We’ve started getting weekly delivery of produce that supposedly doesn’t make the cut as pretty enough to display at the supermarket.
I am happy with the quality, quantity, and price, but then it occurred to me that many supermarkets donate such produce to food banks/soup kitchens.
Am I doing good by reducing food waste, or am I removing a free source of food from people who need it?
As I understand it, food which isn’t good enough to sell to a supermarket never leaves the farm. It’s just turned into mulch.
The food which goes over to the homeless is the stuff from the supermarket that wasn’t sold under the shelf-life limits.
By purchasing ugly produce, you’re not affecting the homeless, you’re just allowing more produce from the land to end up serving its intended purpose. In theory, that means that we need less land and less energy to keep the population fed, because we’re not throwing away X% of our produce.
In reality, that might not play out that way in practical effect because 1) you’re establishing a second delivery pipeline for the X% which is less efficient than the pipeline between the farm and the supermarket, and so you’re spending money on fuel, packaging, etc. that has to be run separate and redundant of the main pipeline, and 2) the farm is no longer mulching its bad produce, making the land slightly less fertile after each batch of crops, requiring more fertilizer to be produced and delivered to cover the loss of all of the nutrients that were sold off as “ugly vegetables”.
If the practice of buying ugly produce became well-accepted, there’s some chance that it could break even in terms of weighing the benefits and losses. As a small, quirky thing that barely anyone does, more likely it’s a loss because of issue #1. I would strongly doubt that there’s any case where there’s a benefit to the world, in practical effect.
If you could convince people to buy ugly produce at the supermarket, then there could be a net benefit. But that’s not what the ugly produce service is offering.
Much of it people DO buy, without realizing it.
Bananas that are starting to turn brown – they are pulled from the produce display … and disappear into the bakery, and tomorrow there will be a manager’s special sale on fresh banana bread. Wilted carrots become carrot cake.
Misshapen heads of cabbage disappear from produce into the deli, where they reappear as cole slaw. Old grapes go into the deli salads, and wilted broccoli combines with sunflower seeds & dressing as another deli salad.
An efficient modern grocery store uses a lot of the ‘ugly’ produce in the deli or bakery; only a limited amount ends up in their compost bin.
In addition, “ugly” produce that’s still edible get turned into soup, baby food, Tater Tots, chopped frozen or canned vegetables and fruits, et al.
I get weekly deliveries from Imperfect Produce. I’m very satisfied. To my eyes there’s nothing wrong with any of it. Most of the time not even blemished. I don’t have any deep-seated philosophical reasons. I was doing CSA, but I never knew what I was going to get in the box, so I couldn’t plan. With IP, I can choose what I get. And I love that they deliver.
This is not how modern supermarket delis and bakeries work.
Again, that’s stuff that has made it to the supermarket.
A lot doesn’t leave the farm because it simply looks too funky to even be worth sending.
My belief is that Imperfect Produce takes the stuff that the farm otherwise wouldn’t have sent past their fence.
We get that too. It’s mostly overstock. Every once in awhile you get something that is imperfect, but typically it’s surplus produce. (If you customize your box, you can see what the imperfections are classified as. Most of the time, it’s surplus.) I use the service to force me to buy more vegetables, but it isn’t cheaper than my local supermarket.
How do you tell if a cow is ugly or not?
In the thread about Dollar Stores, I posted about products that are seconds. Flawed in some way that’s not good enough for regular retail. At least in Hawaii, some of our farmer’s markets and swap meets sell these seconds.
The carrot pieces in the stew at one of our local drive-in chain chains is always twice as big as a carrot you get a supermarket. I realized that these were the size I’d see a the farmer’s markets. So they’re receiving their share of seconds. I suspect the reason I see only the top portion of the carrots is stews is because that the ‘woodiest’, toughest part. The lower part of the carrot is probably used in other dishes that don’t have the long cooking of stews.
Which leads to ‘baby carrots’. Interestingly, this Snopes article https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/baby-carrots/ states that most baby carrots in the US are no longer cut down misshapen carrots. But this UK Carrot Museum article http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/babycarrot.html states that "Manufactured Baby Cut Carrots [are} (the most common).
