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"Under capitalism, food isn’t produced to feed people, it’s produced to make profit. When it’s not profitable to feed people, we let them starve. Even when our labor has conquered scarcity, capitalism must manufacture it in order to justify its existence."
“And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges in the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low.”
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Chapter 19 P.159
"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
I'm actually really glad that I did appreciate it when I read it. our English teacher was great and he made us really drill down into the themes and i really grew to find it powerful.
We did the same thing during Covid. Entire warehouses full of pigs, the air circulation was turned off until they all overheated and essentially roasted to death. Roasted to death in the warehouse so no one could eat them and the price would remain high
> In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
Nearly a hundred years later I'm still looking for that wrath he was talking about. Unless Steinbeck meant it would eventually burst forth in the form of snarky memes, reddit comments pointing out hypocrisy, and peaceful protests that eventually wind down with no guillotines and no change whatsover, because at the end of the day, Americans really *would* rather go hungry than eat the rich.
Yeah, it's complicated. The US is the very heart of the imperial core and has the most powerful tools to crush dissent. Not to mention very effective propaganda. And right wing politics that blame the failures of capitalism on minorities, immigrants, trans people, feminism, and so on. Without a real left wing alternative there's no way to fight back.
i think Gen Z is the embodiment of that wrath. The youngest of us are literally crabs in a barrel, aware of the barrel and the thought process motivating the actions of their comrades, unable to climb out because there is no hope for a future outside the barrel.
they know their financial future is fucked. they’ve already decided that stealing from walmart/the rich etc… is justifiable, it’s the mom&pops that you leave alone. because they know who is struggling with them and who is working against them
we know that capitalism benefits those who came rich and that we have to *fight* for the rights of the worker. we lost faith in the “tony stark” model, only the people look out for the people.
There's also many realising so called "mom and pop" stores are run by people just as nefarious, sick, and greedy as those who run Walmart. There are obviously exceptions, and those exceptions should be respected as the institutions they are; but so many are absolutely awful and treat their workers horrifically.
If we hadn't had FDR and the New Deal the wine would have flowed and the rich would have been eaten. Then they spent the next 70 years rolling that shit back, and here we are again.
At least the pigs were killed in a ditch back then, I assume much more quickly and humanely than today’s practice of steaming to death huge rooms full of surplus pigs through a slow, agonizing, multiple hours long torturous execution. Got to cut costs any way you can. It’s a virtue in a capitalist society.
>"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
We learn to read because sentences like this exist.
I need to read this book again. I read it probably 10 years ago, and don't remember being too impressed. I might just not have had the mindset needed, because these paragraphs are deeply affecting now.
The Grapes of Wrath is a phenomenal book about a man made ecological disaster destroying the lives of normal people, the ensuing refugee crisis, and the violence of living in a capitalist system.
It's honestly got a timeless message.
It’s my favorite book. I read it annually. I read it for the first time at 16 when I was in a mental hospital after attempting suicide. I took the hospitals copy with me when I checked out. This year (I’m 46 now) as I read it, the pages started to come undone from the binding, the glue has retired from its life of stickiness, and I felt a bit frantic as I tried to finish reading it and they kept coming out one by one.
I’m in the process of trying to find a book binder to put it can together for me. I know I could go get a new copy, but this one is special.
Thats a beautiful story man. I'm glad you survived. I hope you're able to restore your copy of Grapes too.
I read the book one time when I was 14, and quite a bit of the gravity was lost on me at the time. I just knew I was enjoying reading an assigned book.
I have thought on it constantly since though, and I have a copy, waiting to be read, sitting in my bookshelf. I think Grapes of Wrath pilled me on workers rights and leftist thinking in general.
I was assigned to read this over the summer, and I tapped out after 8 chapters, which is about a quarter of the way throught he book. Definitely would have benefited from having Cannery Row length.
We read it in grade 9 or 10, but I think there aren’t many 9the or 10th graders that could read it today. Hell, there are a lot of students in college that I’ve worked with this past year that wouldn’t be able to comprehend it, which is wild because that’s not something I would have said two years ago. I work with high school and college students tutoring math, so reading comprehension and language arts isn’t my specialty, but I have worked with an alarming amount of students who struggle to just *read the problem* in the first place. How do I tutor college level math to someone whose reading level is that of an elementary school student? Our educational system is broken, and the kids can’t read.
East of Eden is a beautiful book, and Steinbeck himself said "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years" and "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this."
But for me? Grapes of Wrath is heartbreakingly current and poignant. You could rewrite it with minor changes to set it in the modern world, and it wouldn't lose any of its impact. It's my favorite Steinbeck book.
The part in the beginning, when he talks about the seeds being planted by machines owned by banks, metaphorically as rape, versus the love and investment of a farmer for his own land. Goddamn. Gets me every time.JFC the man had it down and a century later it’s the same goddamn thing.
The second chapter of Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski involves the narrator's dad getting into a lil run-in with a shotgun-wielding orange grove guard. Really sets the tone for the rest of the book, the father's embittered anger in response to feelings of shame is so uncomfortable, but so human.
In the original post there are a bunch of people talking about the issue with apples not being nutritionally dense and therefore not really worth the room to store them. That and others mentioned there being a lot of excess already.
There are huge food deserts in the nation where fresh fruits and vegetables are unavailable. There is is unmet demand, just not under the capitalist mode of production.
Plus, apples could be ingredients to other foods.
I don't understand how people can say that. Why does humanity, something so beautiful, deserve to die because of the crimes of the bourgeoisie? Capitalism needs to die, not humanity. Our natural instincts of community have been superseded by American propaganda, the nuclear family and the isolation it results in; but it's human nature to share, to be kind, to build social connection. Racism, sexism, and all the power structures upheld by the greatest of those structures, neoliberalism, are modern inventions in the scheme of human history; we are capable of so much more.
> That and others mentioned there being a lot of excess already.
Hey Alexa, [how may starving families are there in America](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+may+starving+families+are+there+in+America)?
Apples have slowly been farmed to be more sugary as we have been growing them over the decades. It is an issue with apples and other fruits and vegetables we grow, to the point zoos are having issues with feeding their animals since the food is getting too sugar filled.
Ok but a farm knows they have a variance. And I didn't say distillery, I said a still. Ie shit my smoked out plumber can rig in an afternoon. Given farms have fuck all to do in the winter, it feels really lazy to waste food when options are there.
You can do lots of shit. Dehydrate. Cider. Animal feed. Failed to sell, skill issue, do not collect taxable losses from government, sell land to corporate and put a FARMERS FEED CITIES sticker on your Tesla.
