[mos6507]

This is why I think a die off, while perhaps inevitable, is not likely to happen for a while. I'm sure we can do better than this, or if we have to waste food, convert it into biofuels on the way out.

Link

[eastbay]

Thanks mos. I sent it to a few non- po.com friends. I think the use of the garbage disposal is responsible for a good portion of the waste. It's rather sickening to think of all those resources going down the drain.

[Armageddon]

If credit freezes, trucking will halt. Goodbye food. Systemic collapse is a real possibility.

[SpringCreekFarm]

That is why it is good to have some chickens around, if you can. I feed mine the majority of table scraps except for meat and meat products.

[vtsnowedin]

That is why it is good to have some chickens around, if you can. I feed mine the majority of table scraps except for meat and meat products.

Why not meat to chickens? My father talked of grinding up whole cows, hooves and all and feeding out a gallon a day. No chance of trichinosis like there is in hogs. What do you know that I don't?

[frankthetank]

I compost everything of mine...

[SpringCreekFarm]

I don't give meat scraps to my chickens because the meat scraps go to my outside barn cat to subsidize expensive cat food.

[CarlosFerreira]

I was in a conference with Bob Watson, the Chief Scientist with DEFRA, just yesterday. This was one of the problems put forward in his presentation.

The western world, thanks to various inefficiencies, throws away 25% of the food produced. Sub-Saharan Africa, because of the difficulty with distribution channels and storage, sees 40% of the food produced go bad. And he stated that in Africa the problem could be reduced, with a modicum investment, to 10%. The Chinese going over and building roads helps more that the dumping of subsidised food we do.

[mos6507]

Topic's drifting. I was talking about wasting the food before it's sold, not table scraps. I find it sad that we can't inject a little more computerized efficiency in matching food supply with food demand to minimize the waste, and we can't find better things to do with the waste than let it rot and relase methane directly into the atmosphere. No biogas reactors, no ethanol, no large-scale composting, nothing. There is so much that can be done if we gave a crap.

[CarlosFerreira]

Topic's driving. I was talking about wasting the food before it's sold, not table scraps. I find it sad that we can't inject a little more computerized efficiency in matching food supply with food demand to minimize the waste, and we can't find better things to do with the waste than let it rot and relase methane directly into the atmosphere. No biogas reactors, no ethanol, no large-scale composting, nothing. There is so much that can be done if we gave a crap.

I see what you mean. You refer to the problem of rotting food, no matter where along the supply chain. I've given the example of Africa. 40% waste because of bad management/supply chain disruptions is the number here. Very worrying in a continent where millions of people are malnourished.

The point I'd like to make here is that the fact that 25% of food produced rots before reaching the consumer in the developing countries both gives me hope and makes me doomerish.

What I am about to say might shock some of the doomer crowd around. Please feel free to pelt my post after reading through it.

We have a problem of supply and demand. There is excess supply for the total demand, which drives the price of foodstuffs down and discourages efficiency. Agriculture, subsidized and otherwise, produces too much food for the world to eat. Distributors buy excessively cheap food, that does not account in its price for the subsidies and the environmental impact of over-intensive agriculture, and when demand does not catch up, the better way is to allow the food to rot instead of cutting down prices even further.

Apples going bad? Throw them away, we're selling them so cheap that if we lower prices further we'll lose more money. We sell so much anyway, we'll just add a little to evrything we sell to account for losses of those 24%. Grandma used to make apple jam, sure, and apple juice is great too; we could make both out of the apples going bad. But that means taking them further to a distribution centre and assign them to production plants. However, there's no incentive for that: the over-production is so much, the apple jam and the apple juice producers get apples from the same place supermarkets do. Good ones. The extra 3 trips and the administrative work needed to accomplish this "re-usage" would be so great, it would be more expensive for everyone.

It wouldn't be so bad if ag wasn't so terrible for the environment. Ag is probably the most impacting human activity in the ecosystem. Alone, it accounts for 30 of all GHG emissions worldwide. One third. Mind boggling!

So, never mind the fear of die-off because of lack of ag production. Sure, fertilizers and whatnot, there are and will be alternatives. Production holds. Climate change might have a larger impact on food production than peak oil. We'll just meed to be more efficient, produce a bit less, pay a little more, throw a lit less away. Most gains could come from efficiency, just as in energy usage. It's a perfect example of our throw-away economy.

The African situation, with disruptions in the supply-chain, scares me more. If we get to that, it might hurt. But, as long as production in the West holds well, and even with Climate Change it is supposed to hold well, we will be better off than present-day Africa. But they won't.