Ever buy a conveniently prepared quarter, half or slices of a cantaloupe. Ever notice if you try to mentally or physically try to put the parts together they don’t make a whole fruit? It’s because the part that’s missing part was bruised or has some other imperfection. I’ve seen the produce people in supermarkets take a bruised fruit, then cut away the bad part and cut and offer the remainder to passers-by.
Also, the the chain of markets I shop at, bags of overripe bananas are sold for banana bread, except for the one that does all the baking for the other stores. Hmm…
The farmers that plow under their excess crops are likely either government or local farmer’s co-op subsidized. If everyone has a bumper crop, prices will drop and we can’t have that!
At least in Hawaii, though only a small portion of our produce and fruits are locally grown, they’re curiously close in price at most markets (except Whole Foods of course). Why doesn’t corner the market and blow out their competition by selling well below the others! Hmm again…
You put a wig, lipstick and false eyelashes on it and if it doesn’t help, it’s UGLY!
Yeah, when you go to the customize screen, it explains why they have this product and it is mostly surplus.
It’s not cheaper, but as a household of one, I don’t spend much on groceries anyway, certainly not much on fresh produce. I think my average IP order has been around $10. I’m also using it to encourage myself to eat more veggies.
Imperfect Produce is what we use. My wife does the ordering so I didn’t realize you could see WHY it was offered. I’m kind of annoyed at the marketing now.
So, does buying overstock change the calculus in terms of avoiding waste vs harming the needy/the environment?
Also, I don’t know where you all live but a $25 IP box for our family of three is a great deal in Southern California, assuming you eat all or almost all of it.
Farming is an odd (and tough) business. Produce too much and you may not be able to sell off what you have, especially since it’s perishable. Produce less to try and just meet market demands (that you have to predict months or years ahead) and you have unused land that even if you own it outright you still have to pay taxes on.
Give away your excess to a good cause and you’re a saint when you do and a demon when you don’t since you’ve set expectations. Remember there’s a finite lifespan when your product is usable so some charitable kitchens have to turn down produce donations since they can only cook so much at a time (usually what can be consumed that day) due to health standards and/or have limited storage space
Then there’s liability. There’s a legal covenant that purchasing someone from a properly licensed seller has a certain guarantee and warranty of quality and safety, buying their produce from known suppliers who’s quality standards meets that of the store.
Stand by the roadside and give your excess produce away, and if someone gets sick, finds a bug or just doesn’t like the look of the fruit, they may claim they never wanted the fruit, it was forced on them. There’s no legal covenant there was no trade, and while there’s no guarantee or warranty since it was free, you’ve now earned a reputation of having an inferior product which may follow you to your buyers.
I highly recommend buying ugli fruit (grapefruit’s delicious mutant cousin).
Not really what this thread is about, but I really do not want ugli fruit to disappear from the stores the way tamarillos did.
I’m in Chicago, and I’ve priced it out before, and there isn’t a single item in the box that I get that I can’t get cheaper at the grocery store I normally shop at. Some items are almost similar in price, but typically a $20 box (not counting the $5 for shipping) I could buy myself for about $13-$15. But, like I said, not something I order for the savings, but rather to force myself to eat through more fruits and vegetables. (And I try not to customize my box, but I’ve found I’ve had to, otherwise I end up with a gazillion pounds of carrots and potatoes.)
The small farm we buy produce from doesn’t turn ugly produce into mulch, they turn it into pork. Yummy, delicious pork.
Mail order fruit giant Harry & David sells their less than perfect pears as Mavericks:
“We’re well-known for growing a lot of pears, and naturally, some of our Royal Riviera® Pears don’t meet the premium standard we use for the gold foil-wrapped pears we put in our gift baskets and towers. Sometimes there aren’t enough leaves to protect them from the sun, and they get a little redder than others. Sometimes they grow too close to the branch and have a funny shape. However unique these Royal Riviera® Pears look on the outside, on the inside they’re just as juicy and sweet as their more photogenic siblings.”
Update: