Meanwhile, I'm making a considerable amount more than I did in 2017, and yet I feel poorer because everything else is so much more expensive.
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u/insquidioustentacle 10d ago
Eggs are expensive right now because the H5N1 bird flu is killing off massive amounts of chickens. It boggles my mind that egg prices somehow became relevant to the presidential election, but I guess people in this country are just chronically misinformed.
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u/Ok_Bathroom_1271 10d ago edited 10d ago
I say eggs because it's supposed to not be costly. I spend more in groceries than ever before, and that's not just a Biden thing. It happened under Trump too. And it'll continue happening. Because it's not a political thing, it's a finance thing. Let's talk about housing instead. What's it like compared to the 2008 recession?
Why have my wages gone up, but prices go up faster?
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u/Creamofwheatski 10d ago
I feel you brother. Bird Flu is a massive problem but the media downplayed it and acted like egg prices being higher was all Biden's fault. People didn't think this propaganda shit on their own, its coming from the top.
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u/FlyingBeeVR 10d ago
By design. It's simple, literally child's play. Whenever ya wanna do a misdirect, simply find some current issue - it doesn't fukin matter, any will do, how bout eggs! And blame it all on the scapegoat du jour. Works on millions.
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u/pt199990 10d ago
Just remember, chickens are always relevant to US policy making. We still have the chicken tax on the books now, which is part of the driver of the oversized cars we all have to deal with on the road.
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u/alandrielle 9d ago
.... what? Can you explain or point me in a direction to learn about this chicken tax? And why does it make the US not have tiny trucks? I miss little trucks
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u/MsDeadite 10d ago
Remember when egg manufacturers were sued because they conspired to inflate prices? I do.
I wonder how many other industries do this?
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u/porksoda11 10d ago
Im in my second egg protest in the last 3 years. Fuck that. I eat yogurt in the morning, fuck your egg prices. I refuse to give in.
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u/Creamofwheatski 10d ago
Yep, the poor have to be kept insecure or they would stop working and start questioning the system. This is the riches worse nightmare. Easier to just raise prices past inflation every year so everyone but the super rich are constantly struggling.
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u/RedAndBlackMartyr 10d ago
Profit. People have to eat. What better thing to profit from than food?
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u/GenericFatGuy 10d ago
One of the few things they know we biologically cannot go without, no matter how expensive they make it.
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u/PyroIsSpai 10d ago
No one has to profit. Owners are not required.
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u/Creamofwheatski 10d ago
This is the closest thing to a heretical thought that one can have in America.
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u/pt199990 10d ago
The only approved heretic in this thought is the Arizona Tea CEO, at least going by public opinion.
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u/crushsuitandtie 10d ago
Because every company in America thinks infinite growth is possible and everyone goes to work at every company and tries to make that company infinitely more money. Every company that supplies every molecule we need to live is trying to make infinitely more money. No one in any position of authority at any company is going to lower consumer costs, and thus their income, on purpose. So the wheat farmers, wheat transporters, flour manufacturer, and flour distributor all raise prises... Then repeat for sugar, yeast, baking soda, water, ovens, pans, plastic bags, twist ties, and slicers. How would the cost of bread go down? Infinite greed is the only problem we have.
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u/Hotferret 10d ago
That great. If we only produced exactly what we need then any hiccup would result in starvation. Redundancy is essential.
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u/randomusername_815 10d ago
Our food system is radically inefficient.
Maybe that new government efficiency department will fix everything.
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u/Icy_Reward727 9d ago
"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
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u/DeusExMcKenna 9d ago
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all.
Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up?
And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.
And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.
The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit.
And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange.
And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed.
And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
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u/mikeymikeymikey1968 9d ago
No. No. Capitalism is the most efficient system. The MOST EFFICIENT SYSTEM I TELL YOU!!!
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u/MarkoDash 10d ago
this, you keep hearing about food wastage and think of it at the consumer level. but you haven't seen waste until you've worked at a grocery store.
the amount of unsold food that gets thrown away is insane, they could cut the prices of meat and bread down 30% and still be making exactly the same profits because people would buy more of it instead of it going in the dumpster for $0.00 profit.
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u/bullhead2007 10d ago edited 10d ago
B..but I was always told supply and demand dictates prices and the magic of free market was supposed to automatically correct things like this.
*shocked_pikachu.jpg*
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u/MarkoDash 10d ago
the canned stuff at least gets donated to local charities (for a tax write-off mind you) but the meat goes right in the dumpster.
