• JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    11 months ago

    Yep. And throwing away food isn’t totally a bad thing (though they could do better things with it, ultimately giving it away has rippling effects in the economy of food, the portion of people willing to hold out for less-fresh free food increases, lowering the demand for fresh food and thus raising its price).

    The point is, it’s far better to have a surplus of food than a deficit, or even “just enough”. You don’t want a well-placed cold-snap, a drought, wildfires, fungus, insects, bird flu, barges stuck in a canal, or who knows what else happens in a grow season to be the difference between most the country being “fed” or “not fed”.

    • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      We don’t even really toss out much of the food we grow, it gets turned into grain for cattle 99% of the time. Stalks/roots of the plants get turned into feed for pigs/cows. Our system while it could be better is still very efficient.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        Most of the food we grow goes to cattle (and other livestock. Mostly cattle tho). They consume far more than humans.

        • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          No we do not. 85+% of the grain/food they eat is leftovers from what we grow to eat. They eat what you cannot. Stems/stalks/roots. They also drink non-potable water.

          There is a reason a 50lb bag of sweet feed is $10 and drops to around $6 for bulk purchase.