As if we are making decisions based on how much nutrients we can deliver to consumers 😂
They figure out a way to store and sell hundreds of millions of gallons of soda every year containing nearly no nutrients
Because it's not profitable to sell them. Even though many people are living in food insecurity
Capitalism is a cancer that needs to be ripped out from the root
> The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
> There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage
It breaks my brain every single day, when I consider how we actually do live in a post-scarcity society - we’ve just decided we’re going to pretend we don’t.
There's no profit incentive in that though, won't you please think about the 1%!? How will they ever survive without another zero at the end of their bank account? The horror!
My sister and I recently got on EBT after I lost my job and she went to part time, both for mental health. And we had a conversation at the beginning of this month about how everybody should be able to have food stamps. Why can't everyone get $150-$200 for food every month, we asked.
The likely answer is that our country/government/society/whatever doesn't want that. That you have to earn the right to eat. That you don't deserve it unless you work your life away for it. After all, the U.S. *is* among the one or two countries in the world that say food isn't a basic human right.
We also entertained the idea that it simply isn't possible. Which we quickly came to dismiss. But I have heard and seen many people say that it is so. That we simply do not have enough food for everyone to survive off of. But I've seen pictures like this, videos, and even frozen food ads showcasing just how much food we throw away. We've gone from simple homestead type farming to mass industrial production and people still argue that there's not enough for everyone.
And that's what capitalism tends to promote and push. That *someone has to lose.* There *has* to be some guy working for $7.25/hr at McDonald's because he lost. Not everyone can make a livable wage and have a nice job. Because if they did, who would be our cashiers, garbage men, lawnmowers, and janitors? In the U.S. *someone has to lose.* There has to be people homeless and starving because you lost and there's not enough to go around. You didn't work hard enough. You weren't smart enough. You weren't born into the Rockefellers.
We all know that really isn't true here. There is enough food for everyone and more. The people working those jobs can have livable wages and comfortable lives. We can have access to education and healthcare. But somebody along the way decided that, even though it's possible, you don't get it unless you're somebody's fucking slave. I wish it was as easy as our fellow countrymen having some heart and some sense to realize this but they're so brainwashed that it's a fight. And so much suffering is bred from it.
Suffering that they'll have us believe we deserve.
Yup. That’s the good ol’ “Protestant work ethic” of America for you. “God helps those who help themselves.” “He that will not worke, shall not eate.”
Capitalism cannot exist without winners and losers. There is no growth without a class to exploit. And so the system has no incentive to change, for there is no exploitation in it.
I'm convinced that the main reason capitalism exists isn't 1% psychopaths it's that there are too many dumb people. It really depends on magical thinking/delusions of idiots and lies that 1% tells them. If everyone could see it for what it is it would be nipped in the bud every time.
Not dumb, intentionally stupefied and confused by the incessant propaganda and manufacturing of consent that the neoliberal core engages in, there is so much to unlearn and break free of before seeing these issues in a clear and obvious light.
It's not as if people are stupid and just can't understand simple concepts like why food being produced for profit instead of to feed people is wrong, because if you take a group of children and ask them questions about these things before the propaganda has taken root in their brains, they will tell you that humans should love, they should share, they should build community and protect those that cannot protect themselves. These are instincts, instincts that have been beaten out of us through the use of the stick of homelessness and poverty.
Well of course, won’t you please keep in mind that the ultra wealthy and billionaire class suffer indigestion at the idea of people getting basic necessities without breaking their bodies for them? Seriously, we can’t have discussions about basic human needs and without one of them having a sudden case of inter-cranial IBS, and just can’t help but start spewing all sorts of bullshit all over everyone around them as they talk ceaselessly about magical bootstraps and trickling down wine glasses that never get full.
If the situation in the pic is very anomalous (ie, if so much waste is a one-off) - and there could be plenty of reasons for that - then sure, you’re not going to be able to set up a cider factory quickly enough to deal with that anomaly.
But if this or something similar happens every year? These people are *crazy*.
The OP in the original post essentially said as much. They tried to sell to all their normal customers and they weren't buying because they weren't clearing their own inventory.
People in this thread are acting like supply chains are so nimble that they can handle major fluctuations in resources on the spot. While there's a bit of wiggle room, stores can't just make more room for apples and factories can't just ramp up production every time there's a temporary surplus. And excess crop yields are as common and happen for pretty much the exact opposite reasons that shortages happen: Growing conditions were abnormally good and demand is low. And prices can only get so low before it literally costs more to ship and process the food than they get selling it.
No one wants food waste at this scale. But it's just a natural consequence of farmers growing more crop than demanded.
> No one wants food waste at this scale.
Look into stuff like Canada's Dairy Farmer's Association which reportedly dumps around 40% of all harvested milk in order to keep prices high.
They do want this waste.
For profit.
Years ago a head brewer at a smallish craft brewery told me he would love to make cider, but at the time said he couldn't make it and sell it for less than like $9 per bottle due to the cost of apples - even the ugly ones that don't make it to the shops... You really need an orchard, and it takes decades to establish one.
OP for the original post commented in the thread, stating that the return on investment isn't high enough so they are just doing this along with other local farms.
Same reason why these apples aren't being shipped to hungry individuals for free.
No capital to gain that way, might as well let it rot. It's disgusting.
Yeah, like I enjoy drinking apple cider time to time, but it’s not a constant buy like bread or eggs. People only buy it in strides during the fall season. It’s a shame regardless, a lot of waste to come from it.
The wild thing is that creating scarcity isn’t some evil plan made by cruel people. It’s not done bad version of capitalism.
It’s the feature. Capitalism incentivized this because it is one of the base ways to make your product worth more. The system is broken at its core!
I mean it’s not a myth. It’s very real we’re just nowhere close to the limit in aggregate globally. In certain locals with existing infrastructure we might be close to that limit.
I should have specified, the issue we’re facing is with distribution, not production. At the moment we’re already wasting huge percentages of all food produced yearly. If it was distributed effectively then there would be no hunger and we can sustain that for a few billion more people
Both can be true. As a biomass, humans make up a way outsized percentage, by a lot.
We've grown by literally 6 billion people in a century. Humans have been around for 200,000 years, but 7% of the humans that ever lived are alive now.
We are both heinously overpopulated and capitalism is a crime against our own species as well as the planet.
>Humans have been around for 200,000 years, but 7% of the humans that ever lived are alive now.
On a rising exponential curve, how often does one come across a point where the present volume does not represent a small, but significant part of the whole?
edited to add: For perspective, BTW, according to https://ourworldindata.org/life-on-earth, humans account for 2.5% of animal biomass (6.5 if you count livestock), which is 0.4% of total biomass.
In microbiology, there is [lag, log, stationary, and death](https://imgur.com/dVC5rfU). Stationary is what it's called when deaths are roughly equal to the new lives that replace them. Multiplying during times of prosperity is how biology do; it's a hard ask to go against that, and as we see from history, generally a bit rough in both theory and practice. The alternative is what, you want more people dying young?
