Dumped Milk, Smashed Eggs, Plowed Vegetables: Food Waste of the Pandemic

[Professor Emeritus]

Man, it says they’ve donated what they can and can’t really export it. It’s perishable food. So unless you expect them to track down individual households and mail shyt out - not happening ever, and not in the midst of an infrastructure stressed by a pandemic - not sure what else they can do.

this type of food waste happens in households nationwide as well. Double edge sword, you want to eat fresh foods, but if you don’t get to them in time, they go bad.

I can see the issue with milk but onions? Beans? Eggs? That stuff lasts plenty long to export. American egg exports alone are a $100+ million/year industry. Think if just, at bare minimum, we shipped to places facing serious malnutrition in Caribbean/Latin America. Haiti. Guatemala. Ecuador. etc. It wouldn't be permanent but it wouldn't be a one-off either since lowered demand is going to be an issue for a while yet. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable people in a lot of poor countries are even more vulnerable right now due to the lack of work day laborers are dealing with. If we, as a nation, actually cared about food waste or other people's health then we could move that shyt.

And you talk about infrastructure "stressed by a pandemic", but the ports and the ships are still operating and shipping actually has less strain than usual due to lack of demand. I got a friend who works in longshoreman management (don't know what you call the job but he manages longshoremen) and he still goes to work, but only when a ship is coming in which is way less than before. The truckers are still driving their routes so long as they have product to move, and there's probably a lot of trucking and shipping companies who would love some government-funded business right now.

 

[Pressure]

I can see the issue with milk but onions? Beans? Eggs? That stuff lasts plenty long to export. American egg exports alone are a $100+ million/year industry. Think if just, at bare minimum, we shipped to places facing serious malnutrition in Caribbean/Latin America. Haiti. Guatemala. Ecuador. etc. It wouldn't be permanent but it wouldn't be a one-off either since lowered demand is going to be an issue for a while yet. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable people in a lot of poor countries are even more vulnerable right now due to the lack of work day laborers are dealing with. If we, as a nation, actually cared about food waste or other people's health then we could move that shyt.

Who is stopping their governments from purchasing these goods? It certainly isnt the farmers.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Who is stopping their governments from purchasing these goods? It certainly isnt the farmers.

Where do you see me blaming farmers?

 

[Pressure]

Capitalism.

You think socialism would change this? Socialism doesn't mean free. Yall have gone full retard.

 

[Pressure]

Where do you see me blaming farmers?

Who are you blaming? Be specific?

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Who are you blaming? Be specific?

Thought I already made that clear. You just just go back and read my posts again rather than forcing me to write out extra for you.

At home and abroad. With as little output as is going around right now in other sectors it would certainly be possible for the government to get this shyt shipped out to people who need it, but that wouldn't do anything to help corporate profits and if it doesn't help profits then they really don't care.

I can see the issue with milk but onions? Beans? Eggs? That stuff lasts plenty long to export. American egg exports alone are a $100+ million/year industry. Think if just, at bare minimum, we shipped to places facing serious malnutrition in Caribbean/Latin America. Haiti. Guatemala. Ecuador. etc. It wouldn't be permanent but it wouldn't be a one-off either since lowered demand is going to be an issue for a while yet. Meanwhile, the most vulnerable people in a lot of poor countries are even more vulnerable right now due to the lack of work day laborers are dealing with. If we, as a nation, actually cared about food waste or other people's health then we could move that shyt.

And you talk about infrastructure "stressed by a pandemic", but the ports and the ships are still operating and shipping actually has less strain than usual due to lack of demand. I got a friend who works in longshoreman management (don't know what you call the job but he manages longshoremen) and he still goes to work, but only when a ship is coming in which is way less than before. The truckers are still driving their routes so long as they have product to move, and there's probably a lot of trucking and shipping companies who would love some government-funded business right now.

Government has been dumping tens of billions of farmers since Trump's trade wars started, dumping hundreds of billions on corporations since the economic collapse started, but we won't use that money to actually help desperate people and keep food from being wasted. They'd rather choose their winners and losers based on their own connections and lobbyists rather than using the money where it could get something good done.

 

[Pressure]

Thought I already made that clear. You just just go back and read my posts again rather than forcing me to write out extra for you.




Government has been dumping tens of billions of farmers since Trump's trade wars started, dumping hundreds of billions on corporations since the economic collapse started, but we won't use that money to actually help desperate people and keep food from being wasted. They'd rather choose their winners and losers based on their own connections and lobbyists rather than using the money where it could get something good done.

And you referred to foreign countries. And i said in response, who is stopping those countries from purchasing these excess goods?




Im not sure any of your gripe is particularly relevant to this current phenomenon or the larger phenomenon which seems to be overproduction.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

And you referred to foreign countries. And i said in response, who is stopping those countries from purchasing these excess goods?

A mix of lack of capacity and lack of concern. But what does that have shyt to do with what I said?

Haiti's government ain't shyt, so therefore I shouldn't give a shyt about Haitians?



I have lots of other very different thoughts about the endemic issues in farming in America, some of which I've shared in other threads. But right here I only felt like talking about what's going on in the here and now.

 

[Pressure]

Farmers make too much food.
Consumers and businesses buy too much food.
Either way we end up wasting a ton of food.

 

[Pressure]

A mix of lack of capacity and lack of concern. But what does that have shyt to do with what I said?

Haiti's government ain't shyt, so therefore I should't give a shyt about Haitians?

