Science & Tech Quote by Jeremy Rifkin

Rifkin’s line lands like a quiet indictment disguised as a spreadsheet fact. By insisting “already” twice, he short-circuits the comforting storyline that hunger is a problem of scarcity waiting on innovation. The intent is to relocate the moral and political blame: if food exists in surplus, then starvation isn’t a natural tragedy but a manufactured outcome of how markets, land, and power are organized.

The subtext is sharper than the tone. “More than we can find a market for” reveals the trapdoor: in a market system, need is not the same as demand. People can be desperate for calories and still count as economically invisible because they lack purchasing power. Rifkin is pointing at a grotesque paradox of modern capitalism: abundance can coexist with deprivation when distribution is gated by price, logistics, and property rights. Hunger becomes less a technical failure than a policy choice.

Context matters. Rifkin has long argued that technological progress often outpaces the institutions meant to manage it, producing surpluses, dislocation, and new forms of inequality. In agriculture, industrial yields, subsidies, commodity trading, and global supply chains create mountains of grain alongside food deserts. Farmers can be paid to overproduce, then punished by low prices; governments can stabilize markets by restricting supply; retailers can discard edible food to protect brand standards. The quote works because it doesn’t beg for sympathy; it challenges the listener’s default explanation. If the world is already capable of feeding everyone, the scandal isn’t what we lack. It’s what we tolerate.