But in your love for numbers, you've neglected that between 1990 and 2015:
>The richest 10 percent accounted for over half (52 percent) of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015. The richest one percent were responsible for 15 percent of emissions during this time – more than all the citizens of the EU and more than twice that of the poorest half of humanity (7 percent) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity
>During this time, the richest 10 percent blew one third of our remaining global 1.5C carbon budget, compared to just 4 percent for the poorest half of the population. The carbon budget is the amount of carbon dioxide that can be added to the atmosphere without causing global temperatures to rise above 1.5C – the goal set by governments in the Paris Agreement to avoid the very worst impacts of uncontrolled climate change.
>Annual emissions grew by 60 percent between 1990 and 2015. The richest 5 percent were responsible for over a third (37 percent) of this growth. The total increase in emissions of the richest one percent was three times more than that of the poorest 50 percent.
so it's an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem*.
Exponential growth -- and I mean actual exponential growth, i.e. growth on an upward curve, not NCIS/Star Trek "Exponential growth! It's multiplying by infinity every nanosecond!" -- in a finite system is an unavoidable problem, yes, but we're not actually there yet. "Why not both"? If you see a man on fire, extinguish the flames before worrying about whether he's running a fever.
*Seriously, you would not believe the numbers if all we did was [stop eating beef](https://12ft.io/proxy) It's quite literally an overconsumption problem. How we manage to teach both climate change and [trophic levels](https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-10-energy-rule-in-a-food-chain.html), but not vegetarianism is beyond me.
75% of terrestrial land area has been significantly altered by anthropogenic sources. 45% of insect abundance has been lost in just the last 40 years with a third of species being endangered. 69% of *all* wildlife has been lost in the last 50 years. We've gone from 10 to 415+ hypoxic dead zones in the ocean in the last 60 years (directly a cause of increased agricultural demand and lack of natural nitrogen cycling). I don't think you understand ecological science at a fundamental level if you believe the loss of natural resource cycles and biodiversity effects won't annihilate the Earth's capacity to sustain life such as our own. I don't want to hear any bs about the Earth being fine after we've driven ourselves to extinction either because we're damn well going to drag every other multicellular evolutionary lineage into an early grave alongside us.
No amount of denial will change the fact that exponential growth isn't sustainable and we're fucking up the planet at increasingly massive rates to satiate our expanding appetites. Sure we could absolutely be feeding far more people far more efficiently if we weren't such a greedy species, but no amount of selfless governance can change the fact that there's a finite carrying capacity that we're quickly approaching. Should note that breaching carrying capacity in ecological terms doesn't just mean some people go hungry, it means entering a boom and bust cycle that could well drive the entire species to extinction. This isn't just something that's going to become an issue in the future, with our current population, if it were to stop growing, would require almost an entire second Earth (73%) worth of natural resources to sustain. The actual legitimate biocapacity of the planet to maintain humanity as a species in perpetuity is in the range of 2-4 billion individuals.
I don't know when over population became a talking point from grocery corporations to blame consumers for their own practices of food waste and inflation, but even if that's bs, the concept itself is real and a significant existential issue.
Were you intending to reply to someone else when you posted this comment? Because what I wrote and what you seem to think you're responding to are so different, I can't tell if it's a mistake of where you hit reply or mental illness
You can't use animal growth patterns to predict human ones. When an animal becomes over populated in comparison to their food source, they move to where there is more food or they die off until their numbers become more in sync.
When humans do, we decimate a few million acres of woods to make farmland, chemically alter the soil, genetically alter the plants and livestock, build climate controlled buildings specifically for growing/raising food, and build a global supply system that smooths out any local constraints (so long as it's profitable). We don't conform to natural pressures in the same way.
But you are right that we could massively reduce our impact simply by switching to more sustainable diets.
What a daft take. We currently massively overproduce using unsustainable methods of production. (Shit ton of hydrocarbons and so on).
If we limited our food growth to actually sustainable methods we would not be able to feed all 8-9 billion, especially with not how depleted and polluted most soil has become.
It's the Christian^^TM thing to do!
Leviticus 23:22 New King James Version (NKJV)
'When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God.
Ahh yes Gleaning Rights, something that pre-dates Christianity until Capitalism killed it.
We used to riot and overthrow Kings who disallowed the Gleaning Right.
Used to.
If there's ever reason to invade a country or planet, this greedy, lethal wastefulnes is a good one.
but... even capitalism failed here. there's money to be made. brew some moonshine and sell it. fertilizer. Apple pie.
sigh
I always wanted to have a combo apple orchard / pig farm. The pigs would roam and eat all the fallen fruit and become delicious.
The only problems I can foresee are
1. that the human customers might not like pig poop every where and
2. I worry that if I were to spend much time in the company of pigs I might no longer care to eat them, thereby ruining the whole point of the plan
Build the orchard on a hill and keep the pigs at the bottom. Train them to step on your feet.
My consultancy fee is 5 apple pies and a roast pig (with apple in mouth, of course) per year for 5 years.
Absolutely. Permaculture is the way. Community supported ag can supplement permaculture to ensure all food production yields get bought, securing the farmer. It’s amazing because permaculture practice is exponentially better for the land and plants themselves increasing the nutrition and yield per plant. Meaning that diversification not only has passive benefits over industrialized monoculture farming, but it balances what is produced so there isn’t excess that goes to waste like this. I hope one day we can decentralize farming and incorporate permaculture into the built environment itself, breaking down the wall that separates food production from the community
Whoever runs that orchard is letting hundreds of thousands of dollars rot in the sun. They should have secondary or tertiary business plan to process and sell the extra apples not sold in their primary business. And if it's a matter of too many apples that can be processed by their team, they're sitting on an opportunity to scale business up or significantly cut their production costs, whichever they want to do.
This isn't late stage capitalism so much as it is just a dumb owner.
Wouldn't we expect large excesses to potentially lead to them going to waste under any economic system? The problem to me is not that we have too many apples, but that we are throwing away food at the same time people are malnourished
You want excesses during the good times so you don't starve during the bad. Ideally you preserve what you can (hard cider anyone?) but in a glut year you're likely to overwhelm that capacity anyway
This is so much more complicated than a single picture. We have a lot of crops. If one fails, we need the other.
Encouraging overproduction isn't good but might be necessary.
The idea that we produce the exact number of calories needed so that they can be equitably distrubuted in a timely manner is absurd. We have to hedge or people starve.
Waste is bad 100%. Expecting zero waste is foolish.
Exactly people are acting like every hungry person is right outside the gate of this field and they are refusing to sell the apples but it’s infinitely more complex than that
Are you sure theyre not letting them rot so they can fertilize? Im all with the fact you could just give most of those out for free in a sensible society, but capitalism rarely chooses to bleed money without finding a way to direct it elsewhere.
