Should plowing crops (food) under be a crime?

Sometimes farmers will remove crops to irradicate a pest. I just pulled up a bunch of yummy basil plants at a local, organic farm this past weekend because they were infested with a pest.

No it should not be a crime.

If it is not profitable to harvest, it will not be harvested. This has happened quite a lot through history, btw. Simple economics. Would you work for free?

In general, crops are plowed under a) because there aren’t enough field hands to pick them b) because it costs more to harvest it than it does to sell it c) because it’s been contaminated, and the crop has been labeled unusable. Off the top of my head, those are the main reasons. None of these are reasons are due to greed. They are due to concern that they will lose their farms, that if they allow people on the land to pick for free that they will be sued (it’s a REAL concern). It’s a shame that those people are having their homes destroyed because of sinkholes due to watering by the farmers, but it’s nobody’s fault. It just happened.

Yep I agree with @snowberry. Anyone that runs a business will cut their losses in an investment if it is not going to pan out. Farming is no different. Profit margins can be very tight on a farm.

And culling a crop like this is not the reason why people go hungry.

Hey, I’ve seen folks throwing out perfectly prepared cooked food because THE LAW said they had to. These crops are still in the field. We have caused so many of our problems by passing laws that make it illegal to do the right thing.

I know! Less is more when it comes to laws.

Of course it shouldn’t be a crime. If I own some food I should be able to plow it under if it is my pleasure to do so. If people really wanted these strawberries harvested they would kick people off unemployment and lower the minimum wage so that they could be economically harvested at $0.25/lb.

Notably, the problem of hunger in the world is not one of production, but one of distribution. We can feed everyone, we just can’t get the food there.

Certain ancient cultures practiced gleaning, the act of leaving a portion of the crop untouched so that the poor, aliens, and widows could gather food. I wonder if it would be possible to do something similar in the U.S. If the condition of the crop is edible, then why not allow a free-pass to individuals and agencies that serve the poor. This could be done within a specific time frame prior to plowing under unprofitable crops. Although not common practice, some farmers participate in charitable distribution of excess crops (example). Instead of legalizing the act of gleaning, it seems like this type of charity would work well from a grassroots level in the U.S. (examples: Gleaning Network of Texas, Society of St. Andrew, and Mid-Atlantic Gleaning Network. See also this USDA publication).

@prolificus, Yes, when we lived in Oregon, I was part of a gleaners food co-op. It was fascinating. It also was a hassle for the farmers, for those poor folks had to take out extra insurance just so we could glean in their fields. But we sooo appreciated it!

@snowberry – extra insurance? You mean the farmers had to pay for insurance for gleaners to work for free in their fields? Maybe the gov (state and/or federal) could subsidize the insurance – this could be the legal aspect of alternatives to plowing under unprofitable crops.

@prolificus: If I was a farmer and either had to accept government help or plow my crops under I would gladly plow them right under. If the government wants to help get rid of minimum wage, get rid of unemployment, or get rid of the crazy lawsuits then maybe I would consider an alternative.

Back before/during the Great Depression, American farmers were amazingly productive. They were so productive that the huge supply of food they produced crashed the market. The law of supply and demand tells us why: a huge glut of anything on the market will make the price fall dramatically. And when prices fall, farmers lose. And when the farmer goes broke, the only way he can make more money is by producing yet more, which gluts the market and sends prices falling further. It’s a deadly cycle.

What farmers wanted in those times was some kind of farm parity, a guarantee of worthwhile prices for their products. FDR worked this idea into his New Deal, but the only way to get it started was to destroy vast amounts of farm produce. So there we have the Depression, people starving in the streets, but to insure farm parity we had people pouring out massive quantities of milk on the ground, killing baby chickens, etc., because without creating scarcity and raising prices, more farmers would go under. (If you gave it away for free to hungry people, you would destroy your market, see?) Sure, people saw it as a terrible waste, but FDR would get on the radio and give little Economics 101 classes and people eventually understood that the farmers going broke is no good for anyone. And that’s why we have farm subsidies and sometimes pay farmers not to grow food (especially on ecologically sensitive land) to this day.

Now, I wasn’t able to see what you were linking to (looks like the story changed since you posted your question), but is there a chance that the plowing-under could have been something like this? Yes, wasting food is horrible, but farmers have to make enough to keep the farm, too.

Yes, I believe that the story was about Strawberry Farmers in Florida plowing under the crops because the price of strawberries had dropped below any sort of break-even point and the farmers would actually be losing money to ship their crop to market!