4 ms·

Just gonna put an idea out here: what if food was so abundant it was free? How much cheaper would it be to live? How much could be saved on redistribution sch

Just gonna put an idea out here: what if food was so abundant it was free? How much cheaper would it be to live? How much could be saved on redistribution schemes like unemployment benefits or Social Security? 50,000 years ago, everybody's job was to find or hunt food. If you didn't your kin-group starved. Then the Ice Ages thawed and we developed agriculture, so only about 70% of the people had to produce food, while the others could specialize in the production of tools or the provision of services like health care. Industrialization and the Green Revolution have made food so plentiful, we can have foods from all over the world available to us at any time of year. So instead of worrying about the future of yesterday's dead jobs, let's make the cost of living as low as possible.

WaxProlix 10y ago
> Just gonna put an idea out here: what if food was so abundant it was free? The land it's farmed on has inherent value to someone; there's no amount of labor cost reduction or automation that can bring food costs below the value of the land + whatever raw materials go into production (seed, feed, whatever). > Industrialization and the Green Revolution have made food so plentiful, we can have foods from all over the world available to us at any time of year. And yet people starve all over the place; not just in 3rd world countries but here in the USA. So either it's not that plentiful or we have a serious logistical problem.
- Girlang 10y ago
  Nobody's starving in the U.S. Our problem is obesity. Raising the cost of food would be a good thing.
- leereeves 10y ago
  How many people in the US starve to death from simple lack of access to food, without other physical or mental problems that prevent them from obtaining food from one of the many available sources?
- chris_va 10y ago
  > And yet people starve all over the place; not just in 3rd world countries but here in the USA. So either it's not that plentiful or we have a serious logistical problem. It is the latter, in case you were curious. Access to food requires uninterrupted distribution, which is not always the case.
  - DougN7 10y ago
    I don't think it's distribution - there is food available in every store I've seen. It's money to buy the food with, or money to buy mobility to get to the food.
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      They've been playing a PSA lately saying that "40% of the food produced in America goes to waste". So, on average, people in this country are already spending close to double the amount that they should for food. So, there's distribution from farm to store to home, but there's a non-existent link out of the home into a second-stage distribution pipeline, or something.
      - leereeves 10y ago
        This might be the source of that statistic: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf Only about 25% of the losses (ie 10% of the food) are attributed to "consumer losses".
      - jelliclesfarm 10y ago
        i have a farm and more than 40% never reaches anyone. it is not worth it for me to harvest it even to donate it because the labour would wipe out my profits. but if i let it rot and decompose..make my own compost, there is some value in it for me. isnt that awful? but yea...farming reality. it is what it is..
        khedoros1 10y ago
- nradov 10y ago
  Almost every major long term famine in the past 100 years was caused by violent conflict or colonial occupation. Those root causes create the logistical problems.
CuriouslyC 10y ago
If you got most of your calories directly from corn (instead of indirectly) you could keep yourself going for literally pennies a day. I have a 50lb bag of cornmeal that I got for ~$10 through bakery distributor. About 600g of that would provide sufficient calories for a typical day, so that is a 38 day supply - costing just over a quarter a day.
ashark 10y ago
A diet built mostly on rice and beans[0] with the occasional serving of liver, piece of fruit, can of sardines, and multivitamin to make sure you don't end up deficient in something important is already very, very cheap. So cheap that the annual cost of the square footage for the kitchen to cook it in (maintenance, rent/mortgage, tax. et c.) may be a bigger concern. Granted it's not a very fun diet, but hey, there are people who pay a whole lot of money for a bland food-goo meal substitute (which, admittedly, removes the need for a kitchen). [0] This prepper site http://geekprepper.org/what-is-the-cost-of-5-gallons-of-beans-and-rice/ http://geekprepper.org/what-is-the-cost-of-5-gallons-of-bean... (2015) figures over 100 days worth of rice+beans at ~$125, not counting containers to keep it in. Call it $300/year for a ~2500 calorie/day diet (in JUST rice and beans, not counting anything else). That's $700 for other stuff with a budget of just $1,000/yr/person for food. [EDIT] now that I think about it, you could probably get away without a real kitchen on this diet. Rice cooker or crock pot, microwave, mini fridge, water source. Portable propane burner if you can swing it, for when you have stuff that's not rice+beans. [EDIT EDIT] and you can skip the microwave if you have the burner.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  > with the occasional serving of ... multivitamin to make sure you don't end up deficient in something important multivitamins do have to come from somewhere. And they can be squeezed from actual foods or created synthetically [1]. [1] http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-vitamin-supplements http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-vitamin-suppleme...
jelliclesfarm 10y ago
food is abundant. it can be free. and yet..not. farming isnt 'high profit' by any definition. it is however expensive because you cant throw seeds and eat food. labour is expensive. there is a terrible and tremendous cost to working the soil. and it's invisible too. it is bad for the environment but there is no way to quantify it. everytime you see a tractor rip the soil, that's carbon released into the atomosphere. it is highly dependent on fossil fuels. seeds have become proprietary. you are paying more for distribution and storage..sometimes triple the cost of the food itself. its complicated.