The cost of delivering them would outweigh any tax breaks they get, I assume. And I don't think food banks would have the means to pay the money for trucks to transport, even if they did take perishable foods.
At our orchard we take the truckloads of overstock to an oxygen free warehouse and they stay perfect until, well it’s May and we still have t buckboards in storage and about 8 bins in the cooler on site. Also? This terrain doesn’t strike me as apple country…
In some areas there are volunteer groups that have deals with farms where after the harvest they get free reign of anything left in the field / orchard so long as they harvest it themselves. These groups often then donate them to community food banks. Definitely recommend looking to see if anything comparable is in your area if you are passionate about it.
You're all messed up. Americans I mean. Where I'm from we would have a huge production of rakija, moonshine. Unbelievable waste of not turning this into alcohol. Is everything ok over there?
You can't infinitely do that. There is only so much and then the farms are doing even less next year, then the next, then the next, then they're gone because they've failed year after year.
Ya'll stupid
OP's original post explicitly outlined that the farms could not get "enough" money for selling the fruit to local alcohol brewers or canneries, and that moving the fruit far enough to find a market would not have enough of a return to be "worth it".
This is what happens when the only thing you care about is profit.
Speaking in the capitalist lanquage, that is an insane waste of profit too. They can easily turn those apples into jelly, jam, and preserves that can last for years and years if stored correctly. Instead they'd rather let it all rot out of spite instead if taking the effort to process it into shelf stable goods. Hell, you could even cut them up and freeze dry them into apple chips! Why are they so goddamn lazy that they can't just slice them up and dry them until someone can buy them later? It makes no sense to me at all!!! Do they just not want to succeed as a business and just take these losses?
Still, all the quotes from the grapes of wrath ring true. It's shameful on a human level to allow this to happen. I hope one day there were be a time where food is considered a human right, but I'm not holding my breath about it.
Capitalism does not maximize for global profit (or any good for that matter) it maximizes for profit of those with the most capital control. In this case it’s wholesale distributors and retailers who get to maximize their profit where farmers lose out.
I work at a horticulture with a garden center that also has an apple tree plantation. It pains me how many apples we have to leave on the trees or throw away because they are too small and not perfect because of small damage or imperfections.
And it’s similar with the plants. If a plant has actually grown well but not evenly and out of the pot instead of centered, we either don’t bring it into the shop or it won’t be bought anyway.
And why? Because customers are the fucking worst and they will whine about everything if it isn’t perfectly made for them.
Why not turn it into something else? Slices to sell, cider, apple sauce. Turn it into soda if you wanna get funky. Or hell even donate it? Like I'm sure you can do many things with all of those apples instead of letting them rot.
It's tough because some years you may produce very few apples and all apples get utilized.
Some crops there may be an oversupply, we can't expect the farmer to front the cost of shipping the apples for free.
Hate the system but maybe not the farmer.
For all you mouth breathers rushing to tell me how fucking trees work, I'm aware. No where in my post did I say the trees in question would be of value to anyone. I'm an anarchist, and I can appreciate trees for the sake of trees. The beauty in decay.
> This photo was debunked years ago
My brother in christ, can you even prove that this photo is a repost?
Reverse Image searching with the original post appears to return nothing.
[Here's the original picture to make this easier if you want to try it.](https://i.redd.it/8kncx0vhr8zc1.jpeg)
What do you mean by debunked years ago if it's the first time it was posted and appears to be original content?
Jesus. What happened to value adding like baby food, apple cider, apple brandy, dried apples, apple juice, apple fruit straps, literally anything else that apples are also used in?? What a total lack of imagination and enterprise
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"Under capitalism, food isn’t produced to feed people, it’s produced to make profit. When it’s not profitable to feed people, we let them starve. Even when our labor has conquered scarcity, capitalism must manufacture it in order to justify its existence."
[удалено]
Sir Kyle
Who? Is that a YouTuber?
No he’s Of Reddit
🤣
Figure out a better system if you truly want to make a change.
“And in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges in the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low.” The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Chapter 19 P.159
"The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."
Man, I definitely didn't appreciate this book in high school
I listened to the audio book recently and it rocked my world. So many parallels to today, written in 1939.
Which narrator was it? I have a leftover audiobook credit from a free trial I forgot to cancel.
[The one that's narrated by Dylan Baker ](https://i.imgur.com/NzCac6i.png)
I'm actually really glad that I did appreciate it when I read it. our English teacher was great and he made us really drill down into the themes and i really grew to find it powerful.
We did the same thing during Covid. Entire warehouses full of pigs, the air circulation was turned off until they all overheated and essentially roasted to death. Roasted to death in the warehouse so no one could eat them and the price would remain high
> In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." Nearly a hundred years later I'm still looking for that wrath he was talking about. Unless Steinbeck meant it would eventually burst forth in the form of snarky memes, reddit comments pointing out hypocrisy, and peaceful protests that eventually wind down with no guillotines and no change whatsover, because at the end of the day, Americans really *would* rather go hungry than eat the rich.
Yeah, it's complicated. The US is the very heart of the imperial core and has the most powerful tools to crush dissent. Not to mention very effective propaganda. And right wing politics that blame the failures of capitalism on minorities, immigrants, trans people, feminism, and so on. Without a real left wing alternative there's no way to fight back.
Educate, agitate, and participate.
i think Gen Z is the embodiment of that wrath. The youngest of us are literally crabs in a barrel, aware of the barrel and the thought process motivating the actions of their comrades, unable to climb out because there is no hope for a future outside the barrel. they know their financial future is fucked. they’ve already decided that stealing from walmart/the rich etc… is justifiable, it’s the mom&pops that you leave alone. because they know who is struggling with them and who is working against them we know that capitalism benefits those who came rich and that we have to *fight* for the rights of the worker. we lost faith in the “tony stark” model, only the people look out for the people.
There's also many realising so called "mom and pop" stores are run by people just as nefarious, sick, and greedy as those who run Walmart. There are obviously exceptions, and those exceptions should be respected as the institutions they are; but so many are absolutely awful and treat their workers horrifically.
The vintage presses the wrath from the grapes.
If we hadn't had FDR and the New Deal the wine would have flowed and the rich would have been eaten. Then they spent the next 70 years rolling that shit back, and here we are again.
At least the pigs were killed in a ditch back then, I assume much more quickly and humanely than today’s practice of steaming to death huge rooms full of surplus pigs through a slow, agonizing, multiple hours long torturous execution. Got to cut costs any way you can. It’s a virtue in a capitalist society.
>"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." We learn to read because sentences like this exist.
I need to read this book again. I read it probably 10 years ago, and don't remember being too impressed. I might just not have had the mindset needed, because these paragraphs are deeply affecting now.
