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Most of the "we must destroy this food" stuff happens to control the pricing of food. If it's getting too cheap, they need to restrict supply so they start dest
by pyre 11y ago
Most of the "we must destroy this food" stuff happens to control the pricing of food. If it's getting too cheap, they need to restrict supply so they start destroying otherwise good food.
- Clanan 11y agoCan you provide a citation? That's a strong claim, and I would like to read more about it.
- EGreg 11y agoMe too. And if that's true, why do we have to worry about the end of food because of bees?
- Joof 11y agoIts common knowledge IMO, but you can certainly Google it. Agriculture is a near-perfect free market, so organizations and governments often destroy crops to raise prices.
- pault 11y agoHow does government interference in a market make it near-perfectly free? The U.S. agriculture market is infamous as a source of government waste and pork barrel spending: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21643191-crop-prices-fall-farmers-grow-subsidies-instead-milking-taxpayers http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21643191-crop-pr...
- Joof 11y agoSorry, perfectly competitive is the phrase I'm looking for.
- pault 11y agoI don't think that's correct either. Many of the crops grown in the american west wouldn't be profitable if it weren't for huge subsidies. In the most egregious cases Californian farmers have grown thirsty, low value crops while their counterparts in the Southeast were being paid to destroy them. https://mises.org/library/water-subsidies-and-shortages-american-west https://mises.org/library/water-subsidies-and-shortages-amer...
- pjc50 11y agoThis isn't as big an issue as it used to be in the bad old days of EU production subsidy. Most of the modern food waste is along the production and distribution chain, especially in stores when food has passed its use-by date.