fractalsphere
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Farmers are 'considering letting crops rot'
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/business/mississippi-delta-farmers-rice-prices.html
From the article...
“What am I supposed to do with 2.2 million pounds of rice?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard over the noisy industrial fans drying the rice on his farm in Merigold, Miss. “I’m serious. What am I supposed to do?”
There's plenty of charities that would accept large quantities of food that could be distributed to needy people in various ways. Crops are not just a commodity to be bought and sold. They're food. Literally food that hungry people need. If you have MILLIONS OF POUNDS of extra food and there's millions of people going hungry, and you choose any path other than donating that food, then you (and farmers collectively) are deliberately and intentionally withholding that food from the community at large.
I get it, they're running a business and businesses need to make money, but the lack of international customers is ENTIRELY the fault of this republican administration, and likely who they voted for. So take the charitable deduction, feed the needy and go to bed with a clear conscience instead of hoarding food (which is literally the biblical definition of gluttony) instead of complaining you can't make a 'profit' off of this and knowing people are starving.
richardstinks
Don't forget, the Mississippi Delta remains one of the poorest parts of the country. This is one more blow to an already struggling area.
Fargus57
Hey red voting farmers, guess who killed the USAID program that many of you relied on to buy your crops? (Hint: It wasn't Biden)
YouRadicalizedMe
I volunteer to distribute it!!!
Snooj
I'll take a couple pounds of it.
Skawomplious
If you can't get paid for harvesting the crop, it's hard to decide to harvest it anyway. I don't blame the farmers, I blame Trump.
IlIIII
Can some hit reset. We need a do over.
DarkJaeger
A huge problem with modern agri business, it's all leveraged. Farmer Jack took a loan to get his seed, fertilizer, and wedd control. That note is due at harvest. All his inputs are purchased at retail prices, and he will sell his crop at wholesale, taking a significant loss on the face. There's also a less than zero chance that his main buyer also owns the land he works...Conagra being one such case.
miklkit
FAFO! They voted for this. Who are the people who need that food the most? Mostly they live in the red states that voted for this. Let's see how those hungry people vote in November.
AtmaDarkwolf
It costs to ship stuff. Big shock that. It costs a LOT. if he can't get it out to the charities or they cannot come and get it, what else do u expect? I know we trying to point out the food inequality situation, but it still is about logistics, even if he wanted to give it for free, it would still cost too get it where it needs to be, This is why the term 'food deserts' are relevant. Large areas where all(or most) of the food the area needs has to be shipped in. Results in higher cost to eat.
AtmaDarkwolf
the flip side, is if they leave it on the crop, on the plot of land, and til it back into the soil for the next season, the farmer can save some money on fertilizer. So in a very real sense, it actually is more economical to just leave it there if you can't find buyers (or do not have manpower to harvest / ship / etc) - farmers are not (At least not all of them) the bad guys here.
VolkerPuttman
4000 tons of potatoes ... https://www.4000-tonnen.de/ ... not wasted
GreenJayBird
My first thought was this
justadude41123
Welcome to karmageddon here’s inflation that’s your prize.
poscduke
One of the big issues is, few Americans litteraly starve to death. Many Americans lack proper nutrition and cooking facilities, especially poor children. Handing them 100lbs of rice might not be super helpful if they aren't old enough to cook it, don't have a working kitchen or pits or utensils and people would complain that you're just giving those in poverty raw rice
Osiricus
It seems like the human race literally tries to make the worst out of every situation.
brokehackfourlane
shame there is no longer any goverment organization dedicated to making these excess available to those in need- although thats what they voted for i guess
mindstorm8191
One solution to this is if we can get as many people as we can to buy direct from the farmers. Cut out the middleman businesses (who are likely paying way less to farmers for the product, while charging way more to consumer buyers.
This might not work for every product, since many may need a lot of processing, but maybe we can find solutions to that problem too.
Catheren
It's not that they CAN'T do that- but if they don't let the field rot insurance WON'T PAY OUT and they will have lost a FULL YEAR'S PAY.
Catheren
* accidentally posted instead of making a reading break, pardon. So, from my understanding- if they do literally anything with the field, and I mean LITERALLY ANYTHING with it, then they will lose any pay they COULD have gotten. It's immoral beyond belief, but I can't fault the farmer from trying to at least get SOME sort of financial coverage instead of "LOL, nah, you didn't
Catheren
*fuuuuck my life today I swear I am not doing it on purpose* - "LOL, nah! You didn't 'lose' the crop, you just 'used it poorly' so you can take a big fat 0 from us, better luck next season- Loser!" and if my options were 'give my year's pay to feed people.' or 'Take less than I wanted in pay, so I can afford food and shelter' I can't deny I'd rather take the pay and take care of my family. It's selfish, but not UNREASONABLY SO when the system is literally designed to cause this waste.