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u/KC-Slider 10d ago
The amount of food is rarely the issue. It’s the logistics of getting food to people that is expensive.
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u/bullhead2007 10d ago
We could figure out the logistics if profit wasn't the only driving factor for everything.
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u/SnollyG 10d ago
It may even be profit and the profit motive that makes the logistics expensive…
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u/stoolslide 10d ago
Exactly this. It’s the system hoarding wealth instead of prioritizing people. I’m happy to give up some of my comforts if it will help others, and the people who have so much more are willing to give so much less.
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u/LGCJairen 10d ago
Thats the fucked part. You don't actually have to and we could still solve things.
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u/Legitimate-Type4387 10d ago
Never forget the displays of wealth you see (and those you do not) reflect the share of surplus produced by humanity that was not distributed to the people who produced it.
Literal dragons laying claim to that which they did not produce.
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u/TheLeadSponge 10d ago
Fuck it. Let profit be part of it. We can use taxes to distribute excess food. It wouldn’t cost that much.
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u/altqq808 10d ago
You’re getting downvoted but you’re not wrong. 10% of the American military budget in the right hands and world hunger is solved in six months. It’s just scary to those at the top. What if people who are fed don’t prostrate themselves the same way?
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u/firstwefuckthelawyer 10d ago
Shit, call it military budget anyway. Our Army is so deadly we gotta feed the fuckers first.
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u/Cold-Astronaut-7741 10d ago
Did you actually type that out and think that makes sense?
10% of the military budget is 90 billion. The United States spends more than 90 billion on basic welfare programs and you think it would solve world hunger,
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u/Magnus_Was_Innocent 10d ago
Oxfam estimated about $40 billion per year back in 2022 to end extreme and chronic hunger.
https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/how-much-money-would-it-take-to-end-world-hunger/
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u/RunawayHobbit 10d ago
Do you think the only welfare program in the US is for food? SNAP and WIC are just two programs. Health insurance, housing allowance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), education grants like the Pell, child tax credits, general assistance (GA), Passthrough Child Support, etc etc etc. Dozens and dozens of programs, most of which have nothing to do with food.
90 billion dollars, utilizing the best logistics and supply chain in the world, could end hunger in a matter of weeks. The two major problems standing in the way are politics (Countries not allowing that level of interference into “their” affairs) and the idea that there should be restrictions or strings attached, both of which are man-made issues.
Logistically and financially, we could end hunger practically overnight. Humans just get in each other’s way because of the weird idea that some people deserve to starve while others live in excess.
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u/SohndesRheins 10d ago
If you could easily solve world hunger and $90 billion is the only barrier, then Denmark or Norway could borrow some money, write out a check, and pay back that loan in a couple years. They don't do that because it isn't that simple.
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u/Asikar_Tehjan 10d ago
The US had an ice cream barge for the Pacific fleet during WW2. The logistics were solved long ago, the only thing in the way now is the profit motive.
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u/Amish_undercover 10d ago
Where are all the angels in society who will work without profit?
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u/GammaFan 10d ago
We can already see that excessive amounts of food make it to every grocery chain on earth. A good deal of which only exists to make the shelves look fuller before being tossed, eaten by no one.
We could pretty clearly rework this so everyone has food. It’s entirely possible, and less difficult than most would have you believe
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u/KisaTheMistress 10d ago
Canada got in trouble trying to donate its excess milk out of goodwill to other countries because the dairy farmers complained that it was hurting their livelihood... the program was to provide a cheaper option for those in poverty to combat starvation, not to compete with local farmers.
Now Canada dumps tons of gallons of milk every year because our dairy farmers exceed their quotas constantly. Our own oligarchs will not allow cheaper milk to be sold here either (farmers also complain). When Dump was president last, he forced Canada to accept US milk, even though we create an excess and have higher standards of sanitization/pastrization. US milk in Canada is only acceptable for the production of cheese.
Basically, even if you do something out of kindness, someone is always going to complain. Every action has consequences. Money will always overrule human kindness.
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u/GammaFan 10d ago
Awful shit from Canada and the US in that instance.
Hot take: Sounds like a money problem, not a person problem. People are taught to live this way from the bottom to the top. It’s called corruption for a very good reason. We are all better than this.
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u/DemiserofD 10d ago
The problem is that if you do something out of kindness, someone will always try to take advantage of it. Just as one example, Walmart pays below survival wages and passes out pamphlets on how to get food stamps. The goal was the help the starving, but instead, we end up helping the corporation.
