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40% thrown away does not necessarily imply all others are better.

Normally imperfect produce goes to processing plants (juice, cans, pies etc.) but I'm not sure if there's any significant market for banana chunks/puree.

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.

― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

It’s really crazy how cheap bananas are. They’re flown in from tropical countries and are at least half the cost of local in season produce. And they’re throwing away so many at every stage of production.

Imagine if they actually sold the whole crop to stores. Bananas would be $0.10 a pound. You would never be hungry.

Humans have produced enough food, and had the capability to feed every human in the world for over 500 years. Every famine you've seen in the news, all of them, has been caused by keeping food from being delivered to those that are hungry.

Exactly, nothing about capitalism is efficient and it never was. Capitalism is brutally effective at producing large quantities of stuff, but that doesn't mean the waste is mitigated at all. In fact, the waste correlates with production.

That really sucks but "highly edible" is a very funny phrase.

The grapes of wrath was written 100.years ago. The fact that capitalism is still considered the only solution (other than the state sanctioned anarchists like Chomsky) is testament to the concept that the ideas of any society are the ideas of the ruling class.

Thankfully due to this show, at least Woolworths (Safeway) and maybe some other stores brought out a range of fruit and vegetables called "The Odd Bunch" that are cheaper and less "perfect". It's a small step, but at least it's a start.

My grocery store has a "imperfect produce" section, where they have funny shaped bananas, oranges that are not round, that sort of thing. Really cheap, and just as tasty.

“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,” Steinbeck wrote. “Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground…a million people hungry, needing the fruit — and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.”

Here lidl has boxes of random fruit and vegetables that don't meet the pretty standard for like 25czk now probably more. But now I see them rarely. They were great when I wanted to make soup or something.

Are there actually people who think capitalism is efficient? Like sure it's not Soviet level beaurocracy inefficiency but I wouldn't stake my life saving medicine on this system if I had any other option

People will be picky under any economic system, assuming they aren’t starving

oh banana, how i suffer with thee

Totally separate from the capitalism part, isn't composting a portion of what is grown to return nutrients and maintain soil health a thing? Along with crop rotation, I thought composting the unwanted or unusable products either through a feed-to-manure or organic waste composting method was part of healthy arable land management.

The capitalism part is certainly creating a larger "unwanted/unusable" percentage, but is there any information on how it is impacting overall land sustainability? Monocropping is 100% known to be killing farmland, so I am wondering what the current state of agricultural research is around this.

This is bananas!