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Your statement seems confused. The food production system as a whole produces more food than humanity as a whole consumes. If you can and freeze your leftovers

Your statement seems confused. The food production system as a whole produces more food than humanity as a whole consumes. If you can and freeze your leftovers as an individual it does not change this. At a system level- farms, silos, and grocery stores have no interest in storing any more stock than reasonable, and continually stuffing a growing stock into a larger warehouse/silo is wasteful. If wide swathes of citizens changed their behavior to habitually can and freeze more leftovers, and waste less, it would be a good thing, and farms would decrease production, I agree. But it misses the point I made.

basch 7y ago
>At a system level- farms, silos, and grocery stores have no interest in storing any more stock than reasonable That sounds like an economic failure. On one hand we have futures and maple syrup reserves to keep prices up during shortages, but we dont have reserves to address "0% safety margin for a supply shock (aka famine)"? I would expect excess farm production to be stored for famine, as a stability control function of government. The farms still produce, still get their money, and the government has a safety net for keeping the peace during chaos.
- imtringued 7y ago
  That safety net won't last long.
  - basch 7y ago
    Like I said in my unpopular comment, I dont buy it. I dont buy that canning, freezing, and drying food cant lead to a long term storage reserve. Is it a geographic size issue, that the warehouse space cant possibly exist? Lett's say famine hits for one or two years, and we actually do get better about wasting food. Two years of famine year food usage is 1.33 years of current food usage. Its not possible to reserve that much food for the current population of a country, even dried? It sounds more like we just dont want to, the benefit doesnt outweigh the effort, or nobody wants to pay for it.
    - mech1234 7y ago
      Your solutions can exist. Whether they should or not is an economic tradeoff problem. Production is not free, storage is not free either. Neither one of us have been arguing with hard data yet regarding total $ costs, or evaluation of long-term risks, but the tradeoffs do exist. The U.S. grows 13 billion bushels of corn per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...). Of this, it looks like about 1 billion bushels go to feeding U.S. residents directly. I tried to lookup the volume of corn silos in the U.S. to get a good figure for how many years' worth of consumption we keep lying around, I haven't found anything yet. And this is all looking at a pretty low-level survival grain- canned foods are a bit more expensive to store, then fresh produce, then frozen foods, then fresh meat, etc. (approximately). These foods are also more expensive to produce.
      - basch 7y ago
        I said that one comment up. >That sounds like an economic failure. Id be curious to see an estimate of cost to store 1 year of sunflower, pepita, dried salmon, dried seaweed, dried spinach, dried blueberry. I am imaging a really gross salmon trail mix can, you eat one can a day. What is the main enemy of storing what is basically mass birdseed? Light/heat spoiling the fats?
    - throw321432 7y ago
      "1.33 years of current food usage." Imagine all the world's agriculturally produced land. Now imagine a third of the food produced in a warehouse. How big is this warehouse? Another way of looking at it: "How much rice would it take to provide the caloric needs of a family of four for a month, if they only ate rice?" A lot of rice! We don't realize how much volume and mass goes through our mouths because we buy food very often and never keep much of it at home.
      - basch 7y ago
        I know this isnt how it works, but. 1/3rd of food is wasted. If we canned 1/3 of food production instead, it would take 2 years to create 1 year of reserve food.

basch 7y ago

>At a system level- farms, silos, and grocery stores have no interest in storing any more stock than reasonable That sounds like an economic failure. On one hand we have futures and maple syrup reserves to keep prices up during shortages, but we dont have reserves to address "0% safety margin for a supply shock (aka famine)"? I would expect excess farm production to be stored for famine, as a stability control function of government. The farms still produce, still get their money, and the government has a safety net for keeping the peace during chaos.

imtringued 7y ago
That safety net won't last long.
- basch 7y ago
  Like I said in my unpopular comment, I dont buy it. I dont buy that canning, freezing, and drying food cant lead to a long term storage reserve. Is it a geographic size issue, that the warehouse space cant possibly exist? Lett's say famine hits for one or two years, and we actually do get better about wasting food. Two years of famine year food usage is 1.33 years of current food usage. Its not possible to reserve that much food for the current population of a country, even dried? It sounds more like we just dont want to, the benefit doesnt outweigh the effort, or nobody wants to pay for it.
  - mech1234 7y ago
    Your solutions can exist. Whether they should or not is an economic tradeoff problem. Production is not free, storage is not free either. Neither one of us have been arguing with hard data yet regarding total $ costs, or evaluation of long-term risks, but the tradeoffs do exist. The U.S. grows 13 billion bushels of corn per year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_production_in_the_United_...). Of this, it looks like about 1 billion bushels go to feeding U.S. residents directly. I tried to lookup the volume of corn silos in the U.S. to get a good figure for how many years' worth of consumption we keep lying around, I haven't found anything yet. And this is all looking at a pretty low-level survival grain- canned foods are a bit more expensive to store, then fresh produce, then frozen foods, then fresh meat, etc. (approximately). These foods are also more expensive to produce.
    - basch 7y ago
      I said that one comment up. >That sounds like an economic failure. Id be curious to see an estimate of cost to store 1 year of sunflower, pepita, dried salmon, dried seaweed, dried spinach, dried blueberry. I am imaging a really gross salmon trail mix can, you eat one can a day. What is the main enemy of storing what is basically mass birdseed? Light/heat spoiling the fats?
  - throw321432 7y ago
    "1.33 years of current food usage." Imagine all the world's agriculturally produced land. Now imagine a third of the food produced in a warehouse. How big is this warehouse? Another way of looking at it: "How much rice would it take to provide the caloric needs of a family of four for a month, if they only ate rice?" A lot of rice! We don't realize how much volume and mass goes through our mouths because we buy food very often and never keep much of it at home.
    - basch 7y ago
      I know this isnt how it works, but. 1/3rd of food is wasted. If we canned 1/3 of food production instead, it would take 2 years to create 1 year of reserve food.