Re:Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than ...
by yellowapple on Wednesday May 27, 2020 @05:51PM
(#23330514)
> Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up.
For all I know it is just made up. Maybe if media companies got in a better habit of providing citations they'd be more trustworthy.
> If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops.
Which, from what I've seen first-hand growing up in the rural Central Valley (and what I continue to see first-hand in other rural areas) is exactly what's happening. Those crops ain't being composted with any sort of regularity (I'm sure some of it might be, since store-bought compost has to come from somewhere, but I'm highly skeptical of the idea that the farms themselves are doing it).
The nugget of truth in the article is that they ain't getting "thrown away", either. Rather, they're typically getting sold to companies using them for raw ingredients on a more industrial scale (think canneries and baked-goods factories and TV dinner makers and such) and/or (more recently) companies that specifically market "ugly produce", and whatever's left over from that often ends up being animal food (whether through manufacture - e.g. dog/cat food - or fed directly to e.g. livestock).
For all I know it is just made up. Maybe if media companies got in a better habit of providing citations they'd be more trustworthy.
> If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops.
Which, from what I've seen first-hand growing up in the rural Central Valley (and what I continue to see first-hand in other rural areas) is exactly what's happening. Those crops ain't being composted with any sort of regularity (I'm sure some of it might be, since store-bought compost has to come from somewhere, but I'm highly skeptical of the idea that the farms themselves are doing it).
The nugget of truth in the article is that they ain't getting "thrown away", either. Rather, they're typically getting sold to companies using them for raw ingredients on a more industrial scale (think canneries and baked-goods factories and TV dinner makers and such) and/or (more recently) companies that specifically market "ugly produce", and whatever's left over from that often ends up being animal food (whether through manufacture - e.g. dog/cat food - or fed directly to e.g. livestock).