Kitchen Garden Forum

I see Hugh Fearnley Whittingatall is starting another campaign against the amount of farm food being wasted because parsnips are wonky, apples are too small and supermarkets only want to sell cosmetically perfect products. (9 pm BBC1 2nd November).

I've written to my supermarket's head office telling them I wholeheartedly agree with him, and asked when I can expect to see them selling food as it is dug up rather than only 100% perfect items. But I'm not holding my breath.

Do you think customers really are this fussy? Or is it the supermarkets just imposing this policy regardless? After all, we all eat the stuff exactly as we grow it, don't we? Do supermarkets have a duty to educate their customers in eliminating this kind of food waste? It almost makes me weep when I see films of perfectly edible foodstuff just being ploughed back into the soil.

I think that given the choice between perfectly shaped vegetables, fruit etc. and the irregularly shaped, most if not all people would select the better looking before the less good looking. This of course means the less well shaped can get thrown away although perfectly edible. If supermarkets stock the cosmetically less good looking produce they will have an increased supply of produce. The question is would they then reduce their prices in order to sell the increased supply? I do know from my experience that when produce is sold at a certain price customers will always select the better looking produce. I do agree with you Primrose that it is a terrible shame to see edible produce being ploughed back into the land but I'm not sure what the answer is.

Barney

Well i think it,s partly a question of clever educational marketing and supermarkets need at least to try a few experiments.. If yiu sell misshapen fruit and veg slightly cheaper under your "Just as Good but Prevent Food Waste" label , at least customwrs have a chance to think about what they're buying, and why.. At the moment nobody gets a choice.

I have two neighbors (my neighbors can be a mile away) who have never eaten PFA potatoes at the age of 60-plus and I'm guessing they won't buy them or even worse bin the ones I gave them because they don't look like the spuds they are used to seeing.

I know this comes as a surprise to find that people reached their autumn years and still restrained by the habits instilled by parents which in many ways can be good though because some people won't take simple risks and/or are not adventurous in any way then a wonky spud doesn't taste good in their limited outlook.

My best friend and partner is still shackled by the way she was fed as a child, I have friends who raised children to be scared of water to the extent they never taught their children to swim and whilst this appears to drift away from the subject I'm talking about education.

Marketing people sadly have the power to lead us by the nose and wonky vegetables could soon become superfoods.

Sad, isn't it ?

Perhaps there will be an opportunity for supermarkets to use up all the misshapen veg now they are selling them peeled and cut up and packaged. They could make big profits by buying them cheaply and selling them with a huge mark up. Or perhaps they already do.

Plum Pudding, you may have a point. I wonder where all the frozen carrots come from?

Dear Primrose, the biggest problem is, we are growing far to much food. I know this sounds ridiculous with so many people that go hungry around the world but, at the moment the is to much Sugar beet, wheat, potatoes, milk, apples and now it seems a whole host of vegetables. the problem is, if we cut down on growing them in this country, the gap will only be filled by cheap imports.

I'm afraid the boundaries can be moved a little, but the main problem will stay much the same.

To sum it up, i was talking to very intelligent farmer the other day, and he was excitedly telling me in one breath, that it was a record harvest for his wheat crop and then in the next breath, telling me that the prices for wheat were very low, so the figures will be a little worse than last year.

I think that says it all really.

On the question of growing too much food, I guess we amateur growers experience this on a mini scale with our 'feast and famine" years (although never a "Famine" year when it comes to growing courgettes I suspect ) when we have surplus produce which we end up giving away. But we don't rely on our food for an income so for professional growers the issue is obviously a different dilemma and it,s pretty impossible to get the balance right, as your farmer friend has suggested.

But in thirty years time when our population is forecast to be much bigger, the equation will gradually change, as more mouths need feeding and good farming land has been concreted over for housing. Few politicians rarely seem to look that far in to the future, project the issues that arise and plan for how to solve them. Some of The foods people are eating then may be in a rather different form. I plan to make my exit before eating dried insects becomes the norm for Sunday lunch!

I used to buy spuds off a farmer who was slowly going out of business as he could not afford the cost of a potato wash and very few people would buy them dirty

I think that oldherbaceous summed it up very well.

The problem arises if you sell cheaper cosmetically inferior produce then what happens to the cosmetically superior ones? The cause as oldherbaceous points out is over production and we all as consumers benefit from this state of affairs because food has become relatively cheap. In my recent thoughts on milk prices it is just a question of supply and demand, something we have to accept in a free economy. British steel workers are now paying the price of over production (with no opportunity to diversify or sell their assets that many dairy farmers have). One answer is for governments to dictate to farmers what to grow and how much to grow and agree set market prices. The 'Collective Farming' model comes to mind but I expect that our farmers would much rather remain with the status quo then have their (or is it our?) land nationalised for the benefit of the nation. May I point out that I am not advocating one system over another, I'm just trying to think of the alternatives.

For any not familiar with 'Collective Farms' I have included a little light reading on Collectivization of Farms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectiv ... viet_Union

Barney

I saw a snippet of the trailer for this & there was a farmer just ploughing what looked really good carrots back into the ground. Not a total waste I suppose but no value at all. I wonder if there is anyone who could buy this so called inferior product, and the bent cans, ripped bags, close to use by dates etc and set up shops that are not a food bank where stuff is given to you but are at very low prices.

I expect it would end up over run with folk who could well afford the 'perfect' produce but who like a bargain and maybe a new trendy fad would come out of it? Will be interesting to see what Hugh suggests.

Westi

I suppose they would have to be "Pop Up" pound shops or possibly market stalls as most of these harvests are very seasonal and product would only be available for a short time of the year. I remembers years ago when I was working in London there was a fruit and veg market stall which sold wonky root veg , curled cucumbers and the like for dirt cheap prices. The queues at that stall were always massive. They were incredibly good value for money. I haven't seen a curly mis-shaped cucumber for years!