食物短缺?不，太多的食物放错了位置

食物短缺?不，太多的食物放错了位置

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

近几天来，美国政府高级官员已采取行动向美国民众保证，尽管出现了冠状病毒，但他们不会缺少食物。

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."

副总统彭斯在参观沃尔玛配送中心时宣布，“美国的食品供应非常强劲。”美国食品药品监督管理局负责食品的副局长弗兰克·雅纳斯(前沃尔玛高管)在一次电话会议上告诉记者，“尽管有当地食品供应中断的报道，但没有出现大范围或全国范围的食品短缺。”

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

“没有必要囤积，”雅纳斯说。

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.

事实上，这场大流行引发了完全不同的问题：买不起食品杂货的人数激增，以及不需要的食物过剩。

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、明尼苏达和乔治亚州的奶农被迫倾倒了数千加仑没人买的牛奶。在佛罗里达州，由于同样的原因，蔬菜种植者放弃了可以收获的西红柿、黄南瓜和黄瓜田。

"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."

迈尔斯堡附近的一个菜农金·杰默森说:“如果我们卖不出去，我们就不能采摘，因为我们负担不起每周的工资。”那些庄稼将被重新犁回地里。“我们必须把他们撕成碎片，”杰默森说。“把漂亮的蔬菜撕掉，这些蔬菜本来可以送到其他地方，食物银行、医院和养老院。”

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.

在正常情况下，这个国家的食品配送系统是一个奇迹，能高效率地将大量食品送到消费者手中。但它依赖的是可预测性，就像铁路系统按照既定的时刻表指引一列火车驶向目的地。现在，一些最大的目的地——连锁餐厅、学校和工作场所的自助餐厅——已经消失了，供应链正在艰难地适应。

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.

类似的事情也发生在奶农身上。超市的牛奶销量有所增加，但不足以弥补学校牛奶销量和必胜客奶酪销量的下降。所以一些牛奶合作社已经告诉他们的奶农把奶牛产出的牛奶倒掉。

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.

与此同时，食品银行和食品分发处难以向需要食物的人提供足够的食物，其中包括数百万儿童，他们在学校不再得到免费食物，以及最近几周失业的人。