Food Assistance Fact Sheet - Haiti | Food Assistance | U.S. Agency for International Development

Based on the data their are 62k food insecure individuals in Haiti.

We provided food for nearly 5x that amount.



Haiti has a lot of problems, us not providing them with food isnt where I'd go.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Food Assistance Fact Sheet - Haiti | Food Assistance | U.S. Agency for International Development

Based on the data their are 62k food insecure individuals in Haiti.

We provided food for nearly 5x that amount.



Haiti has a lot of problems, us not providing them with food isnt where I'd go.

Breh, you misread that chart badly. 62k was the number of Haitians helped by that one US program, not the number of food insecure individuals in Haiti. In what fukking world do you think there are only 62k food insecure individuals in Haiti? You are not thinking through shyt at all if you think only 62k Haitians have trouble putting food on the table.

Haiti’s high score is driven mainly by its undernourishment rate, which is the third-highest value in this year’s report (see Appendix C). At 49.3 percent, Haiti’s 2016–2018 undernourishment rate is nearly the same as it was in 2009–2011 (49.5 percent), showing that approximately half of the population is not able to meet its minimum calorie requirements on a regular basis (Figure 4.4). Key contributors to food insecurity in Haiti include a high poverty rate and low agricultural productivity, which, in turn, results from frequent natural disasters, a high level of environmental degradation, and heavy reliance on rain-fed agriculture (USAID 2017).

Many Haitians consume poor-quality diets with low dietary diversity. According to a countrywide assessment, iron-rich foods were lacking in the diets of half of households, and at least one in four households had deficits in the consumption of foods rich in protein and vitamin A (WFP 2016). A small-scale study in southwestern Haiti found that fish, meat, dairy, and eggs, which are rich in protein and micronutrients, were the least frequently consumed food groups.

That's 5.5 MILLION Haitians who are undernourished, with milk and eggs specifically mentioned as something severely lacking in their diets.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Historically, as part of HIV care and support services, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in Haiti provided nutritional support for infants and young children infected or affected by HIV, and Nutrition, Assessment, Counseling, and Support (NACS) for both adult and pediatric patients. However, due to limited resources, this support has been scaled back to targeted nutritional support (hot and/or cold meals) for patients newly enrolled on antiretroviral therapy for the first 6 to 9 months.

So due to "lack of resources", we ain't even supporting nutritional food for AIDS patients beyond their first 6 to 9 months.


I ain't gonna write an aid plan for the Western Hemisphere in this thread. I'm just pointing out that our government has zero interest in ensuring that our food is produced and distributed wisely and helpfully and not wasted, and this is just one more data point.

 

[Pressure]

Breh, you misread that chart badly. 62k was the number of Haitians helped by that one US program, not the number of food insecure individuals in Haiti. In what fukking world do you think there are only 62k food insecure individuals in Haiti? You are not thinking through shyt at all if you think only 62k Haitians have trouble putting food on the table.


That's 5.5 MILLION Haitians who are undernourished, with milk and eggs specifically mentioned as something severely lacking in their diets.

You are correct, 62k was just one break down. Based on the data we provided food aid for nearly 350k Haitians in November and December and set up and additional stockpile for a months worth of food for 300k people.

Its not the job of the US to feed Haiti.

It certainly isnt the job of the US to feed haiti while dealing with a Pandemic here that has laid off more people than the entire population of Haiti.

We're not going to agree here.just as we likely arent going to agree that Haiti has been ran like shyt for my entire life.

 

[Pressure]

So due to "lack of resources", we ain't even supporting nutritional food for AIDS patients beyond their first 6 to 9 months.


I ain't gonna write an aid plan for the Western Hemisphere in this thread. I'm just pointing out that our government has zero interest in ensuring that our food is produced and distributed wisely and helpfully and not wasted, and this is just one more data point.

Your data points would be more effective if you were arguing for the distribution of excess American food for the malnourished Americans.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Its not the job of the US to feed Haiti.

The US doesn't have a "job", ideally it should do whatever the people want it to do. If the people want the US to dump enormous amounts of food on the ground, then dumping food is the job. If the people want that food to feed malnourished folk instead, then yes, feeding malnourished folk is our job.

It certainly isnt the job of the US to feed haiti while dealing with a Pandemic here that has laid off more people than the entire population of Haiti.

Hmmm...you would think that paying farmers and distributors would help that issue rather than hurting it, no? Like I said before, if you're going to give billions of dollars in corporate aid anyway, why not aid them in doing useful things? You want this to be like the bank bailouts where they take the money just to increase management salaries and then lay folk off anyway? Why not pay these guys to ACCOMPLISH something?

Your data points would be more effective if you were arguing for the distribution of excess American food for the malnourished Americans.

I included Americans right at the beginning, but you ignored that because you have some sort of ax to grind.

We're not going to agree here.just as we likely arent going to agree that Haiti has been ran like shyt for my entire life.

I agree we won't agree here because you pretended to be basing your argument on facts, when you neither knew the facts nor particularly cared about them. You were off on the # of malnourished people in Haiti by a factor of 100. Yet being corrected didn't lead you to change your position at all. Whenever I see someone prove that their argument is immune to facts, I know something else has been going on.

And of course the USA and its corporate interests are a MAJOR reason that Haiti has struggled, but those facts are unlikely to be interesting either. And there have been some pretty wild swings in how Haiti has been run in your lifetime so throwing it all under one brush is pretty weird. But I get you - the main basis of your positions is that you care a lot more about Americans than you do about people in other countries. We're built different and that's that.