(08-23-2012, 09:56 AM)Spaced Wrote: Patrick, to me it all comes down to capitalism. There is way more than enough food to go around, the problem is that land use is decided by what makes the most money, and farmers grow crops for profit, not to feed people. The money is in meat, and to raise livestock requires a lot of land, not just for the animals but for all the crops they eat too. The capitalist system is what not only allows but encourages practices like factory farming, genetic manipulation, hormone injections, genetically engineered crops that drain the nutrients out of the soil, etc etc.
Compounding this is the culture of consumerism. Us westerners demand CHOICE! we want supermarkets FILLED with things to choose from, naturally most of it is just going to get passed over.
I feel however that our society is moving into a position where we will be able to move forward from this system, thank goodness!
Not sure if meat is all that money. It is subsidized by govt. If govt pays to have it promoted, pays to have the consumer prices kept down, do we want to know if there is a reason for this?
The other subsidized foods are easy to understand. GMO that is genetically modifying us.
(08-23-2012, 09:32 AM)Patrick Wrote: Meanwhile...
About 126 billion pounds of food is wasted every year in the US alone.
http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/22/40-...port-says/
Really I don't care what people eat, but I simply do not understand why some people are still not able to eat. I know that there is love in children dying of hunger. Possibly this very short and difficult incarnation balances a ton of karma for them very rapidly?
There is a store near me that sells a small amount of organic produce. More than double the price, and some is quadruple the price, of organics elsewhere. The store does not sell any of it, and it all goes to the trash after it has wilted.
Why does food get tossed? Mostly because it does not bring the inflated prices applied to it. I have no idea why two stores will have such hugely different prices, but one store will add to the amount of waste in the statistics.
Then there is the food that goes bad during shipment. Another store I know of chooses to order kale from half the country away instead of just purchasing fresh from a local farmer. The price is slightly better local. So it makes no sense.