Systemic drivers of food waste: How retail psychology and policy failures fuel scarcity illusions
Original framing: “4 steps you can take to avoid ‘perceived scarcity’ and prevent food waste” — The Conversation - Global
The modern food waste crisis is a legacy of 20th-century industrialization, where post-WWII surplus disposal systems morphed into engineered scarcity to maintain profit margins. The Green Revolution’s emphasis on high-yield monocultures disrupted traditional polycultures, increasing vulnerability to pests and spoilage. Historical parallels include the Irish Potato Famine, where colonial export policies exacerbated artificial scarcity despite adequate local production.
The 'perceived scarcity' narrative is a symptom of a food system engineered by colonial capitalism, where retail psychology and policy failures manufacture artificial shortages to drive consumption.
Indigenous systems, which treat food as a commons, offer proven models for waste reduction but are systematically erased by industrial standardization and agribusiness lobbying. The most viable solutions—food sovereignty, circular retail, and neuro-retail reform—require dismantling the power structures that profit from scarcity, not merely tweaking consumer behavior. Historical precedents like the Irish Potato Famine and modern movements like La Via Campesina show that systemic change is possible when marginalized voices lead the design of food systems. The future of food waste lies not in individual guilt but in collective reimagining of abundance, where Hermes’ trickster wisdom exposes the absurdity of a system that starves people while drowning in surplus.