Gee, it's almost as if removing the profit motive of our food supply chain would result in more efficiency, less waste, and fewer hungry people. There's a ton of players in the 'deliver groceries...
Gee, it's almost as if removing the profit motive of our food supply chain would result in more efficiency, less waste, and fewer hungry people.
There's a ton of players in the 'deliver groceries to people weekly' market, showing it is viable to do so. Nationalize that supply/delivery chain, scale it up, and insure free food is available to all who want it.
Healthcare is a human right. Clean water, healthy food, and a place to live should be too.
On the other hand, if the people who needed the food had the money to buy it with (via UBI or similar), they wouldn't need food banks at all. Giving people money doesn't solve everything, but it...
On the other hand, if the people who needed the food had the money to buy it with (via UBI or similar), they wouldn't need food banks at all. Giving people money doesn't solve everything, but it will solve this one.
Right. So we learn from those lessons and do it better. Just because there were failures in the past does not mean that it will always fail. Capitalism has also had a large share of failures as...
Right. So we learn from those lessons and do it better. Just because there were failures in the past does not mean that it will always fail. Capitalism has also had a large share of failures as well. Technology has come a long way since the soviet model, enabling new methods to try.
It doesn't help that every time a socialist nation appears that the largest military power in the world wages direct or indirect war against it....especially if they dare to leave the petrodollar.
Here's how a socialist food program could work in America:
Nationalize all farms and processing facilities.
Set rough production targets based on current output of said farms.
Pay everyone in this supply chain $35 or more an hour, regardless of output. These are the most important workers in America.
Set costs of goods based on availablity of food.
Using delivery models such as Hello Fresh, Peapod, Amazon, and numerous CSAs, sell all goods direct to households first. Then to pubic and nonprofits organizations, then to private interests. Households get at-cost prices, nonprofit/public gets 5% markup, private 10%. Stockpile shelf-stable goods to cover shortages. Export excess goods at 7% markup.
Adjust production targets according to demand and ability to stockpile.
Provide bonuses for waste reduction, sustainability, and stability.
Grocery stores now only exist to sell excess or luxury goods. Food banks are no longer needed, just credits to the direct delivery service.
That may have been true when we had no idea what the capacity of our farms was. The soviet model isnt inherintly flawed, bit it did suffer tremendously from a lack of data. Now that everything is...
Exemplary
Economically dictating what needs to be produced and at what targets doesn't work.
That may have been true when we had no idea what the capacity of our farms was. The soviet model isnt inherintly flawed, bit it did suffer tremendously from a lack of data. Now that everything is studied, digitized, and we have ample computing resources, these things are less of a problem.
No human agency can determine exactly what is needed.
Duh. That's why you review every harvest, and engage farmers to say 'we produced way too much of x and not enough y, can you help?' You don't dictate from on high, you engage with the workers who understand how they can adjust their crop yields.
If we had no idea how many crops we were producing, we'd be in a state of perpetual famine. Hence the need to stockpile shelf-stable foods, so that we don't suffer if yields are lost.
That's the atrength of Capitalism, it adjusts its own targets as needed naturally
Not really, or articles like this one wouldn't exist. Food that is made shouldn't ever go to waste, period.
And then you get 35$ a tub cream cheese. I don't see how this is an improvement.
Howso? Ostensibly the costs of goods currently reflects the cost to make them and their availability. That's the whole reason to introduce market forces into a nationalized system.
If you're referring to the across-the board wage increases, then good. We should be acutely aware of the societal costs of our food.
How do you determine what each household needs?
By having a marketplace for them to buy from? You give X credit per person (where X is enough food for roughly 1400 healthy calories a day). The people can then choose how to spend their credit and buy more if desired.
How do we ensure all those ingredients are being sourced effectively?
By engaging in trade with other countries? By letting private interests try to compete? Just now there will be a cheaper public option for food to insure nobody goes hungry, which is far more important than general dietary preferences.
