how does waste prevent a shortage from becoming a famine ?

Making the expected production a higher number than the expected need will give the headroom necessary to deal with a shortage without people starving.

If you’re aiming to produce food for a population of 100,000, but have the capacity to make food for 200,000, then you can afford to waste half of your food without starvation. You can also accommodate a 50% drop in production without starvation.

So that buffer is expected waste, but it’s also starvation resistance.

It means you have a lot more strength to gain. I think you can afford to just maintain while getting stronger, maybe for a few months, and then when you start cutting again it’ll be easier.

I am not sure how to judge my strength.

You could always plug in your numbers and take a look:

https://strengthlevel.com/

I’d say that if you still have a lot of strength to gain, then you can afford to keep cutting until it starts interfering with your workouts.

That being said, I find it easier psychologically to stick with a long term plan when I’m not cutting too much or too long.

So when you say your BMI is 30, are you a strong 30 or a fat 30? And have you plateaued in your strength gains from resistance training, or are you stronger than you were a month ago?

Personally, I find it easier to cut when I have the fitness to be able to burn a ton of calories through exercise: being able to run 30 minutes straight, being able to put in a high volume weight lifting workout, etc.

So if it were me, I’d lean towards pausing the cut and just getting stronger and fitter on the same weight, so that the next round of cutting, a few months from now, is easier.

Then again I’ve never been able to maintain a cut for more than 2-3 months, so you should be aware of my bias.