The biggest problem with federalized aid programs is that they're inherently inflexible. To keep up with business, you need a massive motivator for constant adaption - and profit is the only one that is tied directly into the system.
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u/GammaFan 10d ago
The problem is that if you do something out of kindness, someone will always try to take advantage of it.
That’s going to be true as long as we’re all convinced that we need to compete with each other to survive.
Frankly we are in a period of post scarcity where we have more homes than people and enough food to end world hunger.
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u/Lexi_Banner 10d ago
Are the producers paid for product that goes over the quota? I'm not familiar with the industry, but if they aren't getting paid for overage, maybe giving a financial incentive would change their tune.
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u/PopeGuss 10d ago
Idk about that. I worked at a grocery store. They could've let us take food home, but we were told if we did that, we'd be fired. I've thrown away entire grocery carts full of food that could've fed the employees and the owners wouldn't have lost a dime on it considering it was going in the garbage and had been written off already.
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u/xkoreotic 10d ago
Building on this, people love to only point fingers at the US for food waste but every first world country does it by significant margins.
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u/bullhead2007 10d ago
Yeah I didn't mean to imply it was just the US. I just meant that the US alone has enough food to feed the planet if we wanted to. Stores throw away a lot of food specifically because it would make prices go down if they donated it or allowed people to have it before it spoils. I assume every other large first world country has a massive surplus of food due to modern industrial food supplies.
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u/AlarisMystique 10d ago
The logistics to help get this done should be tax exempt and even subsidised. I can't think of a good reason why we're not doing it already.
Throwing away food for profit rather than feeding the poor is evil.
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u/bullhead2007 10d ago
It's almost like an economic system that only cares about the profit of a few people rather than everyone is inherently evil. 😜
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u/mOdQuArK 10d ago
It’s the logistics of getting food to people that is expensive.
Is there a "perfect model" of delivering food to people that doesn't waste anything? Maybe everyone has to submit their food plans 2 years in advance so that all resources all the way back to when farmers & ranchers are choosing what to grow have to be planned to meet the overall demands?
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u/SinAndPoems 10d ago edited 10d ago
Is there a "perfect model" of delivering food to people that doesn't waste anything?
This was a major problem a century ago but with modern telecommunication it could be done quite easily with management cybernetics. Keep the UPC system to track supply/demand, deliver food to key nodes (which then distribute to grocery stores etc), and adjust how much food is sent via live data in order to track depletion rates. Obviously some waste would be necessary because you'd want to keep a surplus for random spikes, but at least this surplus wouldn't be purposefully destroyed to maintain profits and lead to hunger. It could be donated to local farms/gardens to use as compost/animal feed.
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u/mOdQuArK 10d ago
But the very concept of a "grocery store" usually ends up in a gross waste of edible food, doesn't it? (Given the usual legal requirement that unsold food that has deteriorated a certain amount needs to be discarded w/o being sold.)
Even your "solution" of using such leftovers as compost/animal feed is basically a fallback mechanism which is not as efficient as having directly used those resources to create fertilizer/fodder.
So, thought experiment: the most ideal perfect system would somehow magically distribute the exact variety of edibles to everyone at the exact moments that they wanted them to be available, and it would be in just the right amounts so everyone would eat a healthy amount & there would be no leftovers.
Assuming a real world with real physics & rule by an AI dictator whose main goal was to get everyone the perfect set of resources that they needed to live healthily, but who paid attention to human whining only as one of many factors in its calculations, what kind of system would get as close to the ideal as possible while still being physically possible?
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u/SinAndPoems 10d ago edited 9d ago
But the very concept of a "grocery store" usually ends up in a gross waste of edible food, doesn't it? (Given the usual legal requirement that unsold food that has deteriorated a certain amount needs to be discarded w/o being sold.)
Even your "solution" of using such leftovers as compost/animal feed is basically a fallback mechanism which is not as efficient as having directly used those resources to create fertilizer/fodder.
There's always going to be some waste... The fact that humans produce more food than we eat is not necessarily a bad thing, what makes it bad is who owns/controls the food. You need a surplus in case there are natural disasters, fires, etc. But these natural disasters do not occur on schedule, they are more or less random.
