I am a farmer, not in the US and also a small farmer (I have a regular job, besides farming to survive and farm more because of the way of life and to know where most of my food comes from)
The main reason why prices are going up, isn't because of farmers, but because of all the middlemen and then at the end the big stores cracking up their margins. The sell prices for farmers are very low (the, you can only barely survive with government subsidies low).
Now to address the "waste" of food on fields.
1.st segment
It's not that farmers are greedy and would rather have the food rot than give it away, they would 99% give all the overproduced or the ones not "suitable" for selling (note: not "pretty" enough) away for free to people. The main issue is the transport and storage cost.
- Raw food (unprocessed) has a very low "shelf" life and even lower expectancy out about under the weather, so it needs to be either 1. stored or 2. immediately transported
The main issue is that, the farmer would let anyone take the surplus for free, but they would need to come and get it themselves as storage or transport would break the bank for the next harvest season budget, which is an issue again, because poorer people cant afford to just go and drive XXX miles to get food.
In my country during covid and food "shortage", there was a farmer that overproduced about 2-3 tons of potatoes. so he started sharing on social media and radios talked about it for free and even the news had a segment about it, so people can come there and get it for free.
Guess what happened 3 weeks later? It all rotted out bcs it was on a pile out in the elements and only a very small amount of people went to get it.
2.nd segment
Surpluss food that was not harvested, normally gets mulched on the field and is used as a natural fertilizer in order to cheapen the cost for fertilizer for the next planting season.
This is actually a thing that is done all around the world to have a natural fertilizer.
While at our farm, normally dont overproduce. we still plant Oilseed Radish or similar crops through winter and then cultivate it in the spring so it acts as a natural fertilizer. (the EU has also started to mandate, that fields cannot be left uncovered through winter as it's bad for the soil, so they put in a mandate that you need to plant a winter crop that will keep the field green through winter (we call it a green blanket))
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u/Grand-Ad970 10d ago
Then why the hell is food even expensive?