Many of us have heard the reprimand from our parents: "Don't waste your food, kids are starving in Africa!"
As I grew older, the question came to my mind of whether if we stopped wasting food, famine in other countries be relieved. The first and most obvious thought is if we wasted less, we would have to buy less food, thus the surplus could be given to these countries to feed the poor.
However that ideal may not come to pass in real life. If we were to buy less food, would farmers continue to produce the same amount and give the extra bit to poor countries? Somehow I doubt it vastly, as they would have to bear the loss in profit. The logical thing would be that the price of food would drop as the demand decreases, causing less food to be produced.
One may then ask: perhaps the governments of advanced nations and rich corporations or people could buy up this excess and donate it to poorer regions? Unfortunately, it has been done before, but the donated food did not quite find its way to the starving people; instead much of it was siphoned off by corrupt officials in these starving nations, and sold to the black market instead.
Owing to this, large amounts of dairy products in Europe are destroyed each year, for fear that if they were donated to charity they would instead float over to the black market and contribute to drop dairy prices worldwide due to excess supply.
So, the logical circumstances of us wasting less food would not be that Ethopians starve no longer, but instead that farmers worldwide earn less money due to less demand for foodstuffs. This would not significantly impact those in rich countries I suppose, but poorer farmers would feel the pain. Maybe not finishing our rice might not be that bad after all.