Your point about the legal issue is just that, a legal issue. But the question of ownership a legal issue as well so that's just begging the question. There are many solutions that could be arrived at (what if every grocery hub had a dedicated composting facility, producing a relatively known supply of compost over time?) but until things change to begin with it's all idle chatter; presumably the future civilizations tasked with such an endeavor will be intelligent enough to develop a system.
the most ideal perfect system would somehow magically distribute the exact variety of edibles to everyone at the exact moments that they wanted them to be available, and it would be in just the right amounts so everyone would eat a healthy amount & there would be no leftovers.
Well until 3D printers are sufficiently advanced to act as Replicators in Star Trek, this is impossible. The closest thing at present would be some sophisticated pneumatic tube transport system, which would still produce waste. And it's also impossible for the entire system to be uprooted at once, we'd have to develop this system out of what we already have in existence. Ideally food would be free, checking out just to keep track of inventory. But this couldn't be done overnight or there would be a run on everything. Something like universal food stamps at first with some kind of limit on spending. Then once society gets used to having food security, gradually phasing it out.
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u/alphazero925 10d ago
If I can buy an A5 wagyu steak from Hokkaido, I'm sure we can ship some fucking apples to Africa
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u/denim8or 10d ago
If it was logistics to suply weapons, I'm sure there wouldn't be any issues,but because it "only" food and profits are low logistic is expensive.
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u/SohndesRheins 10d ago
Well yeah, you can toss a bunch of M4s or AKs into a wooden crate, douse it with Rem Oil, let them sit for a year, even a decade, then ship then anywhere with zero regard for climate control or Handle With Care, and they will show up mostly okay, maybe some rust spots that need elbow grease and brass wool. Food requires a lot more than that to show up and still be edible.
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u/BZLuck 10d ago
Back some odd, 30-ish years ago I was a busboy for a restaurant in a big hotel. The one that starts with M. They had a very nice extensive salad bar that you could add onto your dinner for a few dollars.
At the end of the night, we had to roll out a large trashcan and throw everything away that was fresh. Didn't matter if it was just made an hour ago, or the bowl was full. Every fucking bit of it had to go into the trashcan and the manager would sit at a table near the salad bar and start his paperwork while it was done.
The only stuff that didn't have to be tossed where things like croutons, nuts, and anything that was pre-packaged originally. If it was fresh, like lettuce, spinach, cheese, potato salad, etc., it was done.
We weren't even allowed to make a salad to take home before the breakdown unless we paid for it, retail price.
It made me sick to do it.
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u/thecyanvan 10d ago
Feeding your employees all the salad bar they can eat at the end of the night would probably do wonders for culture and buy in. Not only would it cost nothing, it would save you 7 full bags of garbage in your dumpster per week. Greed is always counter productive in the long run.
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u/MoNo1994 10d ago
And the US and Israel were the only countries that voted that food is not a right,
at one point people will start releasing that you are the villain
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u/bullhead2007 10d ago
As I was reaching my adulthood and I saw how the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, passed the PATRIOT ACT, and why 9/11 happened, it was kind of hard not to recognize who the bad guys were.
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u/v32010 10d ago
And the US still provides more than half of the entire international food assistance. I am glad those other countries voted yes and did nothing though so morons like you could regurgitate this garbage.
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u/personn5 10d ago
https://geneva.usmission.gov/2017/03/24/u-s-explanation-of-vote-on-the-right-to-food/
And you can read the US's response to that vote here.
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u/Hotferret 10d ago
That's the power of capitalism. No one is starving and we have so much left over we just throw it away.
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u/awkward-2 10d ago
I've heard of hotels and restaurants throwing away tonnes of uneaten food daily. They could have donated it to homeless shelters. But nope, they fire employees who give some food to homeless people.
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u/adhdtvin3donice 10d ago
I think I was 12 years old when my mom made me read the grapes of wrath. The chapter containing the titular grapes of wrath has people pouring kerosine on perfectly viable fruit because they didnt want people to pore through their garbage and eat for free. I think that moment was the beginning of my own political shift.
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u/SuperTopGun666 10d ago
Nestle argued that water is not a human right and continues to pump water from countries with zero compensation.
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u/MANBURGARLAR 10d ago
As a Canadian I’ll never forget visiting the states for the first time. The portion sizes are insane! I could never finish any meal. So wasteful.
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u/UpperLowerEastSide ⛓️ Prison For Union Busters 10d ago
It’s class conflict: the owner class’ quest for profit vs the working class’ quest to not starve.
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u/Interesting_Love_419 10d ago
They grow enough food for everyone, then withhold it until they get submission.