NChomsky
eetsumkaus
tbf this is the opposite of capitalism. They're suffering that because of retaliatory tariffs. The second Trump administration has proven to not be ideological capitalists.
NChomsky
You're confusing free-market mythology with "really existing capitalism." State intervention, including tariffs, has always been the necessary scaffolding for capitalist development. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗶𝗻𝘀𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗱𝗼𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲. this is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE under this hideous system. To claim otherwise is to indulge in a fantasy that ignores how the "masters of mankind" (as Smith dubbed them) actually organize the economy.
YouRadicalizedMe
I volunteer to distribute it!!!
Myoron
Capitalism is an inherently immoral system when it encourages destroying food and letting people starve to keep profits up.
igetit41
Who did Mississippi vote for again?
varonicaED
You understand that the farmers have already lost money because they can't sell the crop, so they are heading for bankruptcy, if they donate people don't drive to the farm to pick it up free of charge, they first need to spend time finding someone who till take it, then spend time and money to load it into truck and pay drivers to deliver it, costing fuel and wages, the most financially sensible thing to do would have been simply not harvesting at all.
whitebbwolf
I am pretty sure that this is all planned. The more business going bankrupt under Trump the more him n his Cronies can buy up dirt cheep
MeatPopsicleMultiPass
I thought it was a handful of maggots.
2074red2074
I don't know about rice, but you often can't donate bread because every charity is absolutely full of bread and refuses any more. Usually the shortages are proteins and fruit/vegetables, not carbs.
SkunkMom
Rice can be safely stored for a LOT longer than bread. You're better off comparing it to wheat or flour, but I believe even in those cases rice lasts longer.
2074red2074
Yeah but they don't need to store the rice. They are constantly flooded with bread. Either we waste all of this rice, or we waste the bread, or we keep this rice and just have a massive surplus that we're paying money to maintain for years, or we keep this rice and just pause farming for a few years. The fact is we've produced way more food than Americans could consume, because we're used to exporting tons of it.
SkunkMom
And yet there are still plenty of hungry americans and the foodbanks were all wiped clean during the last government shutdown, with more coming. Poor people (like me) could take a 50lbs bag of rice home, and now the charity doesn't need to worry about it taking up space. Bread's gone in a week, eaten or not. Yes, if more poor people have this rice reserve they'll buy less bread, but then they'll use that money on other things they need (like the mentioned meat+veg).
2074red2074
They still need the bread because not everyone can cook at home. Also why are you talking about people buying bread in the context of food banks? Are you suggesting people go get bread from food banks and then go buy even more bread on top of that?
qcernie
Seems like there would be a tax break for donating it to charity
Munchman347
Farmers aren't trashing bags of grain, they're bulk dealers who sell by the tankcar. Just the hulling of rice costs money, then cleaning, drying and bagging costs more. Then somebody has to be paid to ship and distribute it. The farmer is already in debt just for the planting, it's this administration that caused this, not greedy farmers...
Ikwilstroopwaffels
Farmers in mississippi? What, 99.5% trump voters? Fuck em. Starve.
SkunkMom
61.6%. Even the deep red south isn't as red as you think. And even idiots deserve food.
Ikwilstroopwaffels
61.6% overall, or 61.6% of farmers?
fractalsphere
Those farmers are not starving, but the people who may benefit from 2.2 MILLION pounds of rice will starve if they let it just rot.
Sulexar
Donating it is a nice platitude until you actually stop to think about how they're going to donate it. Because teleporters do not exist yet. Farmers don't own transportation infrastructure, and I'm willing to bet most charities don't either.
Wholivesinapineappleunderthetree
Brexit all over again
anononanonanona
In some areas there exist charities that this is their entire jam, doing the logistics to redistribute almost-waste food. So it's not impossible, but probably very hit or miss.
