7 ms·

> I think the word prematurely is missing If its a the processing plant that's kind of true, even if they could run them through the automated 'harvesting' sy

> I think the word prematurely is missing If its a the processing plant that's kind of true, even if they could run them through the automated 'harvesting' system its probably really expensive to store until an undisclosed time for it to be processed and then sent to market. At a significant loss in Market price, I imagine. So its best to take the subsidy/insured loss and restart again. This is actually really fucking sad... I hope it encourages more people to focus on the World's broken food supply and its immense waste and do something about it. I hope we don't have to see the same thing that happened with toilet paper, and paper towels happen with our food before people get the message that we have to re-think our entire infrastructure. > Americans eat 24M chickens per day. So 2M killed is only a fraction of the number eaten in a single day. That's a horrible calculus, and quite frankly stereotypical of People so detached from their food system: have you taken into consideration the externalities of hatching, raising, and ultimately getting them to Market size? It's actually incredibly costly. And they were probably factory farmed, which makes it even worse given the cruel practices involved. On a positive note: Spring is finally here, and I saw a bunch of people's Community Garden's today.

mike_d 7y ago
> focus on the World's broken food supply and its immense waste That is an extremely hyperbolic statement. According to the United Nations [https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez] fruits, vegetables, cereals, and roots account for 70% of all food waste. It is unfortunate that due to a global pandemic they had to be put down, but chickens are the most efficient form for preserving and delivering calories from grains to the table. Additionally, industrialized and developing nations waste food at the same rate - just in different stages of the logistics chain. No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7 billion people have a meal a day.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Well, that raises further questions. How could a chicken farm or chicken meat in a freezer be more efficient forms of calorie storage than a grain silo or a shipment of flour? Do you have a source?
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Because frozen meat stays good literally forever. Flour eventually goes bad. Grain can rot.
    - namibj 7y ago
      Dried grain, when sealed against humidity, is stable in a passive store like an old mine for wau over half a century. So, no, grain storage is incredibly low-maintenance, compared to a freezer.
    - strgcmc 7y ago
      Your comment inspired me to do a little reading, since this is an interesting idea (and maybe represents an opportunity in the supply chain... maybe what we need is better/newer technology for long-term storage of grains/flour/etc.). Apparently, flour can (should?) be frozen for long-term storage, and would keep indefinitely: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay-to-keep-flour-in-the-freezer https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay... (unfortunately that link to University of Nebraska is 404 now). Long-term grain storage concerns: https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and-equipment/grain-bins/8-tips-f-longterm-grain-stage_214-ar45622 https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and-equ... ; as a non-expert, this begs the question of why more climate control is not done, to create indefinite/permanent storage (probably just not economical to do so, but given disruptions like COVID-19, maybe this will change?).
      - bryanlarsen 7y ago
        > just not economical to do so Yup. Grains are so incredibly cheap that's it's not worth preserving them. My favorite stat to pull out at parties: The price of a bushel of wheat (aka 60 pounds) has been approximately one British pound since the mid 1300's. It's currently worth about 4 British pounds, but that says more about how much the British pound has declined against the USD than it says about the price of wheat.
        7y ago
- Melting_Harps 7y ago
  > That is an extremely hyperbolic statement. It isn't, having worked in both Agriculture and Culinary in 11 countries spanning two continents, and 2 islands I think my position is far more informed than your own and perhaps even those stats you have given as it only gives averages. Context: I also have a background in logistics and supply chains at VW and BMW, and I can tell you that any Industry losing UPWARDS of 40% of all product from start to end (even more when viewing farm to end consumer depending on distribution channels) and accepts that loss is utterly doomed--the monetary losses are masked in murky mix of poverty and subsidies. There are many challenges with having a global food supply system, some that we will have to radically alter or abandon altogether, which are mainly environmental in the best of times and scarcity ridden disasters and Humanitarian crises in the worst. I've seen it occur in Egypt, Somalia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela and had interactions with people on the ground as it happen or that lived through it themselves and we later worked together. Its easy to dismiss when food is so plentiful at the shops, but this is actually why I went to IBM to go into their Food Safety program and left when I realized it was just vapourware. I understood that it only takes very simple variable changes to alter the very delicate and fragile system we have in place that we all rely on. There is a massive opportunity loss in not addressing this on so many levels, but even the glaring monetary one seems to go past unappreciated despite the fact that Agriculture is the biggest Industry in the World only second to FOREX, and mainly because FOREX includes the transactions within International Ag supply chains. Consider also that less 1.7% of the World's population feeds the other ~98% and things start to sink in really fast. The 'technical-debt' like issues with specialty crops that only grow in one specific area (almonds in Central CA is one example) rather than having several cultivars throughout the World are disasters waiting to happen. I'm not sure if its by design or sheer ignorance anymore, as some to profit from either scenario but either way it needs to be resolved. I'm glad you guys have taken so much interest in this subject, as its a personal passion of mine; I will go thoroughly in all the responses, and please engage if you want to discuss the matter further as I welcome more discussion to get people involved as this is not only a dire problem, but its ultimately a solvable optimization issue given enough focus. And I think tech people are what are needed most, on a calories basis we've already reached a post-scarcity situation in food production already. > No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7 Agreed, I would go so far as to say its a modern working miracle it does yield that result when you see its inherit flaws we seem to willfully neglect because it doesn't affect +98% of thew World's population, and have gone into detail before why that is in other posts. On the other end of that equation for the farmers is often poverty and suicide.
Aeolun 7y ago
24 million chickens?! That’s one chicken per person per 10 days or so. That’s a fuckton of chickens.

