In America, we like our fruits and vegetables to be as flawless, impossibly glossy and runway-ready as the beauty pageant contestants and bobble-headed supermodels that our culture reveres. Hang out in the produce section of your neighborhood grocery store and within the span of five minutes, you will witness shoppers of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds sizing up kelp, cucumbers and kiwis with uncompromising, highly scrutinizing hawk-eyes. Rifling though strategically stacked displays of perfectly uniform apples, bell peppers, oranges and tomatoes, we hold the potential objects of our desire up to the light in order to more effectively scan them for tell-tale signs of inadequacy. If we detect a freckle, fleck of dirt, bruise or inconsistency in pigmentation, chances are good that we will cast it aside in search of a far superior model. While our hyper-selectivity may yield us what we believe to be the most succulent and nutritious specimens, amid all of the poking, prodding and sizing-up going on, we are in fact contributing to a deep, dark secret that pervades the entire fruit and vegetable industry across the country and throughout the world.
If it’s flawed, we fling it. If it’s below par, we kick it to the curb. If we’ve allowed it to go past its prime, we ditch it without a second thought. Even in the midst of our current economy, we have been programmed to emulate the fruit-and-veggie-sorting standards that our country’s farmers and grocers are expected to follow. So, despite the fact that our paychecks may not go as far as they used to, American households dispose of 1.28 pounds of food on a daily basis, 27% of which is vegetables, mostly due to flaws in appearance.
On average, U.S. farmers are forced to dispose of approximately 1/5 of their entire harvest because it does not fulfill visually uniform and blemish-free criteria set forth by the FTC, modern advertising imagery and consumer desire. Other resources cite that figure being as high as 50%. That means that every twisty-goateed-carrot, two-headed eggplant, and eyeball-ridden potato that they encounter is either left on the fields to rot before finally being tilled underground or immediately carted off to the dumpster. Remarkably, the UK has followed suit for decades with the EU-imposed regulation of 26 varieties of fruit and vegetables that must be banned for sale if they are under-sized and/or misshapen – resulting in an annual crop loss for British farmers of 20%.
Add to those numbers the wasteful habits exercised by other global consumers. India has one of the most fragmented produce-supply chains on the planet which explains why more than 30% of their fresh produce is lost or spoils before it reaches the market. On average, goods pass through six or seven middlemen before a consumer can buy it, resulting in ridiculously extended transit and significant deterioration in quality. The United Kingdom recently found that £3 billion worth of perfectly good fruit and vegetables are thrown away each year, including 2.8 million tomatoes and more than four million whole apples. If we focus on the U.S. alone, at the current rate of loss, edible fruits and vegetables (whether ugly, a bit wilted or every stage in between) could save consumers and manufacturers tens of billions of dollars each year if we even partially corrected our flawed system.
Naturally, a certain amount of waste in the farming industry is beyond control, such as adverse weather-related conditions that cause crop deterioration, wide-scale disease, or insect infestation, but there is another surprising reason why perfectly edible crops are being discarded on a regular basis. Many fruit and vegetable farmers admit to taking a risk on the commodity markets, hoping that they will score financially. When they miscalculate the demand for their crop, a lot of good food goes to waste — current figures suggest that 12% of American crops, valued at $20 billion, are ultimately plowed under when farmers grow too much.
Once approved crops are sorted and distributed to various retailers across the country, further losses occur post-transit, and affected fruits and vegetables are culled one more time prior to being put on display and several times thereafter until the stock is depleted. What happens to all of the produce that is wilted, bruised (thanks to aggressive customers) and otherwise rendered less-than-perfect? Depending on the retailer and their policies, they may throw it away, compost it, donate it to local food bank charities, offer it animal refuges/zoos/farms, or sell it at a deeply discounted price to livestock farmers. Out of curiosity, I asked the produce managers in three different grocery stores near me to tell me what they do with their expired and otherwise unsellable fruits and vegetables, and they all told me that they throw the stock away.
There is clearly an economic cost to discarding perfectly valuable, albeit unattractive produce, but what about the environmental cost? Driving unwanted produce to dumpsters across the country uses large quantities of fossil fuel, which in turn spits out a huge carbon footprint. Dumping these items en mass into our landfills takes the process one step further by triggering the release of large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide. Since landfills are America’s largest human-related source of methane emissions, cutting the unnecessary disposal of fruits and vegetables can have a measurable and positive impact on the environment.
As people continue to be hit harder by the global recession, countless organizations are trying to brainstorm more practical options and possible solutions to the food waste issue. The European Commission recently decided to lift EU regulations that formerly restricted the sale of 26 types of “ugly” fruits and vegetables (although limitations on 10 of the best-selling fruits and vegetables still remain in place), and they have ruled that unattractive but perfectly nutritive produce labeled with the words “product intended for processing” will be allowed in stores. In the U.S., the farm-to-table and local-food movements have encouraged consumers to embrace irregularly shaped produce. In 2008, they helped convince the Federal Trade Commission to ease restrictions on the sale of a coveted hybrid heirloom tomato called the UglyRipe that is not-so-pretty but nonetheless delicious.
I think that a perfect way to bridge the gap might be to create real incentives for farmers to donate their surplus to charities and food banks that are in desperate need of resources. Another plus for farmers – being able to sell their unattractive but usable produce at a deep discount to school lunch programs, food processing companies and restaurants across the country. Do you have any ideas that would enable us as a country to revamp our produce-wasting mentality? In spite of everything, there is a small light at the end of the tunnel. I came across two organizations that are striving to do what they can in their neck of the woods to keep as much produce out of the landfill and into the mouths of needy families. Please take a moment to explore their goals and achievements – and by all means, spread the word.
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