There's a simple enough solution here - government stops doing something

Look not at the precise details here - far too boring to check as they are - but at the general assumption being made. The complaint is that government has screwed up, the solution proffered is not that government should stop screwing up but that it must do so more.

We are really very certain that this is an error:

Michael Gove has said “much, much more” must be done to tackle food waste as it emerged producers are “incentivised” to send their surplus to green energy plants rather than to charities that feed the vulnerable.

Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food every year is either ploughed back into the ground or sent to animal feed or anaerobic digestion plants because it is cheaper than storing it or transporting it to where it is needed.

We agree that food should go into people. The specific complaint is about the tax breaks (and we've not investigated the truth or not of this contention):

He said: “Food that is in perfect condition is being turned into energy instead of feeding people because the Government gives green energy firms a guaranteed minimum price per unit for what they generate.

“That means they can afford to transport food and in some cases even buy surplus food from farmers, which gives the food producer an incentive to go down that route.

“In contrast, there is no financial incentive or support for a farmer or food producer to store food in an edible state, because that will cost them money, just as it costs money to transport the food to charities.”

The answer, we're told, is that more taxpayers' money should be given to those food charities. Or the farmers, or a new tax break introduced, but government must do something anyway.

The answer is, instead, that government should stop doing something. Stop offering those guaranteed prices to energy from biodigesters. Once we have that level playing field then we'll find the efficient method of dealing with that food. Perhaps it is worth more being ploughed back into the land, perhaps feeding the hungry, possibly even creating the light by which other food can be eaten. Until and unless we have the price system telling us we'll just not know, will we? 

That is, as so often, the correct response to a problem is not that government must do something, but that it must stop doing the damn fool thing it already is.