I see how this meme is clearly targeting capitalism and not farmers, and I understand and agree with the point that money is the primary incentive for growing food under capitalism.
But in my opinion the part about letting people starve in order to manufacture scarcity misses the mark. As far as I can tell, the primary reason that so much food goes to waste is liability. No one wants to sell food that could reasonably be constrained as having caused an illness for fear of a lawsuit - if not for that fact, much more food “waste” would actually go to use. Even in the hypothetical absence of liability no overall food scarcity needs to be manufactured because there remains a scarcity of “premium” food.
Your point is arguably valid for the industrialized countries, but untrue for the preindustrial ones where hunger still takes place. We could industrialize them, but it’s not profitable, so we don’t.
I see how this meme is clearly targeting capitalism and not farmers, and I understand and agree with the point that money is the primary incentive for growing food under capitalism.
But in my opinion the part about letting people starve in order to manufacture scarcity misses the mark. As far as I can tell, the primary reason that so much food goes to waste is liability. No one wants to sell food that could reasonably be constrained as having caused an illness for fear of a lawsuit - if not for that fact, much more food “waste” would actually go to use. Even in the hypothetical absence of liability no overall food scarcity needs to be manufactured because there remains a scarcity of “premium” food.
Your point is arguably valid for the industrialized countries, but untrue for the preindustrial ones where hunger still takes place. We could industrialize them, but it’s not profitable, so we don’t.