Question

Why is the United States producing more food than the population requires? And how the can fix this problem?

Answer 1

The vast majority of humans living on earth are confused about wants and needs. We mistake our wants for needs. Our essential needs are finite and limited in scope. Our wants are endless and can never be satisfied.

Our entire global economy is not based on the (sometimes) efficient allocation of scarce resources to satisfy wants and needs. Being confused about wants and needs, and not understanding that our wants are endless, we attempt to satisfy something we can never satisfy. Since we can never satisfy it, we expand, we dig, we "grow" our economy.

In America, we drain the aquifers to grow food in deserts. We ship our desert-grown food thousands of miles across the country. We grow inedible corn to feed herds of cows. We forbid city residents from growing food in their front yard for fear of falling property values -- whatever that means. We put patents on genetically engineered seeds and forbid farmers from replanting seed stock. And somehow, America still manages to export food and feed the rest of the world. Then we dump and destroy some it to prop up prices. Then get reimbursed by taxpayer money. And having done that, there are still people who go hungry in America ... let alone all the hungry people in the rest of the world.

Starving people is one result of this confusion. So are mining operations for rare earth material to make the smartphones, laptops, and computers you are probably using to view these words. As are the radioactive, toxic byproduct of said material that gets dumped into villages. It leads to the insane security policies of the industrialized worlds. Rhinos being killed for their horns. Whales being killed for their meat.

So the problem isn't that we grow enough food to feed hungry people, and we don't feed them. The problem is the very premise of the economy we live in. Where did your laptop come from? Where did your smartphone come from? Where did that latte come from? The chair you are sitting on? The walls enclosing the room you are in? The roof over your head? Who is paying your employer?

The products we consume are themselves not the issue here. The issue is your endless wants. It's the craving to stand in line for a phone. It's the must-have clothes. It's the daily habit of a latte. It is in the every day, ordinary life. World hunger isn't someone else's problem. It isn't a policy that you debate and discuss over Quora and "someone else" will implement it.

World hunger is rooted in your cravings and wants. That's why we are called consumers. Don't blame the corporations. Don't blame the politicians. Don't blame the leadership. Take a good look at yourself. And if you decide to do something about it, you start by becoming aware of your confusion of wants vs. needs.

Whenever you want to buy something -- a phone, a toy, some clothes, ask yourself first:

1. What do I want?
2. What do I really need?
3. How will I feel when I get what I really need?