The idiom of "doesn't grow on trees" as a metaphor for scarcity falls apart when you realize that food does grow on trees yet is still very scarce. - eviltoast

Extremely not-fun fact: collectively, humanity currently produces more than enough food for every person. But a huge part of it is either wasted or inaccessible by people that need them, which usually results in them not going to anyone and being wasted, which is why we still have food scarcity.

  • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Food is far from scarce in the developed world. There’s so much food that people can easily become obese, and millions of tons of food are destroyed each year.

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Uhhh, yeah, no idea where the “food is scarce” came from, we’ve got so much food in developed countries that we could easily feed the whole world with it.

      • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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        1 year ago

        There’s a lot to be said for encouraging self sufficiency. See the damage done to African textile industries from a glut of charity clothing.

        Of course, in an industrial age “encouraging self sufficiency” also means making competition, and a lot of dummies start talking about bootstraps instead of supporting education and investment.

      • PM_ME_FEET_PICS@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Not easily, nor safely. Most food waste is from retail and Healthcare. It’s very hard to repurpose that already consumed scrap for others to eat. Let alone ship it across the world.