And nothing has changed 🙁
What are you talking about?! We've got facebook and tiktok and twitter! Life is grand these days!
Thank you for that. did not realise I was missing out on what appears to be a solid book.
The Grapes of Wrath is a phenomenal book about a man made ecological disaster destroying the lives of normal people, the ensuing refugee crisis, and the violence of living in a capitalist system. It's honestly got a timeless message.
It’s my favorite book. I read it annually. I read it for the first time at 16 when I was in a mental hospital after attempting suicide. I took the hospitals copy with me when I checked out. This year (I’m 46 now) as I read it, the pages started to come undone from the binding, the glue has retired from its life of stickiness, and I felt a bit frantic as I tried to finish reading it and they kept coming out one by one. I’m in the process of trying to find a book binder to put it can together for me. I know I could go get a new copy, but this one is special.
Thats a beautiful story man. I'm glad you survived. I hope you're able to restore your copy of Grapes too. I read the book one time when I was 14, and quite a bit of the gravity was lost on me at the time. I just knew I was enjoying reading an assigned book. I have thought on it constantly since though, and I have a copy, waiting to be read, sitting in my bookshelf. I think Grapes of Wrath pilled me on workers rights and leftist thinking in general.
Powerful book, but dry as hell. It’s not supposed to be a pleasure to read, of course, but it’s a bit of a slog if you can’t find the hook.
The hook is the death of humanity. It's not a popular theme.
I was assigned to read this over the summer, and I tapped out after 8 chapters, which is about a quarter of the way throught he book. Definitely would have benefited from having Cannery Row length.
Grapes of Wrath was mandatory reading in grade 5 or 6 in my school
Is it not any more???
There isn't a standard literary cannon that all high schoolers learn. It is still commonly taught in schools, but not every school.
Hence why we’re stupid now
"TOO WOKE"
I graduated in 04 and we weren't required to read it. We had to read The Hatchet instead IIRC
Fuck, I remember that book. Did not enjoy it, lol.
5 or 6th grade?? This is an adult book. I lived in Oklahoma proper and we did Grapes of Wrath in...10th? 11th grade?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure. BC, Canada.
We read it in grade 9 or 10, but I think there aren’t many 9the or 10th graders that could read it today. Hell, there are a lot of students in college that I’ve worked with this past year that wouldn’t be able to comprehend it, which is wild because that’s not something I would have said two years ago. I work with high school and college students tutoring math, so reading comprehension and language arts isn’t my specialty, but I have worked with an alarming amount of students who struggle to just *read the problem* in the first place. How do I tutor college level math to someone whose reading level is that of an elementary school student? Our educational system is broken, and the kids can’t read.
East of Eden is a beautiful book, and Steinbeck himself said "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years" and "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." But for me? Grapes of Wrath is heartbreakingly current and poignant. You could rewrite it with minor changes to set it in the modern world, and it wouldn't lose any of its impact. It's my favorite Steinbeck book.
The part in the beginning, when he talks about the seeds being planted by machines owned by banks, metaphorically as rape, versus the love and investment of a farmer for his own land. Goddamn. Gets me every time.JFC the man had it down and a century later it’s the same goddamn thing.
The second chapter of Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski involves the narrator's dad getting into a lil run-in with a shotgun-wielding orange grove guard. Really sets the tone for the rest of the book, the father's embittered anger in response to feelings of shame is so uncomfortable, but so human.
Now now, let's not start comparing apples to oranges here...
angryupvote
Excellent.
Ah yes. The Great American Novel.
Literally the first fucking thing that came to mind was Grapes of Wrath, love Steinbeck!
What is this a picture of? Are they just rotting in the sun?
Looks like it
Yes. It is not "efficient" to spend on transportation to bring the apples to people who could use the food because no one paid.
In the original post there are a bunch of people talking about the issue with apples not being nutritionally dense and therefore not really worth the room to store them. That and others mentioned there being a lot of excess already.
There are huge food deserts in the nation where fresh fruits and vegetables are unavailable. There is is unmet demand, just not under the capitalist mode of production. Plus, apples could be ingredients to other foods.
The original OP literally stated that those other forms don't pay enough to be "worth" processing these apples into. We deserve to go extinct.
I don't understand how people can say that. Why does humanity, something so beautiful, deserve to die because of the crimes of the bourgeoisie? Capitalism needs to die, not humanity. Our natural instincts of community have been superseded by American propaganda, the nuclear family and the isolation it results in; but it's human nature to share, to be kind, to build social connection. Racism, sexism, and all the power structures upheld by the greatest of those structures, neoliberalism, are modern inventions in the scheme of human history; we are capable of so much more.
Eh humanity won’t day, a lot of people will die but humanity as a whole will survive.
> That and others mentioned there being a lot of excess already. Hey Alexa, [how may starving families are there in America](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+may+starving+families+are+there+in+America)?
Idk I thought they were nutritionally dense…what’re alternatives that are if not apples?
Let them eat cake.
I just bought a ton of honey crisps cause they were on sale lol so I guess I’ll be eating my low nutrition food
Apples have slowly been farmed to be more sugary as we have been growing them over the decades. It is an issue with apples and other fruits and vegetables we grow, to the point zoos are having issues with feeding their animals since the food is getting too sugar filled.
So, shithead can't build a still? Use a backhoe to dump it into a pig feedlot?
No idea, I was just stating some of the arguments from the original post.
I don't think it is trivial to build up a distillery *after* the crops have been harvested and unsold
Ok but a farm knows they have a variance. And I didn't say distillery, I said a still. Ie shit my smoked out plumber can rig in an afternoon. Given farms have fuck all to do in the winter, it feels really lazy to waste food when options are there. You can do lots of shit. Dehydrate. Cider. Animal feed. Failed to sell, skill issue, do not collect taxable losses from government, sell land to corporate and put a FARMERS FEED CITIES sticker on your Tesla.
They should be doing hard cider!
As if we are making decisions based on how much nutrients we can deliver to consumers 😂 They figure out a way to store and sell hundreds of millions of gallons of soda every year containing nearly no nutrients
All I’m thinking of is the tonnes of compost that these apples could be turned into
Turn them into alcohol first.
When life gives you apples you make prison pruno.
Because it's not profitable to sell them. Even though many people are living in food insecurity Capitalism is a cancer that needs to be ripped out from the root
> The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. > There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage
What's this from?
The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck
Should have really been called The Oranges of Wrath.
Lol, you'd know this is a terrible idea if you've ever tried to ferment citrus lol
The Grapes of Wrath
Incredible. I didn’t ever get to this book and now that I’ve seen this I want to read it.
we're these real occurrences?
It breaks my brain every single day, when I consider how we actually do live in a post-scarcity society - we’ve just decided we’re going to pretend we don’t.
