OT- the American food machine

Yesterday I spent the afternoon volunteering at the regional foodbank. We take product and recrate it for delivery to local food pantries etc.

What's truly astonishing is that all this food isn't purchased, it isdonated by the makers because it doesn't meet QC spec for packaging. Literal tons of perfectly good food that gets surplused because the boxes are wrinkled. That we can generate so much food that we're allowed to do such things blows my mind.

Boggles my mind, and as makers of things thought maybe you all could relate.

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I don't see any question herein....

But so what? It sounds like a winning situation for all the food-less people. I assume by 'food bank' you are referring to a place where 'poor' people get free food. The evil rich white people of the world who are too good to buy a wrinkled package of green beans for themselves instead bear the cost by paying higher prices that have been passed on by evil corporations, and the poor, truly good people of the world get free food for not having lifted a finger. I guess you're right - it IS mind blowing.

I know people who don't work. Yet they have a constant supply of cigs and beer and are frequent visitors to the food bank which is run a Christian ministry. At Christmas they eat like kings - turkeys with all the fixings, all for free. Mind blowing.

Well, there's some assumptions and stereotypes. Ever spent time with no work and no money? It's a different perspective on the "anyone can get rich" trope.

Food production and distribution isn't a simple equation. I don't pretend to know all the details. I can understand why an underweight package would be pulled from distribution. I'm surprised it's cheaper to trash it than recycle the contents, but that shows what I know. Why are overweight packages also pulled and dumped with the overweight? Another mystery. I can understand why products are date coded and pulled off shelves so customers don't get an inferior product and a bad experience. But I'm told some things are perfectly good YEARS after the expiration date. Just a ploy for turnover? Dunno, another mystery. And why some grocers would insist that substandard produce NOT go to a food bank but directly to the landfill is another mystery.

It would be nice if there were a food economist on the board who could actually illuminate the question.

Also some really great quality vegetables can be bought and delivered fresh to the home. My wife gets them and they look really perfect yet there is some feature that they were not perfect for direct established purchasing standards. These should not be wasted and when you look them over they are way better than what you can find at the grocery.

Rather than a political narrative I think this is worthwhile not wasting good food. At least give it to the poor and hungry if you care or not care it can still be done. If one does not want to then don’t do it but do not chastise anyone willing to do something good. Consider growing as a person by looking at the example of giving to others.

Back when I was still trying to be a hippie (clannish fucers I couldn’t learn the handshake and they wouldn’t let me join up...), I went to Bread & Puppet in VT.
They were WAY into food politics and fair practices being subverted for profit...

Peter Schumann | Americans Who Tell The Truth

All this is fine...but let's see a show of hands....

How many of you will go into a grocery store and pay full price for the lettuce with brown spots or the green beans that have forklifted when there's a perfectly good head of lettuce or undamaged package of green beans sitting right next to it? None of you.

Who goes to the car lot and tells the dealer they have no problem buying for full price the truck that got dented up when they unloaded it? None of you.

People expecting undamaged goods in exchange for undamaged money is nothing unreasonable. Then, top it off with all the hell people raise when they were fed chicken infested with salmonella or spinach that had bacteria growing in it - and it's not hard to see why a food grower is not gonna take a chance of selling sub-par goods. It's called common sense and good business.

With so many problems in this world coming from low quality standards, do we really wanna start bitching about high quality standards?

The surplus food production is testimony of the success of all those things global climate change alarmists want to abolish. You know, "The green NO deal".

When population loomed as a problem not so many years back, and zero population was the activist buzz phrase, the specter of mass starvation due to unavailability of food and failed crops was presented as a significant likelihood. Now the world produces more food than needed on about 2/3 of the total land.

In America, corn yields have gone from 30 bushels per acre as a Great harvest, to over 100 bushels per acre expected yield.

Now, the only issue that impedes "feeding the masses", is distribution. Mostly due to politics.

Thank progress!

Average corn yield USA wide is in the 168 bu/acre range.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

I agree with CalG that this is proof of how successful we are at producing more food than we need, and yes, the problem is distribution. Many neighborhoods in inner cities are food deserts, and the lack of fresh produce leads to many health problems. This is where the goodness of America comes in, where volunteers take surplus food to those who need it most. So what if there are some blemishes when the food is free? That's what knives are for and trimming is usually one of the first steps in food preparation.

I read recently that if America's poor were counted as a nation they would be far wealthier than many other real countries. If we give in to some of the more radical among us seeking massive societal change, aka the Green New Deal and other similar schemes we will become as poor as those other countries except for the privileged few who exist and thrive in even the poorest countries.

Green Raw Deal is closer to the truth for the average person.

Somebody call the "Manufacturing in America and Europe" forum....

Their politics are leaking into the rest of the place...

GregSY said:

I know people who don't work. ...

Click to expand...

Yeah and I know people who *do* work, and work hard. And they're still poor and
do use public assistance like food stamps.

So I suggest your 'young black buck eating steaks' or your 'welfare queen driving a cadillac' is
just so much horseshit.

Ox said:

Average corn yield USA wide is in the 168 bu/acre range.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Click to expand...

Where I live it’s almost never below 200. Even this year with our terrible weather. 280 is not unusual.

"Yeah and I know people who *do* work, and work hard. And they're still poor and do use public assistance like food stamps. "

Good. That's what food stamps are for. Unfortunately, those cases are equaled, at least, by those who abuse public assistance. The fact that there are a lot of sober drivers doesn't mean we overlook the drunk drivers, does it?

I just wish someone would grow some real strawberries. The ones in the stores look so delicious. But they taste like cardboard

Some of my thoughts on this.

First, God bless those companies who donate the food products they can not sell and the people who work to distribute it to those who need it. This is how things should work.

Why would some companies not donate their products? Well, law suits for one. Somewhere along the line someone who received a free product like theirs got sick and perhaps died. Instant blame on the company that donated it. Lawsuit, probably by a law firm working on speculation and taking a percentage of the amount awarded. They don't sue the charitable organizations because that would be bad publicity and they probably don't have enough assets to make it worth their (the lawyer's) time.Do they sue the company who donated the food. After that, the lawyers for a company which may want to donate the same or a similar product advise them to just trash it instead of exposing them to possible legal action. That's far cheaper in the long run.

As for the recycled goods going to the truly deserving, that may be a hard one. I am sure that there are some who get these and other donations who do not really need or deserve them. But I am equally sure that there are others who are truly in need. I don't even try to speculate on the proportions of those groups. So, what should we do, stop all charitable activity? I don't think so. The world is not perfect and there are many imperfect people in it, myself included. That does not mean that we should not help those who need it.

"Wasting it by not recycling": In my humble opinion, there is absolutely no way that anything can be disposed of without it being recycled. EVERYTHING gets recycled. PERIOD! It may spend some time, even centuries, in a land fill, or even longer in the universe in general, but in the end it will be recycled. Even if you bury it so deep that it never comes to the surface again, it will be recycled. Even if you launch it into the sun or outer space, it will get recycled. Sooner our sun will go nova and turn itself and this ball of dirt we live on into interstellar gas. And that gas will go into the formation of new stars and new planets. AKA, RECYCLED. Everything gets recycled. And there is no way to stop that. Even with the "heat death" of the universe, there are theories that the reverse of the big bang will occur and the whole thing will start all over again. There is nothing we can do to defeat the mechanisms of the universe and those mechanisms include recycling. I worry very little about just what mechanism we use to recycle things.