Comment by pyuser583

I’m from a historically agricultural state, and live in the farming area. Government interventions are regularly mocked - always have been.

Demand for food plummets when it is no longer fresh. Throwing food away is politically toxic. This creates major problems.

As people get richer they don’t want more food, they want better food. Fresher and more meat based. Which is fine. But means the food when you talk about food “that which prevents us from starving to death” you are quite divorced from actual demand.

People don’t price food based on its anti-starvation capabilities.

Either they follow traditional diets, or they buy for convenience (highly processed), or they are health nuts who live off rice, beans, and kale.

Nobody is trying to maximize calories. Very few people are trying to match their food intake to their amount physical exertion.

All these ontological and teleological models are divorced from how food is actually valued: market “taste” is insanely important under normal circumstances.

Our agriculture sector won’t succeed if it’s based around preventing famine.