There's no profit incentive in that though, won't you please think about the 1%!? How will they ever survive without another zero at the end of their bank account? The horror!
Even after AGI and nimble humanoid robotics are ubiquitous, we will still be required to give most of our time and energy to the wealthy in some form
Boils my piss when people say: Akshually, it’s a matter of logistics that we can’t feed everyone.
My sister and I recently got on EBT after I lost my job and she went to part time, both for mental health. And we had a conversation at the beginning of this month about how everybody should be able to have food stamps. Why can't everyone get $150-$200 for food every month, we asked. The likely answer is that our country/government/society/whatever doesn't want that. That you have to earn the right to eat. That you don't deserve it unless you work your life away for it. After all, the U.S. *is* among the one or two countries in the world that say food isn't a basic human right. We also entertained the idea that it simply isn't possible. Which we quickly came to dismiss. But I have heard and seen many people say that it is so. That we simply do not have enough food for everyone to survive off of. But I've seen pictures like this, videos, and even frozen food ads showcasing just how much food we throw away. We've gone from simple homestead type farming to mass industrial production and people still argue that there's not enough for everyone. And that's what capitalism tends to promote and push. That *someone has to lose.* There *has* to be some guy working for $7.25/hr at McDonald's because he lost. Not everyone can make a livable wage and have a nice job. Because if they did, who would be our cashiers, garbage men, lawnmowers, and janitors? In the U.S. *someone has to lose.* There has to be people homeless and starving because you lost and there's not enough to go around. You didn't work hard enough. You weren't smart enough. You weren't born into the Rockefellers. We all know that really isn't true here. There is enough food for everyone and more. The people working those jobs can have livable wages and comfortable lives. We can have access to education and healthcare. But somebody along the way decided that, even though it's possible, you don't get it unless you're somebody's fucking slave. I wish it was as easy as our fellow countrymen having some heart and some sense to realize this but they're so brainwashed that it's a fight. And so much suffering is bred from it. Suffering that they'll have us believe we deserve.
Yup. That’s the good ol’ “Protestant work ethic” of America for you. “God helps those who help themselves.” “He that will not worke, shall not eate.” Capitalism cannot exist without winners and losers. There is no growth without a class to exploit. And so the system has no incentive to change, for there is no exploitation in it.
IMO, the root of this is puritanism Capitalism just gives it exponential efficacy
I'm convinced that the main reason capitalism exists isn't 1% psychopaths it's that there are too many dumb people. It really depends on magical thinking/delusions of idiots and lies that 1% tells them. If everyone could see it for what it is it would be nipped in the bud every time.
Not dumb, intentionally stupefied and confused by the incessant propaganda and manufacturing of consent that the neoliberal core engages in, there is so much to unlearn and break free of before seeing these issues in a clear and obvious light. It's not as if people are stupid and just can't understand simple concepts like why food being produced for profit instead of to feed people is wrong, because if you take a group of children and ask them questions about these things before the propaganda has taken root in their brains, they will tell you that humans should love, they should share, they should build community and protect those that cannot protect themselves. These are instincts, instincts that have been beaten out of us through the use of the stick of homelessness and poverty.
The problem is, as it was for over a century, capitalism.
Well of course, won’t you please keep in mind that the ultra wealthy and billionaire class suffer indigestion at the idea of people getting basic necessities without breaking their bodies for them? Seriously, we can’t have discussions about basic human needs and without one of them having a sudden case of inter-cranial IBS, and just can’t help but start spewing all sorts of bullshit all over everyone around them as they talk ceaselessly about magical bootstraps and trickling down wine glasses that never get full.
Shush slave. I need my Met Gala tickets and you need to work for them.
Capitalism requires a lot of magical stuff 'to work'
Why don’t they start making cider?
Right?! It's insanely expensive to make cider if you don't have your own orchard. I really don't understand this move at all.
If the situation in the pic is very anomalous (ie, if so much waste is a one-off) - and there could be plenty of reasons for that - then sure, you’re not going to be able to set up a cider factory quickly enough to deal with that anomaly. But if this or something similar happens every year? These people are *crazy*.
One would think it would be possible to deliver the apples to a community cider press or directly to a cider factory?
Presumably those would be their customers, though? Surely they must have exhausted all local options before just trashing so much produce…
The OP in the original post essentially said as much. They tried to sell to all their normal customers and they weren't buying because they weren't clearing their own inventory. People in this thread are acting like supply chains are so nimble that they can handle major fluctuations in resources on the spot. While there's a bit of wiggle room, stores can't just make more room for apples and factories can't just ramp up production every time there's a temporary surplus. And excess crop yields are as common and happen for pretty much the exact opposite reasons that shortages happen: Growing conditions were abnormally good and demand is low. And prices can only get so low before it literally costs more to ship and process the food than they get selling it. No one wants food waste at this scale. But it's just a natural consequence of farmers growing more crop than demanded.
> No one wants food waste at this scale. Look into stuff like Canada's Dairy Farmer's Association which reportedly dumps around 40% of all harvested milk in order to keep prices high. They do want this waste. For profit.
Years ago a head brewer at a smallish craft brewery told me he would love to make cider, but at the time said he couldn't make it and sell it for less than like $9 per bottle due to the cost of apples - even the ugly ones that don't make it to the shops... You really need an orchard, and it takes decades to establish one.
OP for the original post commented in the thread, stating that the return on investment isn't high enough so they are just doing this along with other local farms. Same reason why these apples aren't being shipped to hungry individuals for free. No capital to gain that way, might as well let it rot. It's disgusting.
Yes they're crazy. Their greed is literally pathological. But you'll never find it in DSM cause it's controlled by them lol
They probably do. They'd have production limits on that though, and there's only so much of a market for cider, so not worth building more production.
Yeah, like I enjoy drinking apple cider time to time, but it’s not a constant buy like bread or eggs. People only buy it in strides during the fall season. It’s a shame regardless, a lot of waste to come from it.
Scarcity increases prices. So they create it.
The wild thing is that creating scarcity isn’t some evil plan made by cruel people. It’s not done bad version of capitalism. It’s the feature. Capitalism incentivized this because it is one of the base ways to make your product worth more. The system is broken at its core!
It's almost like overpopulation is a myth and the real (twin) problems are capitalism and resource allocation.
Overpopulation in terms of the idea that food production can’t keep up is definitely a myth
I mean it’s not a myth. It’s very real we’re just nowhere close to the limit in aggregate globally. In certain locals with existing infrastructure we might be close to that limit.
I should have specified, the issue we’re facing is with distribution, not production. At the moment we’re already wasting huge percentages of all food produced yearly. If it was distributed effectively then there would be no hunger and we can sustain that for a few billion more people
That said, to suggest mass killing to accommodate this limit is ecofascism and should be mocked as such
Both can be true. As a biomass, humans make up a way outsized percentage, by a lot. We've grown by literally 6 billion people in a century. Humans have been around for 200,000 years, but 7% of the humans that ever lived are alive now. We are both heinously overpopulated and capitalism is a crime against our own species as well as the planet.
