I’ve seen whole citrus groves of perfectly good fruit left to drop and rot because it wasn’t the “right” size, meaning too big. And no one could pick up a single orange for fear of arrest for theft.
Waste? Most don’t know a fraction of what takes place.
Last year they also kept the jumbos and sold them to a potato chip producer. Smaller sweet potato farmers harvest everything and sell them according to size and grade, from #1's to canners, which are the small or oddly shaped, that will be cut and canned. They can't afford the waste.
You are correct though ... if people only realized.
And this kind of thing continuously happens all over the world. Now, how can any to all of world politics ever successfully become non-wasteful at any given point in the future, when everything else in the world that can possibly be wasted far to often is? “Do onto others as you want done onto you.” But, if an individual seriously has wasteful personal habits and yet seriously also wants all politicians to shrink the size of government, cut taxes, eliminate taxes, fully privatize everything involving the government, fully practice free market reforms on a variety of issues, etc., how can worldwide conservatism ever actually completely succeed at any given point in the future? The existence of socialism, communism, and all other forms of leftist politics also far too often successfully suppresses people from greatly improving upon their own government.