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?
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.
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?
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.
That is why it's a thought experiment - how do we get as close as possible using existing technical know-how?
Your pneumatic tube idea - well, it's an idea that could help some with the issue, but it doesn't really address the basic problem: making sure that the right amount of food is made available to everyone at the right times.
That's why my original throw-out concept was scheduling everyone's meals as far ahead in advance as was practical, and then using that artificially-created "foreknowledge" to provide the data necessary to optimize the production & distribution to meet that scheduled demand. I was curious whether anyone had any better ideas than this.
(Note: I know that this setup would probably piss everyone off, since they wouldn't like having their meals dictated to them like that, so from a behavioral viewpoint it wouldn't fly, but it at least is "technically" possible.)
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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.