Do you know how much those potatoes are worth to the farmer who starts with dirt, water, sunshine and diesel and grows them if the supply chains and infrastructure aren't there to get them to consumers? Zero. We saw this with the pandemic when the normal supply chains were disrupted and farmers literally ended up plowing their potatoes back into the fields because there was suddenly no way to sell them all. In fact, technically it's negative - the fuel and time to dispose of them costs something. (Of course, all the left-wing activists blamed some capitalist conspiracy for this, as though the potatoes would magically fly from field to plate if we did away with capitalism.) The core of the modern economy is specialization - instead of everyone growing their own food, a much smaller number of people grow food for everyone, freeing up a bunch of time for other things beyond just basic sustenance - and the actual multipliers involved are pretty huge.
FWIW, I don't think one needs to believe in capitalist conspiracies to feel repulsed by a situation in which stranded food is being buried in bulk to minimize losses, because there's not market mechanism to get it to people during a pandemic, while there are miles of lines at food banks, and record levels of food insecurity. Not everything needs to be couched in an ideological battle between capitalism and socialism, IMO.