mike_d 7y ago

> focus on the World's broken food supply and its immense waste That is an extremely hyperbolic statement. According to the United Nations [https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez] fruits, vegetables, cereals, and roots account for 70% of all food waste. It is unfortunate that due to a global pandemic they had to be put down, but chickens are the most efficient form for preserving and delivering calories from grains to the table. Additionally, industrialized and developing nations waste food at the same rate - just in different stages of the logistics chain. No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7 billion people have a meal a day.

skybrian 7y ago
Well, that raises further questions. How could a chicken farm or chicken meat in a freezer be more efficient forms of calorie storage than a grain silo or a shipment of flour? Do you have a source?
- sandworm101 7y ago
  Because frozen meat stays good literally forever. Flour eventually goes bad. Grain can rot.
  - namibj 7y ago
    Dried grain, when sealed against humidity, is stable in a passive store like an old mine for wau over half a century. So, no, grain storage is incredibly low-maintenance, compared to a freezer.
  - strgcmc 7y ago
    Your comment inspired me to do a little reading, since this is an interesting idea (and maybe represents an opportunity in the supply chain... maybe what we need is better/newer technology for long-term storage of grains/flour/etc.). Apparently, flour can (should?) be frozen for long-term storage, and would keep indefinitely: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay-to-keep-flour-in-the-freezer https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay... (unfortunately that link to University of Nebraska is 404 now). Long-term grain storage concerns: https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and-equipment/grain-bins/8-tips-f-longterm-grain-stage_214-ar45622 https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and-equ... ; as a non-expert, this begs the question of why more climate control is not done, to create indefinite/permanent storage (probably just not economical to do so, but given disruptions like COVID-19, maybe this will change?).
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      > just not economical to do so Yup. Grains are so incredibly cheap that's it's not worth preserving them. My favorite stat to pull out at parties: The price of a bushel of wheat (aka 60 pounds) has been approximately one British pound since the mid 1300's. It's currently worth about 4 British pounds, but that says more about how much the British pound has declined against the USD than it says about the price of wheat.
      - 7y ago
Melting_Harps 7y ago
> That is an extremely hyperbolic statement. It isn't, having worked in both Agriculture and Culinary in 11 countries spanning two continents, and 2 islands I think my position is far more informed than your own and perhaps even those stats you have given as it only gives averages. Context: I also have a background in logistics and supply chains at VW and BMW, and I can tell you that any Industry losing UPWARDS of 40% of all product from start to end (even more when viewing farm to end consumer depending on distribution channels) and accepts that loss is utterly doomed--the monetary losses are masked in murky mix of poverty and subsidies. There are many challenges with having a global food supply system, some that we will have to radically alter or abandon altogether, which are mainly environmental in the best of times and scarcity ridden disasters and Humanitarian crises in the worst. I've seen it occur in Egypt, Somalia, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela and had interactions with people on the ground as it happen or that lived through it themselves and we later worked together. Its easy to dismiss when food is so plentiful at the shops, but this is actually why I went to IBM to go into their Food Safety program and left when I realized it was just vapourware. I understood that it only takes very simple variable changes to alter the very delicate and fragile system we have in place that we all rely on. There is a massive opportunity loss in not addressing this on so many levels, but even the glaring monetary one seems to go past unappreciated despite the fact that Agriculture is the biggest Industry in the World only second to FOREX, and mainly because FOREX includes the transactions within International Ag supply chains. Consider also that less 1.7% of the World's population feeds the other ~98% and things start to sink in really fast. The 'technical-debt' like issues with specialty crops that only grow in one specific area (almonds in Central CA is one example) rather than having several cultivars throughout the World are disasters waiting to happen. I'm not sure if its by design or sheer ignorance anymore, as some to profit from either scenario but either way it needs to be resolved. I'm glad you guys have taken so much interest in this subject, as its a personal passion of mine; I will go thoroughly in all the responses, and please engage if you want to discuss the matter further as I welcome more discussion to get people involved as this is not only a dire problem, but its ultimately a solvable optimization issue given enough focus. And I think tech people are what are needed most, on a calories basis we've already reached a post-scarcity situation in food production already. > No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7 Agreed, I would go so far as to say its a modern working miracle it does yield that result when you see its inherit flaws we seem to willfully neglect because it doesn't affect +98% of thew World's population, and have gone into detail before why that is in other posts. On the other end of that equation for the farmers is often poverty and suicide.

Aeolun 7y ago

24 million chickens?! That’s one chicken per person per 10 days or so. That’s a fuckton of chickens.