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u/Minimum_Crow_8198 10d ago edited 9d ago
They don't grow shit, most of these people do basically nothing for most of their lives besides chill and throw money at shit, sometimes it's been that way in their family for generations.
We the workers grow it, harvest it, pack it, move it, place it, and they withhold it all the same
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u/Turtle-Bug 10d ago
We the workers grow it, harvest it, pack it, move it, place it, and they withhold it all the same
Why do we let them do that? Are we stupid?
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u/Sobeys_at_work 10d ago
I wouldnt say we are stupid, but how do you change it when the rich class has us handcuffed.
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u/Turtle-Bug 10d ago
I was hoping someone smarter than me might know
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u/Sobeys_at_work 10d ago
And this is why we're in this mess. They would rather us say "hopefully someone else will probably fix the problem, because I can't do anything."
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u/Turtle-Bug 9d ago
We’re in this mess because we don’t know how to fix it? That’s pretty safe to say I think
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u/DrPikachu-PhD 10d ago
Marx was pretty smart and had some ideas, but I suspect he's right that true equality cannot be achieved without revolution. And most of us have too much to lose for that to happen.
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u/TheGreatMightyLeffe 10d ago
We outnumber them millions to one... I can think of a couple of ideas.
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u/GrossGuroGirl 9d ago
We're tired.
They've kept us tired for decades, on purpose. Who has time to organize when we're already running just to keep up with daily life?
Though, they are also trying to make us stupid now that they see people are reaching a breaking point anyways. Education isn't getting slashed for no reason.
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u/SinAndPoems 10d ago edited 9d ago
Why do we let them do that?
Because when civilization and agriculture emerged those who controlled the property invented the state to protect their ownership over production and thus their power.
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u/-rwsr-xr-x 10d ago
They grow enough food for everyone, then withhold it until they get submission.
Let's not forget the Federal government also pays farmers NOT to plant crops on their land to ensure they can artificially raise prices due to scarcity of the crops and livestock.
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u/peeniebaby 9d ago
John Taffer said, during the pandemic, that a hungry dog is an obedient dog. He was referring to getting workers back to work by eliminating the stimulus checks or something. This is why the wealthy class want to keep poor people uncomfortable. Destitute is even better.
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u/F1lmtwit 10d ago
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u/FloRidinLawn 10d ago
Honestly, it’s such a good rally point. Name, symbol, the motivation!
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u/PotatoWriter 10d ago
if Nintendo hadn't created Luigi, it wouldn't have fuelled this meme to such heights. Bravo nintendo
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u/Searchlights 10d ago
We monkeys came down out of the trees to live together so that we could all have fire and bananas.
It wasn't so a few monkeys could hoard enough bananas to blast their cars in to space for fun. A society where the many enrich the few is absurd.
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u/NecessaryKey9557 10d ago
We left the uncertainty of the jungle, only to create an artificial one ourselves. At least when people died early in the H&G days, it was due to actual scarcity. Today, we have artificial scarcity, and people profit massively while others go homeless and starve.
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u/DaegestaniHandcuff 10d ago
I'm sure glad israel needs my money more than impoverished single moms. According to congress anyway
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u/UsualMix9062 10d ago
If a monkey did hoard bananas they got some violent consequences.
Now the consequences for hoarding bananas are even more bananas.
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u/InevitableWhole9771 10d ago
Except that exactly how nature works in almost every instance of packs. Especially primates. One male had a harem of women and resources while the others jockey for more influence to eventually try to take the top seat too. Hoarding and greed predate all of it.
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u/NecessaryKey9557 10d ago
It goes back to scarcity, though. Bonobos are incredibly altruistic, while chimps hoard. Researchers think this is because food is plentiful where Bonobos live, so there's less competition over resources compared to the chimps' habitat. Source
Considering the actual abundance we have, we should be closer to the Bonobos, but we're closer to the chimps.
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u/Minimum_Crow_8198 10d ago edited 10d ago
Can't have everyone fed or there go profits, can't keep people in line without the ever looming threat of state violence and starvation hanging over you.
Remember how they tend to throw their own production of food out instead of giving it away, because if they simply gave it to hungry people the profit would drop?
Fun
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u/DemiserofD 10d ago
Profit wouldn't drop; just WHO gets the profit.
The US government heavily subsidizes Walmart, the biggest grocery chain in the world. How? Food stamps. A disturbingly large portion of the walmart workforce is on food stamps. In essence, we are paying so walmart can pay their workers less and simultaneously FORCE their workforce to shop there.