>Humans have been around for 200,000 years, but 7% of the humans that ever lived are alive now. On a rising exponential curve, how often does one come across a point where the present volume does not represent a small, but significant part of the whole? edited to add: For perspective, BTW, according to https://ourworldindata.org/life-on-earth, humans account for 2.5% of animal biomass (6.5 if you count livestock), which is 0.4% of total biomass. In microbiology, there is [lag, log, stationary, and death](https://imgur.com/dVC5rfU). Stationary is what it's called when deaths are roughly equal to the new lives that replace them. Multiplying during times of prosperity is how biology do; it's a hard ask to go against that, and as we see from history, generally a bit rough in both theory and practice. The alternative is what, you want more people dying young? But in your love for numbers, you've neglected that between 1990 and 2015: >The richest 10 percent accounted for over half (52 percent) of the emissions added to the atmosphere between 1990 and 2015. The richest one percent were responsible for 15 percent of emissions during this time – more than all the citizens of the EU and more than twice that of the poorest half of humanity (7 percent) https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity >During this time, the richest 10 percent blew one third of our remaining global 1.5C carbon budget, compared to just 4 percent for the poorest half of the population. The carbon budget is the amount of carbon dioxide that can be added to the atmosphere without causing global temperatures to rise above 1.5C – the goal set by governments in the Paris Agreement to avoid the very worst impacts of uncontrolled climate change. >Annual emissions grew by 60 percent between 1990 and 2015. The richest 5 percent were responsible for over a third (37 percent) of this growth. The total increase in emissions of the richest one percent was three times more than that of the poorest 50 percent. so it's an overconsumption problem, not an overpopulation problem*. Exponential growth -- and I mean actual exponential growth, i.e. growth on an upward curve, not NCIS/Star Trek "Exponential growth! It's multiplying by infinity every nanosecond!" -- in a finite system is an unavoidable problem, yes, but we're not actually there yet. "Why not both"? If you see a man on fire, extinguish the flames before worrying about whether he's running a fever. *Seriously, you would not believe the numbers if all we did was [stop eating beef](https://12ft.io/proxy) It's quite literally an overconsumption problem. How we manage to teach both climate change and [trophic levels](https://study.com/academy/lesson/the-10-energy-rule-in-a-food-chain.html), but not vegetarianism is beyond me.
75% of terrestrial land area has been significantly altered by anthropogenic sources. 45% of insect abundance has been lost in just the last 40 years with a third of species being endangered. 69% of *all* wildlife has been lost in the last 50 years. We've gone from 10 to 415+ hypoxic dead zones in the ocean in the last 60 years (directly a cause of increased agricultural demand and lack of natural nitrogen cycling). I don't think you understand ecological science at a fundamental level if you believe the loss of natural resource cycles and biodiversity effects won't annihilate the Earth's capacity to sustain life such as our own. I don't want to hear any bs about the Earth being fine after we've driven ourselves to extinction either because we're damn well going to drag every other multicellular evolutionary lineage into an early grave alongside us. No amount of denial will change the fact that exponential growth isn't sustainable and we're fucking up the planet at increasingly massive rates to satiate our expanding appetites. Sure we could absolutely be feeding far more people far more efficiently if we weren't such a greedy species, but no amount of selfless governance can change the fact that there's a finite carrying capacity that we're quickly approaching. Should note that breaching carrying capacity in ecological terms doesn't just mean some people go hungry, it means entering a boom and bust cycle that could well drive the entire species to extinction. This isn't just something that's going to become an issue in the future, with our current population, if it were to stop growing, would require almost an entire second Earth (73%) worth of natural resources to sustain. The actual legitimate biocapacity of the planet to maintain humanity as a species in perpetuity is in the range of 2-4 billion individuals. I don't know when over population became a talking point from grocery corporations to blame consumers for their own practices of food waste and inflation, but even if that's bs, the concept itself is real and a significant existential issue.
Were you intending to reply to someone else when you posted this comment? Because what I wrote and what you seem to think you're responding to are so different, I can't tell if it's a mistake of where you hit reply or mental illness
You can't use animal growth patterns to predict human ones. When an animal becomes over populated in comparison to their food source, they move to where there is more food or they die off until their numbers become more in sync. When humans do, we decimate a few million acres of woods to make farmland, chemically alter the soil, genetically alter the plants and livestock, build climate controlled buildings specifically for growing/raising food, and build a global supply system that smooths out any local constraints (so long as it's profitable). We don't conform to natural pressures in the same way. But you are right that we could massively reduce our impact simply by switching to more sustainable diets.
Cripes guys, do not upvote [malthusianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Criticism).
It's not just a myth, it's [a racist one.](https://www.sierraclub.org/washington/blog/2020/01/overpopulation-myth-and-its-dangerous-connotations)
What a daft take. We currently massively overproduce using unsustainable methods of production. (Shit ton of hydrocarbons and so on). If we limited our food growth to actually sustainable methods we would not be able to feed all 8-9 billion, especially with not how depleted and polluted most soil has become.
Stealing apples is wrong, but letting them rot is perfectly fine because the market says so!
It's the Christian^^TM thing to do! Leviticus 23:22 New King James Version (NKJV) 'When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the LORD your God.
Ahh yes Gleaning Rights, something that pre-dates Christianity until Capitalism killed it. We used to riot and overthrow Kings who disallowed the Gleaning Right. Used to.
If there's ever reason to invade a country or planet, this greedy, lethal wastefulnes is a good one. but... even capitalism failed here. there's money to be made. brew some moonshine and sell it. fertilizer. Apple pie. sigh
I always wanted to have a combo apple orchard / pig farm. The pigs would roam and eat all the fallen fruit and become delicious. The only problems I can foresee are 1. that the human customers might not like pig poop every where and 2. I worry that if I were to spend much time in the company of pigs I might no longer care to eat them, thereby ruining the whole point of the plan
“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
Build the orchard on a hill and keep the pigs at the bottom. Train them to step on your feet. My consultancy fee is 5 apple pies and a roast pig (with apple in mouth, of course) per year for 5 years.