WaxProlix 10y ago

> Just gonna put an idea out here: what if food was so abundant it was free? The land it's farmed on has inherent value to someone; there's no amount of labor cost reduction or automation that can bring food costs below the value of the land + whatever raw materials go into production (seed, feed, whatever). > Industrialization and the Green Revolution have made food so plentiful, we can have foods from all over the world available to us at any time of year. And yet people starve all over the place; not just in 3rd world countries but here in the USA. So either it's not that plentiful or we have a serious logistical problem.

Girlang 10y ago
Nobody's starving in the U.S. Our problem is obesity. Raising the cost of food would be a good thing.
leereeves 10y ago
How many people in the US starve to death from simple lack of access to food, without other physical or mental problems that prevent them from obtaining food from one of the many available sources?
chris_va 10y ago
> And yet people starve all over the place; not just in 3rd world countries but here in the USA. So either it's not that plentiful or we have a serious logistical problem. It is the latter, in case you were curious. Access to food requires uninterrupted distribution, which is not always the case.
- DougN7 10y ago
  I don't think it's distribution - there is food available in every store I've seen. It's money to buy the food with, or money to buy mobility to get to the food.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    They've been playing a PSA lately saying that "40% of the food produced in America goes to waste". So, on average, people in this country are already spending close to double the amount that they should for food. So, there's distribution from farm to store to home, but there's a non-existent link out of the home into a second-stage distribution pipeline, or something.
    - leereeves 10y ago
      This might be the source of that statistic: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf Only about 25% of the losses (ie 10% of the food) are attributed to "consumer losses".
    - jelliclesfarm 10y ago
      i have a farm and more than 40% never reaches anyone. it is not worth it for me to harvest it even to donate it because the labour would wipe out my profits. but if i let it rot and decompose..make my own compost, there is some value in it for me. isnt that awful? but yea...farming reality. it is what it is..
      - khedoros1 10y ago
nradov 10y ago
Almost every major long term famine in the past 100 years was caused by violent conflict or colonial occupation. Those root causes create the logistical problems.

CuriouslyC 10y ago

If you got most of your calories directly from corn (instead of indirectly) you could keep yourself going for literally pennies a day. I have a 50lb bag of cornmeal that I got for ~$10 through bakery distributor. About 600g of that would provide sufficient calories for a typical day, so that is a 38 day supply - costing just over a quarter a day.

ashark 10y ago

A diet built mostly on rice and beans[0] with the occasional serving of liver, piece of fruit, can of sardines, and multivitamin to make sure you don't end up deficient in something important is already very, very cheap. So cheap that the annual cost of the square footage for the kitchen to cook it in (maintenance, rent/mortgage, tax. et c.) may be a bigger concern. Granted it's not a very fun diet, but hey, there are people who pay a whole lot of money for a bland food-goo meal substitute (which, admittedly, removes the need for a kitchen). [0] This prepper site http://geekprepper.org/what-is-the-cost-of-5-gallons-of-beans-and-rice/ http://geekprepper.org/what-is-the-cost-of-5-gallons-of-bean... (2015) figures over 100 days worth of rice+beans at ~$125, not counting containers to keep it in. Call it $300/year for a ~2500 calorie/day diet (in JUST rice and beans, not counting anything else). That's $700 for other stuff with a budget of just $1,000/yr/person for food. [EDIT] now that I think about it, you could probably get away without a real kitchen on this diet. Rice cooker or crock pot, microwave, mini fridge, water source. Portable propane burner if you can swing it, for when you have stuff that's not rice+beans. [EDIT EDIT] and you can skip the microwave if you have the burner.

nashashmi 10y ago
> with the occasional serving of ... multivitamin to make sure you don't end up deficient in something important multivitamins do have to come from somewhere. And they can be squeezed from actual foods or created synthetically [1]. [1] http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-vitamin-supplements http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-vitamin-suppleme...

jelliclesfarm 10y ago

food is abundant. it can be free. and yet..not. farming isnt 'high profit' by any definition. it is however expensive because you cant throw seeds and eat food. labour is expensive. there is a terrible and tremendous cost to working the soil. and it's invisible too. it is bad for the environment but there is no way to quantify it. everytime you see a tractor rip the soil, that's carbon released into the atomosphere. it is highly dependent on fossil fuels. seeds have become proprietary. you are paying more for distribution and storage..sometimes triple the cost of the food itself. its complicated.