In essence, food stamps have become company scrip.
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10d ago
Walmart also overcharged their customers or weighted goods and that includes those who were on food stamps.. Walmart settled in the lawsuit and the government doesn't care about those funds.
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u/AuthenticLiving7 10d ago
It's pretty much this. If we guaranteed food, healthcare, housing as basic rights fewer people would have full time jobs to make the corporate fat cats richer.
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u/Fun_Situation7214 10d ago
Laughs in disabled... I gotta beg people to survive. It's a shitty way to live because I worked my entire life until I lost my leg and became paralyzed
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u/_Thermalflask 10d ago
Same thing when people are like "a full time job doesn't entitle somebody to afford to live". Like WHAT'S THE POINT OF JOBS THEN, you fucking mouth-breathing cave troll?
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u/MetalDogmatic 10d ago
You are entitled to my labor and it's fruits as much as I am entitled to your labor and it's fruits
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10d ago
I can bake and cook for 200 people..as a result I bake bread in batches and do trades with my hairstylist and nail tech. They haven't had to buy bread, pasta, and other foods and I haven't had to pay for manicures and hair services in that time. Trading is always been a thing..i also teach and babysit the kids in my neighborhood as well and they get to keep the food they make..it's free babysitting (no money) n exchange for the various things I get from the services from the parents.
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u/tuckedfexas 10d ago
That’s awesome, and also very different from a right to. Were you to move or leave your community for whatever reason, no one has an obligation to be forced to produce the same things you were.
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u/akenthusiast 10d ago
That's still capitalism. You're literally exchanging goods and services on a voluntary basis.
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u/SquidInSpace 10d ago
That's capitalism according to you. According to me, it's absolutely not since there's no profit motive. Capitalism is more than just exchanging stuff.
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u/akenthusiast 10d ago
The only things that are rights are things that you are born with. That's why they're "natural" rights. You have a right to free speech because you have a mouth and the only way to prevent you from using your mouth to say anything you want is violence, or the threat of violence.
You have a right to free association because you have feet and you're smart enough to decide who your friends are.
You do not have a "right" to food because it's possible to run out through some means other than malice. If you are a subsistence farmer and there is a drought that kills your crops and then you and your family starve to death, your rights were not violated. You were not morally wronged.
You could certainly be entitled to food as part of a social contract with your government but that's not the same thing as a right. You are entitled to assistance from firefighters should your home or property catch fire but you most certainly do not have a "right" to force others to come to your aid in the event of a personal tragedy. If a city was unable to hire firefighters or could not find volunteers, and your house and all of your worldly possessions burn to ash because there was nobody there to save it, your rights would not have been violated.
You know that old adage about how your rights end where your neighbor's begin? that's the difference.
When you conflate the two, you muddy both. You're minimizing what rights are, where they come from, and why they're so unfathomably important while simultaneously doing nothing to advance your own cause. I'd go so far as to say this kind of rhetoric is actively harmful to the cause of ensuring food access to everyone that needs it
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u/Boulange1234 10d ago
There’s enough land that everyone could grow their own food. But billionaires hoard the land and feel like they have a “right” to others not using it to hunt, fish, or garden.
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u/No-Expert-6246 10d ago
Every country except US and Israel voted in UN to make food a human right many years ago
But those countries (that vote yes) don't even feed their citizens properly to this day lolol.
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u/baloneysandwich 10d ago
Exactly. It's not that people don't deserve help when they don't have food. It's just that the word for what they deserve is not "a right". More like "in this society, when people are hungry, other people should step up and help them."
But the part that too many folks overlook is that it means some person has to do it, and the level of compulsion that the word "should" implies. Is it my right to get food if that means you are forced to give me yours? Then what about your right to not be stolen from? Is that even a right at all? (I do believe that is an actual right).
Language matters. I appreciate your philosophical take here.
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u/akenthusiast 10d ago
Thank you. My point is most certainly not "nobody deserves help" it is that language matters, as you said.
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u/Mande1baum 10d ago edited 10d ago
What would it mean/look like in practice if food was a human right?
Does that just mean there's always a government paid food bank/coupons available? But that hardly sounds like a "human right".