AtmaDarkwolf
coupled with this is any food the charity CANNOT use has to be disposed of, which is yet ANOTHER cost most people simply fail to consider. It REALLY sucks, REALLY SUCKS (I been there first hand working for a food back so saw first hand) when a far portion of the 'cash assets' the organization has in the safe has to be used to pay for bins to be emptied (Big trash bins) - again ignoring all the manpower required to process, organize, prepare and store the food in question.
fractalsphere
SOME people would step up to make this happen. You think if some farm collective said "hey, we can't sell all this and it either rots or gets distributed and eaten" that charities wouldn't spend money to get it shipped to where it needs to go? You think donations to move that food wouldn't happen? As others have said, maybe the Church (ANY CHURCH) should step up to feed the hungry and fund some of the logistics here.
armagedon4343
this is really Naive if well intentioned. People/farmers dont destroy crops to keep them out of needy hands - they only do if if getting those crops to those hands means they might loose their farm. Transportation and packaging is massively expensive for an independent farmer and most of them don't know an angel investor who will freely give 30-50K to give away their crop....
tidepool
It also has to be processed into what you see at the store. It doesn’t get pulled off of the plant pristine and ready to eat. The farmers don’t do that part, either, the companies that buy it do the processing. I mean I get your point and there probably is fresh off the plant food that can be donated but rice is a little more complex.
Sulexar
I genuinely wish you luck in raising awareness to make this work, just please be sure you don't cast blame at the people who cannot make it happen.
TomahawkJackson
it's 2.2 million pounds from this *one single farmer*. How much of that could you personally move today? (assuming it's local to you - how big a truck could you arrange for/fund TODAY?)
How much have you contributed to a charity this month so that THEY have the funds to go arrange a truck to carry it away TODAY?
This is the central argument around Free Ride people. Your assumption is that SOMEONE should do something - but that someone *is not you, and has not been you in the past or the future*
TomahawkJackson
it just somehow magically happens with 100% of the effort and expense and organization coming from unspecified other people.
PowerPedant
I don't understand how getting some money by selling below cost is not better than getting no money at all, even if it's not making a profit.
Shouldn't smaller losses be better than big losses?
SheepySleepySmuggler
Selling the rice below cost not only impacts last year's earnings but also impacts demand for this year's growing season - effectively you turn one bad year into two bad years and not many farmers can survive that. Having said that, I do wonder how much of this was destined to USAID programmes that were cut to "save taxpayers money" - many farmers likely voted Trump for the tax cuts and cheered the cuts to USAID that was subsidising the excess grain/corn production in the US.
miklkit
Do not leave SNAP out of the equation.
toastymonkey
Michelle Obama's farm to school program was also cut. Obviously much smaller, but it was not an insignificant amount for the farms that were part of the program.
PowerPedant
Good point, I had not considered season-spanning effects, assuming "sold as soon as harvested". This indeed makes the calculations less clear, especially with futures trading involved.
The USAID factor sounds plausible too.
SheepySleepySmuggler
Reuters claimed a million metric tons (~70 million bushels) of food was distributed in 2024 - not distributing it in 2025 saved $1bn. At the expense of US farmers. https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-food-purchases-foreign-aid-halted-despite-waiver-sources-say-2025-02-05/
eetsumkaus
USAID contracts would only cause a few farmers to lose out on the season. It's not industry-wide like we see happening. Those are most definitely from tariffs.
SheepySleepySmuggler
Based on annual production of 20 billion pounds (https://www.usarice.com/thinkrice/discover-us-rice/us-rice-facts), this is 0.1% of annual production so you're right, this is more likely a tariff issue although with prices around $0.11/pound ($10/cwt) and tariff relief packages totalling $12bn (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-07/trump-aims-bumper-aid-at-us-rice-farmers-facing-bleakest-outlook?embedded-checkout=true), it's hard to see how cutting USAID really saved any money.
OkButWhyWereTheyFilming
You will hate to hear this, but even in "good times" about 30-40% of the food we produce in this country is thrown out before it even makes it to retail grocers. We could eradicate hunger nationwide with about 10% just of the food we waste under normal circumstances.
OkButWhyWereTheyFilming
Source: I used to run a food rescue/access nonprofit.
bekkayya
importantly, like recycling or running water, the wasters are corporations. You as an individual and individuals as a group could barely put a dent in the graph even if we dedicated our lives to it
OkButWhyWereTheyFilming
That's true, although in the United States and I would imagine a lot of other wealthy western countries, much of the food waste comes from corporations acting according to consumer behavior; misshapen, discolored, or otherwise "ugly" but still perfectly good produce makes up a large percentage of the pre-retail food waste. Retailers won't buy it because they know consumers won't buy it. If we were willing to accept this food, it wouldn't get thrown out.
