“What a waste” –Maclean’s Nov.16th issue.

What a waste indeed! As long as our farms can produce an abundance of foods at low cost, there is not much that can be done about it –save a real change in attitude of consumers, or legal restraints on production and/or consumption. I don’t see either as a realistic option.

Marketing boards can underpin prices –which benefit farmers –by either buying up surpluses and destroying it, as you describe, or restrict production, which is probably the lesser of two evils, because at least the food is not wasted and produced with its concomitant energy usage. Either way it reduces price variability and supports the farmer. However, the supply-controlling quotas also create inefficiencies and must be complemented by import restrictions on the same farm products.

In a more philosophical way, it is a shame that we in the western, developed world, gorge on foods to where it damages our health; while many in the developing world are living on starvation rations. I don’t pretend to have an easy the answer to that conundrum.

As a child in Europe during the war and after, I experienced food shortages, though not starvation. If we did not clean our plates, mother would have a standard statement: “think of the poor starving children in Africa”. Not much has changed in parts of Africa, but it certainly has in my birth country. Food waste and excess consumption is just as rampant as in Canada and the US. So soon we forget.
Thank you for bringing this subject to the fore. Perhaps it will help bring attention to the horrendous waste in modern society; whether it is food, energy or other resources.