Last week on Twitter, the crop scientist Sarah Taber wrote a long thread arguing that ugly produce isn’t the problem or solution. On a fundamental level, some researchers question whether Americans’ understanding of food waste as a crisis actually reflects the problem at hand. It seems as though “ugly” produce companies didn’t anticipate the criticism they’ve received. The reality of its potential impact might be a little more complicated, with start-ups profiting from the food system’s structural problems while also providing real, material good for working-class people. Depending on who you ask, ugly produce is either the salvation or destruction of America’s food system. But not everyone is buying it: Food-justice advocates argue that profit-based solutions are unequipped to do battle against food inequality, and that even well-meaning companies could do real harm to community organizations. If successful, ugly-produce companies could help with the vanishingly thin margins faced by smaller-scale growers and expand access to fresh food. Read: Why Americans lead the world in food waste Companies like Misfits Market, Imperfect Produce, and Hungry Harvest aim to fill the logistical gaps and provide new markets for growers by buying up farmers’ “ugly” or excess produce and shipping it directly to your doorstep, often by subscription. To combat that, a new class of for-profit start-ups has emerged: ugly-produce boxes. By some estimations, it’s more than half. One of the most popularly cited problems is the amount of produce that goes entirely unconsumed in the developed world. Younger, socially conscious Americans and their concerns about sustainability have turned some unflattering attention toward the food industry. That I hadn’t thought much about my little carrots meant the system had worked as intended for the type of consumer I am (affluent, urban) and helped obscure the leviathan of the American food-supply chain, which includes everything from commercial growers and processors like Dole and Kraft Heinz down to local farmers’ markets and food banks.īut as shoppers change, so must the systems that serve them. Since the early 1980s, scores of smaller American agricultural companies have been driven out of business or gobbled up by Big-Ag conglomerates. I’ve never lived in a world that wanted me to think about how the carrots got made. I’m not sure what I’d believed about them previously: Were they actual babies? Were they a “baby” breed of small adult carrots? I certainly hadn’t understood them to be carrot nuggets, whittled out of big, ugly carrots that many people wouldn’t buy in their natural state. Waitrose also said it would divert millions of carrots and other misshapen vegetables into its own label soups, ready meals and smoothies.Do you know what baby carrots actually are?įor me, the baby-carrot jig was up a couple years ago. Waitrose said its latest efforts were part of an existing programme to sell misshapen vegetables in an effort to reduce food waste.Ī University of Edinburgh study in 2018 estimated a third of fruit and vegetable produce across Europe never reaches supermarket shelves because it fails to meet appearance standards, leading to more than 50 million tonnes of food waste each year. Large parts of England are officially in a drought for the first time since 2018 following the driest summer for 50 years, forcing water companies to restrict water usage to safeguard supplies. The steps should help farmers make up for any shortfall in overall yields due to dry weather and low rainfall. “Whilst the crop coming out may look and feel a bit different to what we’re all used to, it’s still the same great British quality,” Lidl GB Chief Executive Ryan McDonnell said in a statement.
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