im sorry but that cannot be right, unless there is a new purpose for food coming soon, otherwise the only purpose of food is to be donated to the donation hub.
for example upgrading a "box of plants" from lvl 5 to lvl 6 requires 170 wire, 340 fertilizer and 220 metal parts, and it increases the food production by about 0.3 per hour, so if i were to instead donate those resources to the donation hub i would get 50 400 donation points.
but by investing those resources into upgrading the box of plants to lvl 6 i would lose those resources but get a passive 0.3 food per hour in return, it requires 45 818 food to get the 50 400 donation value back, at a rate of 0.3 per hour it would require 152 727 hours for the upgrade to pay itself, thas over 17 years before it starts to make profit.....
17 years!!! , and it get even worst with higher levels, there is no way the players are expected to wait over 17 years before their investment starts to wield profit.
as you can see by the math, this cannot be an intended balanced design.
before the update, 10 000 food was required to unlock the "special issue crate" and all the other creates below it, now we need 136 364 food to unlock "special issue crate" alone (without the other crates below), thats almost 14x more food required than before.
Please check again as this cannot be intentional unless there is a new purpose for food incoming in the near future.