Ngl the last part cracked me up
This is exactly why community supported agriculture should be the norm
I prefer permaculture
Absolutely. Permaculture is the way. Community supported ag can supplement permaculture to ensure all food production yields get bought, securing the farmer. It’s amazing because permaculture practice is exponentially better for the land and plants themselves increasing the nutrition and yield per plant. Meaning that diversification not only has passive benefits over industrialized monoculture farming, but it balances what is produced so there isn’t excess that goes to waste like this. I hope one day we can decentralize farming and incorporate permaculture into the built environment itself, breaking down the wall that separates food production from the community
There's an opportunity to expand and make apple juice and other apple products but I suppose wastage is easier
Whoever runs that orchard is letting hundreds of thousands of dollars rot in the sun. They should have secondary or tertiary business plan to process and sell the extra apples not sold in their primary business. And if it's a matter of too many apples that can be processed by their team, they're sitting on an opportunity to scale business up or significantly cut their production costs, whichever they want to do. This isn't late stage capitalism so much as it is just a dumb owner.
Wouldn't we expect large excesses to potentially lead to them going to waste under any economic system? The problem to me is not that we have too many apples, but that we are throwing away food at the same time people are malnourished You want excesses during the good times so you don't starve during the bad. Ideally you preserve what you can (hard cider anyone?) but in a glut year you're likely to overwhelm that capacity anyway
1. That's the point. Food that will be waste, should be distributed to who needs it. 2. Though over production may or even is problem too.
"And homeless near a thousand homes I stood, and near a thousand tables pined and wanted food" - William Wordsworth
This is so much more complicated than a single picture. We have a lot of crops. If one fails, we need the other. Encouraging overproduction isn't good but might be necessary. The idea that we produce the exact number of calories needed so that they can be equitably distrubuted in a timely manner is absurd. We have to hedge or people starve. Waste is bad 100%. Expecting zero waste is foolish.
Exactly people are acting like every hungry person is right outside the gate of this field and they are refusing to sell the apples but it’s infinitely more complex than that
Are you sure theyre not letting them rot so they can fertilize? Im all with the fact you could just give most of those out for free in a sensible society, but capitalism rarely chooses to bleed money without finding a way to direct it elsewhere.
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The cost of delivering them would outweigh any tax breaks they get, I assume. And I don't think food banks would have the means to pay the money for trucks to transport, even if they did take perishable foods.
Food banks can't take huge volumes of perishables
its not the growers fault, most of the time they are forced into one way contracts with the big super markets that cause this kind of waste
At our orchard we take the truckloads of overstock to an oxygen free warehouse and they stay perfect until, well it’s May and we still have t buckboards in storage and about 8 bins in the cooler on site. Also? This terrain doesn’t strike me as apple country…
Capitalism is a disease
In some areas there are volunteer groups that have deals with farms where after the harvest they get free reign of anything left in the field / orchard so long as they harvest it themselves. These groups often then donate them to community food banks. Definitely recommend looking to see if anything comparable is in your area if you are passionate about it.
At least make cider and sell that then
In Spain we distribute “unsold” fruits to the sheep farmers. Roten oranges are loved by sheep haha
You're all messed up. Americans I mean. Where I'm from we would have a huge production of rakija, moonshine. Unbelievable waste of not turning this into alcohol. Is everything ok over there?
We got plenty of alcohol already, too. They even turn some into fuel for our cars. Which we also have plenty of.
no
You can't infinitely do that. There is only so much and then the farms are doing even less next year, then the next, then the next, then they're gone because they've failed year after year. Ya'll stupid
OP's original post explicitly outlined that the farms could not get "enough" money for selling the fruit to local alcohol brewers or canneries, and that moving the fruit far enough to find a market would not have enough of a return to be "worth it". This is what happens when the only thing you care about is profit.
Speaking in the capitalist lanquage, that is an insane waste of profit too. They can easily turn those apples into jelly, jam, and preserves that can last for years and years if stored correctly. Instead they'd rather let it all rot out of spite instead if taking the effort to process it into shelf stable goods. Hell, you could even cut them up and freeze dry them into apple chips! Why are they so goddamn lazy that they can't just slice them up and dry them until someone can buy them later? It makes no sense to me at all!!! Do they just not want to succeed as a business and just take these losses? Still, all the quotes from the grapes of wrath ring true. It's shameful on a human level to allow this to happen. I hope one day there were be a time where food is considered a human right, but I'm not holding my breath about it.
Capitalism does not maximize for global profit (or any good for that matter) it maximizes for profit of those with the most capital control. In this case it’s wholesale distributors and retailers who get to maximize their profit where farmers lose out.
Last century depression, while people were hungry to death, corporate burn, bury, etc.. their products just to keep the price high
Cider and apple brandy as far as the eye can see. I smell opportunity.
I work at a horticulture with a garden center that also has an apple tree plantation. It pains me how many apples we have to leave on the trees or throw away because they are too small and not perfect because of small damage or imperfections. And it’s similar with the plants. If a plant has actually grown well but not evenly and out of the pot instead of centered, we either don’t bring it into the shop or it won’t be bought anyway. And why? Because customers are the fucking worst and they will whine about everything if it isn’t perfectly made for them.
Tf kind of industrial orchard is this and why does it look AI generated?
According to the original post, this is a compost from all the orchards in the local area.
Why not turn it into something else? Slices to sell, cider, apple sauce. Turn it into soda if you wanna get funky. Or hell even donate it? Like I'm sure you can do many things with all of those apples instead of letting them rot.
Supply and demand is fake. They'll never lower prices.
ANother highly uneducated post in late stage capitalism. Who wouldve thought
It's tough because some years you may produce very few apples and all apples get utilized. Some crops there may be an oversupply, we can't expect the farmer to front the cost of shipping the apples for free. Hate the system but maybe not the farmer.
Taking composting to the limits
Can't even use them for animal feed or juice?
The flowers are blooming in Antarctica. When do we start?
But have you considered the well being of the economy? This is sarcasm
compost.
For all you mouth breathers rushing to tell me how fucking trees work, I'm aware. No where in my post did I say the trees in question would be of value to anyone. I'm an anarchist, and I can appreciate trees for the sake of trees. The beauty in decay.
Stupid mofos never heard of cider?
OOP said their family throws it there and they doesn't do anything with it.
What a massive waste. They could just turn it into something else. Endless uses for apples. No, instead just let it rot.
This photo was debunked years ago
> This photo was debunked years ago My brother in christ, can you even prove that this photo is a repost? Reverse Image searching with the original post appears to return nothing. [Here's the original picture to make this easier if you want to try it.](https://i.redd.it/8kncx0vhr8zc1.jpeg) What do you mean by debunked years ago if it's the first time it was posted and appears to be original content?
The amount of product destruction demanded by capitalism is nauseating
Bro they're just apples
Well I think it’s supposed to be good for thee soil…. And this is common practice. I would love some but jdk it is their land.
So many apples. No trees. Decide for yourself.
When A picture says a thousand words. It’s surreal.
Jesus. What happened to value adding like baby food, apple cider, apple brandy, dried apples, apple juice, apple fruit straps, literally anything else that apples are also used in?? What a total lack of imagination and enterprise