This goes back to the inefficiency of command and control.
Dairy farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Georgia have been forced to dump thousands of gallons of milk that no one will buy. In Florida, vegetable growers are abandoning harvest-ready fields of tomatoes, yellow squash and cucumbers for the same reason.
"We cannot pick the produce if we cannot sell it, because we cannot afford the payroll every week," says Kim Jamerson, a vegetable grower near Fort Myers. Those crops will be plowed back into the ground. "We'll have to tear 'em up," Jamerson says. "Just tear up beautiful vegetables that really could go elsewhere, to food banks, and hospitals, and rest homes."
[...]
Normally, chain restaurants buy a steady supply of produce, week after week. But most have shut down — and did so just as Florida's vegetable harvest shifted into high gear. "Now you're sitting there with all this production, perfect weather, and everybody's like, 'Oh no,' " Johnson says.
[...]
Something similar has happened to dairy farmers. Milk sales in supermarkets have increased, but not enough to make up for the drop in sales of milk to schools and cheese to Pizza Hut. Factories that make milk powder can't take any more milk. So some milk cooperatives have told their farmers to dump the milk that their cows are producing.
[...]
Claire Babineaux-Fontenot, CEO of Feeding America, a network of food banks and charitable meals programs, says that these programs normally receive large donations of unsold food from retail stores. In recent weeks, though, as retailers struggled to keep their shelves stocked, "we're seeing as much as a 35% reduction in that donation stream from retail," Babineaux-Fontenot says.
Food banks are trying to claim more of the food that is stranded in the food service supply chain, either through donations or by buying it.
Gee, it's almost as if removing the profit motive of our food supply chain would result in more efficiency, less waste, and fewer hungry people.
There's a ton of players in the 'deliver groceries to people weekly' market, showing it is viable to do so. Nationalize that supply/delivery chain, scale it up, and insure free food is available to all who want it.
Healthcare is a human right. Clean water, healthy food, and a place to live should be too.
On the other hand, if the people who needed the food had the money to buy it with (via UBI or similar), they wouldn't need food banks at all. Giving people money doesn't solve everything, but it will solve this one.
Right. So we learn from those lessons and do it better. Just because there were failures in the past does not mean that it will always fail. Capitalism has also had a large share of failures as well. Technology has come a long way since the soviet model, enabling new methods to try.
It doesn't help that every time a socialist nation appears that the largest military power in the world wages direct or indirect war against it....especially if they dare to leave the petrodollar.
Here's how a socialist food program could work in America:
Grocery stores now only exist to sell excess or luxury goods. Food banks are no longer needed, just credits to the direct delivery service.
That may have been true when we had no idea what the capacity of our farms was. The soviet model isnt inherintly flawed, bit it did suffer tremendously from a lack of data. Now that everything is studied, digitized, and we have ample computing resources, these things are less of a problem.
Duh. That's why you review every harvest, and engage farmers to say 'we produced way too much of x and not enough y, can you help?' You don't dictate from on high, you engage with the workers who understand how they can adjust their crop yields.
If we had no idea how many crops we were producing, we'd be in a state of perpetual famine. Hence the need to stockpile shelf-stable foods, so that we don't suffer if yields are lost.
Not really, or articles like this one wouldn't exist. Food that is made shouldn't ever go to waste, period.
Howso? Ostensibly the costs of goods currently reflects the cost to make them and their availability. That's the whole reason to introduce market forces into a nationalized system.
If you're referring to the across-the board wage increases, then good. We should be acutely aware of the societal costs of our food.
By having a marketplace for them to buy from? You give X credit per person (where X is enough food for roughly 1400 healthy calories a day). The people can then choose how to spend their credit and buy more if desired.
By engaging in trade with other countries? By letting private interests try to compete? Just now there will be a cheaper public option for food to insure nobody goes hungry, which is far more important than general dietary preferences.
As opposed to 'free market' waste where we toss 30-40% of our food produced in the trash.
From the article:
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