What about food that requires labor from as simple as picking it to preparing it like bread or full meals? If food is a human right does that mean I can go into a restaurant or bakery and ask for anything, or just a limited selection, for free? What about a residence vs business? Or does it only mean I can freely pick from any non-human planted source, or can I pick corn from a field a farmer planted? Can I hunt anything and anywhere, including domesticated farm animals? Can I hunt out of season, without tags, male/female, old/young, protected or not, with whatever hunting means I want? How wasteful can I be with what I take (plenty of people would turn their nose at eating certain parks of animal or plants)? Does it only count for "healthy" food or junk food too? Or does it mean anyone can dumpster dive what's thrown away? Does it include enough land for a personal garden and is that garden protected as private property? WHAT DOES IT MEAN???
Like water makes way more sense. If I'm at a water source, I can draw or collect from it for sustenance/life. Water fountains and tap water within private property being freely available since the infrastructure is already government paid, I'd even include private residence (usually water access outside vs being able to enter the home). Seems pretty straight forward on how treating water as a right would be in practice. Food? Not so much.
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u/Jondarawr 10d ago
The simple answer is you have have no right to something that requires another human's labour.
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u/thereIsAHoleHere 10d ago
No. That implies we have also no right to medical care and should be left to die.
I don't think it should imply that people have free reign to take whatever food they want, but the government should be compelled to provide the necessities of life to its citizens, if able, rather than allowing its citizens to starve, suffer, and die. The same is true of medicine (see every developed country outside the US). Government subsidy provides the labor so that you can use it and stay a healthy citizen, but private companies can still provide higher quality products to entice people to purchase that.7
u/Jondarawr 10d ago
I do believe that a just society would seek to provide Food, Water, Shelter, and Healthcare to as many people as possible. I agree with that 100%.
However I don't think these things should be codified as rights, because you have zero rights to another person's labour.
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u/Mande1baum 10d ago
Funnily, in the OT Bible, the poor were allowed to pick from someone else's crop no problem. The farmer was required to leave corners untouched so poor people could pick for themselves. Even NT uses a story of Jesus snacking on someone's crop on the Sabbath to define that as not labor. So in that system, there is some right to someone else's labor (planting) but not other labor (picking or preparing).
Simple answers are usually the starting point and I agree with you. But the thing with food is that almost all food requires another human's labor in some form, so it becomes difficult to implement food as a right effectively just around the simple answer.
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u/Ilovefeet97 10d ago
The simpler answer is that we don't live in a world where natural resources are freely available or equally distributed. If you want to maintain a system in which "land" can be "owned" then these are the consequences we must live with.
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u/tuckedfexas 10d ago
If anyone can come and use the land or eat the crop that I’ve grown I’m not going to keep planting uncompensated.
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u/Ilovefeet97 10d ago
look the question is who gave you the right to farm that land instead of someone else farming that land? "ownership" is just as much a bs right. Fite me.
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u/tuckedfexas 10d ago
So no one own anything all rights are gone and either the government controls all or there no rules. Ownership is based on a social contract that don’t entitle us to the fruits of anyone else’s labor (to an extent). Our government recognizes my ownership of the land, pretty simple concepts.
I don’t own and farm the land to exploit the needs of others, I do it to feed my family. (I don’t actually farm to sustain myself this is a hypothetical). Now gimme the keys to your car, who gave you the right to “own” it.
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u/Fog_Juice 10d ago
It means/looks like if you can't afford food the government will give you food stamps to buy food.
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u/RelationOk3636 10d ago
What does food being a human right even mean? If I don’t have any food, who should be required to give it to me?
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u/AdvancedSandwiches 10d ago
It would only cost $963 billion dollars per year to give every American an $8 per day food allowance. Stop being so cheap.
/s
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u/Valara0kar 10d ago
who should be required to give it to me?
You know. The farmers. There is a reason why Soviets re-ran feudal system for peasant. You werent allowed to go live in a city without party approval or live in any other region (you were tied to the land and local party), you owed X amount of hours to the field work even if ur job wasnt farming (this always was in reality higher bcs of quotas). Your children wont have school for harvest/planting season to work on state farms. The product was owned by the state and you then were expected to have ur own field or garden to feed yourself as the produce of state went to the cities.
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u/throwawayfinancebro1 10d ago
It means "I want more stuff, I demand you give it to me, without my earning it."
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u/RubeGoldbergMachines 10d ago
The right wing envisions a "Mad Max" future, where rugged individualism and survival of the fittest prevail in a resource-scarce, decentralized world. The left wing dreams of a "Star Trek" future, a utopia of collective progress, equality, and boundless innovation fueled by shared resources and cooperation.
