Occupy Underground

In his famous novel The Grapes of Wrath (Chapter 25), John Steinbeck described how food was destroyed during the Great Depression:

“Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people come for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges... 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... Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out [with nets]. Slaughter the pigs and bury them... And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates – died of malnutrition – because the food must be forced to rot.”

A few more facts. In 1933 alone, the US federal government bought 6 million hogs and destroyed them. Vast quantities of milk were poured down the sewers. 25 million acres of crops (the area of a square with sides 200 miles long) were ploughed under. In Brazil, 69 million bags of coffee, equivalent to two years’ output, were destroyed. All to keep up prices.

More: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1272-august-2010/material-worldwaste-and-want-grapes-wrath-revisite