[vtsnowedin]

Any production process has its failure rate. Its reject pieces and seconds. Agriculture, dealing with living things subject to attack from insects microbes floods and droughts, isn't it a wonder they get any good production at all. I would say that a 25% loss between field and store shelf is probably a historical low and without oil you would be hard pressed to match much less improve on it.

[yesplease]

If credit freezes, trucking will halt. Goodbye food. Systemic collapse is a real possibility.

That's a pretty big if. At worst, outside of isolated incidents, I imagine more expensive credit would result in more expensive food.

[CarlosFerreira]

I would say that a 25% loss between field and store shelf is probably a historical low

Maybe. But the problem is those 25% are also on-shelf - supermarket through out an astonishingly large amount of food gone bad on a daily basis. It's cheaper for the to do so than to re-ship it to a place where it can be processed into something else. I worked in the retail industry, clothes department, for a while. Slow sellers are priced down, not taken back to the central an then to other stores. The system is one-way, does not work well with back-flows.[/quote]

Armageddon wrote:
If credit freezes, trucking will halt. Goodbye food. Systemic collapse is a real possibility.
That's a pretty big if. At worst, outside of isolated incidents, I imagine more expensive credit would result in more expensive food.

I agree with that. And higher prices are an incentive towards efficiency.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Part of the problem is also picky consumers who expect all of their apples to look like the one on tv with no spots, blemishes or ever odd discolourations. Or those who do things like open corn on the cob but won't buy it because its not perfect inside. Then becuase the cob is open others won't buy it now either.

[vtsnowedin]

I would say that a 25% loss between field and store shelf is probably a historical low

Maybe. But the problem is those 25% are also on-shelf - supermarket through out an astonishingly large amount of food gone bad on a daily basis. It's cheaper for the to do so than to re-ship it to a place where it can be processed into something else. I worked in the retail industry, clothes department, for a while. Slow sellers are priced down, not taken back to the central an then to other stores. The system is one-way, does not work well with back-flows.

Armageddon wrote:
If credit freezes, trucking will halt. Goodbye food. Systemic collapse is a real possibility.
That's a pretty big if. At worst, outside of isolated incidents, I imagine more expensive credit would result in more expensive food.

I agree with that. And higher prices are an incentive towards efficiency.[/quote]

Around here a lot of that ends up as pig feed. Its a hassel for the farmer to unpackage some of it but as long as its free all he has is trucking and time in it. To a pig stale bread and sour milk with some wilted cabbage is a devine repast.

[vtsnowedin]

Part of the problem is also picky consumers who expect all of their apples to look like the one on tv with no spots, blemishes or ever odd discolourations. Or those who do things like open corn on the cob but won't buy it because its not perfect inside. Then becuase the cob is open others won't buy it now either.

It costs just as much to ship a bad apple as it does a bright red perfect one and the perfect apple is more likely to arrive in saleable condition then one that has visable and perhaps hidden defects. If there is any distance involved you only ship the #1 grade produce. Its just poor business to do anything else.

[yesplease]

Around here a lot of that ends up as pig feed. Its a hassel for the farmer to unpackage some of it but as long as its free all he has is trucking and time in it. To a pig stale bread and sour milk with some wilted cabbage is a devine repast.

That's what we get with subsidized food production and an inefficient system...

[vtsnowedin]

Around here a lot of that ends up as pig feed. Its a hassel for the farmer to unpackage some of it but as long as its free all he has is trucking and time in it. To a pig stale bread and sour milk with some wilted cabbage is a devine repast.

That's what we get with subsidized food production and an inefficient system...

And your better system would be????

[CarlosFerreira]

Around here a lot of that ends up as pig feed. Its a hassel for the farmer to unpackage some of it but as long as its free all he has is trucking and time in it. To a pig stale bread and sour milk with some wilted cabbage is a devine repast.

That's what we get with subsidized food production and an inefficient system...

Yes, I agree. That was my point - why produce perfectly good, spotless food and then let rot and feed it to the pigs, ending up with lots of environment stress in the process?

Thank you for pointing it out.

[CarlosFerreira]

Around here a lot of that ends up as pig feed. Its a hassel for the farmer to unpackage some of it but as long as its free all he has is trucking and time in it. To a pig stale bread and sour milk with some wilted cabbage is a devine repast.

That's what we get with subsidized food production and an inefficient system...

And your better system would be????

produce cheaper pig food instead of feeding it high quality, high price human food, that's been irradiated and kept with more care - and expense. It would be cheaper for society as whole.