OkButWhyWereTheyFilming
Also our food safety protocols are so crazy that we put use/sell by dates on things that are weeks ahead of when they go bad, but supermarkets will throw them away as soon as they hit those dates in order to avoid liability.
bekkayya
most of those reasons, when you really hunt down where it started, is still the corporation. consumer behavior is a thing that the market shapes as much as it shapes the market
OkButWhyWereTheyFilming
Maybe so. It's definitely true at least to some degree. Hard to track/quantify, though.
spinymouse
Harvesting, processing, storage, packaging, transport, some more storage, logistics to distribute the food, best bundled so not everyone has to do everything separately,... and of course people who do all that. It's expensive. And yes, farmers here have plowed crops down because the harvest would be more expensive than what the market would pay. It's crazy, but unless you ship the hungry, likely jobless people to the farms to go pick their own food, it's difficult to fix.
bekkayya
it was reasonable until you fucking lied about most hungry people being jobless. Eat shit
spinymouse
Because people with a job likely don't have time to take trips to fetch rice ffs. A sack of rice doesn't make up for lost wages. Read and think before throwing insults, it helps
bekkayya
you're such a fucking liar lmao jfk. your scenario is nonsense. if you sent just the jobless hungry people to pick food how would that help the jobhavers? You were absolutely just morally lumping in hungry people with jobless people like either are a moral failing
Navrodel
Difficult, not impossible, but almost completely disincentivized. A compassionate society would have mechanisms in place to make good use of resources that we can't use economically. Instead, literally the only incentive we have as a society is money, and we've made only the scarcest of infrastructure to help people that don't have any. Very much a society-scale problem, and we definitely don't have the leadership to do anything about it any time soon.
fractalsphere
You're sure not wrong about the logistics, but I still see the benefit of that 2.2 million pounds of food (from JUST THIS ONE FARM) being fed to people as better than the alternative of it rotting and going to waste simply because it can't be profited on this season.
HamSlamwich
Ok you're not wrong, but you're saying "being fed to people" as if this is a passive thing that just happens. The part you're not getting is this: this man needs to sell this rice, because he spent all his money to grow and harvest it. In order to feed it to people, he has to load and transport 2.2 MILLION pounds of something. This is not something you can do without labor and fuel, both things he would have to pay for. And he is already far in the red.
spinymouse
Some of the local farms and bakeries run heating systems that can be fueled with grain or bread. The food banks get more bread than they can hand out, a zoo gets extra bread for the animals that can have some, and STILL the bakery is heated half the year by burning bread. Our excess economy is RIDICULOUS beyond belief
NoCapForRealForReal
Exactly - this is ONE farm - you think there aren't more in the same situation? We're already talking about a massive logistics effort for this single farm. Simply having the food is a small part of the equation
SarcasticComment
so an org needs to step in so the farmer can. else it's stuck on the property rotting which means it would be better to let it fertilize the field with decomposition.
spinymouse
The local food bank moves aprox. 2 tons of food a week, from supermarket "waste" bins to people in need. 60 volunteers, almost 20.000€ costs per year for vehicles, cold storage, rent, etc. The central hubs call when they have pallets of partially cracked eggs, way too much sour cream or similar high "value" foods. And even 4 food banks descending on the eggs at the same time barely makes a dent. Millions of pounds of rice? Beyond capacity by FAR, not even a well-organized org can do that.
SarcasticComment
so it stays in the field instead of rotting in the hold. talk order to ask a farmer to take further loss cultivating crop they can't move off property.
spinymouse
Yep, at least that way it feeds soil organisms and saves on fertilizer.
hawkeye2816
Like the first commenter said, the farmer would have to pay for all that processing. It's not just that it wouldn't be profitable, it could literally bankrupt the farmers. In an ideal world, the government or various charities/churches would take up that slack to make sure people are fed, but this isn't the ideal world.
fractalsphere
The church (ANY CHURCH) could get a lot of good publicity for a change by stepping up. I think the Mormons could step up and fund this easily. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/15/mormon-church-whistleblower-taxes-hedge-fund
hawkeye2816
Oh, sure, they could, but they have no *real* incentive. Publicity is all fine and good, but they have their captive base. All churches do. Spending that kind of money when their primary concern is making money just doesn't do it when all you get back is temporary goodwill. And I'm sorry to say, but that applies to almost any organization with enough resources to meaningfully help.
Companies, churches, most governments, they don't have morals. They care too much about money and power.