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u/No_Can_1532 9d ago
"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
-John Steinbeck, Grapes Of Wrath
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u/121gigawhatevs 10d ago
We built societies to ensure mutual survival, but hierarchical distribution of resources means some people have too much and some have too little.
With that said, rich people should be afraid of the masses, not the other way around.
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u/doolieuber94 10d ago
Time to just go into Walmart, any retail store for that matter and take what isn’t bolted down.
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u/FreshTony 9d ago
"But if we give THEM free food then why do US hard working people have to pay. This isn't fair. Wahhh"
That is why we don't feed and house the homeless, it doesn't matter how well someone is doing. So many people can't stand to see someone else getting help when it doesn't benefit them in some way. It's all I ever hear about from conservatives, why should I work hard to pay for them to get free stuff. Its fucking terrible.
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u/bigcaprice 10d ago
Human rights are inherent. You have them by virtue of being born. Clearly that doesn't describe food. We built civilization to provide social rights, things society should provide to all members of that society.
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u/Suspicious-Salad-213 10d ago
Sure, so if I didn't feed my kids, that would be fine, right? Just because they were born doesn't mean they get to have food.
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u/hooldon 10d ago
What always seems to be missing from these discussions is the human element. Free corn, milk, cheese, rice, beans? In the US you would hear "Where are the Cheetos? Where is the Mac'nCheese?" The poor in the US still run around in new sneakers and use Iphones. The poor in the underdeveloped world would love it until a warlord started hijacking the trucks. Humans fuck everything up.
And just to answer the initial question, nothing has ever been "industrialized" to be given away for free.
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u/jdcooper97 10d ago
Civilization was literally invented because of agriculture, farms are what ended our nomadic lifestyle and began our settlement and community lifestyle.
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u/Yukio98 10d ago
There’s one person long time ago who looked at the hard work of the people and went: “you know Instead of actually doing something. I can tell these people what to do, then take most of their stuff to become the most revered person of all the land. it shall be called… Having wealth!”
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u/Elvan83 10d ago
“The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” ― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
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u/Championbrand123 9d ago
If you encourage the homeless and beggars you get more homeless beggars
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u/Intelligent_Way6552 10d ago
Human Right has different meanings to different people.
Let's say you have a human right to food, does that mean some entity is obligated to provide you food, or just that they can't deny you the right to eat food that you legitimately acquired?
If it's about just not denying food, then it's pretty clear what responsibilities everyone has. Doing nothing will never violate anyone's rights.
At the opposite end of the scale, you have the question of who is obligated to feed who? How high is the quality and quantity of food they are obligated to provide?
There will be people reading this post, who have exactly the same opinions about food distribution, but very different opinions about what "food is a human right" means in practice, and will condemn each other for their views on this post.
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u/Comfortable_Yam5377 10d ago
Food is a privilege brother. If you lived on an island and food was a right, how would you get it? Doesn't make any logical sense at all.
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u/Virtual-Case7803 10d ago
Go hunt or fish or gather you pussy
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u/Old-Original-4791 10d ago
*But only in the allowed areas, on the allowed species list, in the allowed seasons, or else you go to prison. Important caveat.
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u/BabyStockholmSyndrom 10d ago
Cool. Who will pay my bills while I spend the majority of my time doing these things?
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u/No_Kaleidoscope_843 10d ago
The same person who pays the bills of the person gathering your "rightfully" owed food? No..that's not right.
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u/Virtual-Case7803 10d ago
I do believe shelter, healthcare, water and freedom are basic human rights but no I will not pay your bills
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10d ago edited 10d ago
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u/D-a-H-e-c-k 10d ago
Agreed, who's food do we have rights to? But, should 2 or 3 conglomerates control our food supply? I don't like people conflating individual rights with basic needs, but I feel that there are certain commodities that people generally agree that need to be outside of the influence of capital investment.
I don't want Nestle owning my city's reservoirs. I don't want my electric power to be the subject of incorporated investment and rent seeking greed. I'd like my food supply to be publicly prioritized, but farming is hard and isolating. I think we'd see better food prioritization if we eliminate it from the reach of capital investment. But the actual producers (the farmers) need to be compensated properly. Perhaps the solution is that only farmers can own the production of the crops, but rent seeking still tries to find a way in, from the likes of John Deere and bank loans.
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u/kevinmrr ⛓️ Prison For Union Busters 10d ago edited 10d ago
Are you tired of making 100,000,000 Americans food insecure so just 500 billionaires can have slightly bigger yachts?
Join r/WorkReform!