食物短缺?不，太多的食物放錯了位置

食物短缺?不，太多的食物放錯了位置

In recent days, top U.S. government officials have moved to assure Americans that they won't lack for food, despite the coronavirus.

近幾天來，美國政府高級官員已采取行動向美國民眾保證，盡管出現(xiàn)了冠狀病毒，但他們不會缺少食物。

As he toured a Walmart distribution center, Vice President Pence announced that "America's food supply is strong." The Food and Drug Administration's deputy commissioner for food, Frank Yiannas (a former Walmart executive) told reporters during a teleconference that "there are no widespread or nationwide shortages of food, despite local reports of outages."

副總統(tǒng)彭斯在參觀沃爾瑪配送中心時宣布，“美國的食品供應(yīng)非常強(qiáng)勁。”美國食品藥品監(jiān)督管理局負(fù)責(zé)食品的副局長弗蘭克·雅納斯(前沃爾瑪高管)在一次電話會議上告訴記者，“盡管有當(dāng)?shù)厥称饭?yīng)中斷的報道，但沒有出現(xiàn)大范圍或全國范圍的食品短缺。”

"There is no need to hoard," Yiannas said.

“沒有必要囤積，”雅納斯說。

In fact, the pandemic has caused entirely different problems: a spike in the number of people who can't afford groceries and a glut of food where it's not needed.

事實(shí)上，這場大流行引發(fā)了完全不同的問題：買不起食品雜貨的人數(shù)激增，以及不需要的食物過剩。

Dairy farmers in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Georgia have been forced to dumpthousands of gallons of milk that no one will buy. In Florida, vegetable growers are abandoning harvest-ready fields of tomatoes, yellow squash and cucumbers for the same reason.

威斯康辛、明尼蘇達(dá)和喬治亞州的奶農(nóng)被迫傾倒了數(shù)千加侖沒人買的牛奶。在佛羅里達(dá)州，由于同樣的原因，蔬菜種植者放棄了可以收獲的西紅柿、黃南瓜和黃瓜田。

"We cannot pick the produce if we cannot sell it, because we cannot afford the payroll every week," says Kim Jamerson, a vegetable grower near Fort Myers. Those crops will be plowed back into the ground. "We'll have to tear 'em up," Jamerson says. "Just tear up beautiful vegetables that really could go elsewhere, to food banks, and hospitals, and rest homes."

邁爾斯堡附近的一個菜農(nóng)金·杰默森說:“如果我們賣不出去，我們就不能采摘，因?yàn)槲覀冐?fù)擔(dān)不起每周的工資。”那些莊稼將被重新犁回地里。“我們必須把他們撕成碎片，”杰默森說。“把漂亮的蔬菜撕掉，這些蔬菜本來可以送到其他地方，食物銀行、醫(yī)院和養(yǎng)老院。”

The country's food distribution system, in normal times, is a marvel, efficiently delivering huge amounts of food to consumers. But it relies on predictability, like a rail system that directs a stream of trains, on set schedules, toward their destinations. Now, some of the biggest destinations — chain restaurants, schools and workplace cafeterias — have disappeared, and supply chains are struggling to adapt.

在正常情況下，這個國家的食品配送系統(tǒng)是一個奇跡，能高效率地將大量食品送到消費(fèi)者手中。但它依賴的是可預(yù)測性，就像鐵路系統(tǒng)按照既定的時刻表指引一列火車駛向目的地。現(xiàn)在，一些最大的目的地——連鎖餐廳、學(xué)校和工作場所的自助餐廳——已經(jīng)消失了，供應(yīng)鏈正在艱難地適應(yīng)。

Something similar has happened to dairy farmers. Milk sales in supermarkets have increased, but not enough to make up for the drop in sales of milk to schools and cheese to Pizza Hut. So some milk cooperatives have told their farmers to dump the milk that their cows are producing.

類似的事情也發(fā)生在奶農(nóng)身上。超市的牛奶銷量有所增加，但不足以彌補(bǔ)學(xué)校牛奶銷量和必勝客奶酪銷量的下降。所以一些牛奶合作社已經(jīng)告訴他們的奶農(nóng)把奶牛產(chǎn)出的牛奶倒掉。

Meanwhile, food banks and pantries are having trouble supplying enough food to people who need it, including millions of children who no longer are getting free meals at school and people who've lost jobs in recent weeks.

與此同時，食品銀行和食品分發(fā)處難以向需要食物的人提供足夠的食物，其中包括數(shù)百萬兒童，他們在學(xué)校不再得到免費(fèi)食物，以及最近幾周失業(yè)的人。