Do all ugly tomatoes really end up in salsa?
Why processing food isn’t a solution to waste
Ever since our company first started selling “ugly” produce, one of the most common questions we have gotten has been: “What used to happen to ugly produce before Imperfect?” Sometimes, we even get this question in critique form: “Doesn’t ugly produce just end up in juice, soup, salsa, and other processed foods?” It’s a valid question, and since we care about transparency, honesty, and finding real solutions to food waste on farms, we’ve taken it seriously since day 1. We recently put this question out to several of our growers so we could learn more about how the processed food market actually works for them.
So, if you’re a farmer, is it really true that you can just sell all of your ugly produce to become processed food?
Many fruits and vegetables don’t have a processing market
While it is true that curvy carrots can be sold to soup manufacturers and blemished apples can be juiced or turned into sauce, it’s also true that many fruits and vegetables do not have a processing market. Saying that ugly tomatoes can always be made into salsa does not help farmers that are growing eggplant, rutabaga, or dozens of other veggies that can’t be easily juiced, pureed or made into salsa or soup. For example, squash growers can certainly sell their ugly butternut squash to become frozen dinners or soup mixes, but if they have other varieties like Acorn, Kabocha, or Spaghetti, that isn’t an option. Without a processing outlet, a grower’s best options for veggies like these is to either leave them in the field, send them to become cattle feed or compost them. While not all of these may qualify as “true” waste in your mind, none of them are ideal for the farmer, since they offer no return on their investment.
Farmers growing for the fresh market don’t have the quantity & consistency that processors need
We also learned that, while processed food companies do buy ugly produce, they often do not buy it from farmers who are growing for the fresh market. This boils down to the sheer economies of scale that processed food requires. Essentially, even if a farmer is growing a crop that does have a processing market, like tomatoes, apples, or carrots, they are likely not set up to provide the volumes that processors need at the frequency that their business demands. For a processor, a fresh grower coming to you with 100 boxes of ugly tomatoes one week, then 50 the next, then 500 the following week isn’t a recipe for delicious salsa, it’s a recipe for frustrating logistics and inconsistent supply chains. They’d honestly much rather buy from a grower who is set up to provide the quantities they need every week.
On this point, most growers we talked to emphasized the fact that processors have specific growers on contract growing just for them. Brian Peixoto, Sales Manager at Lakeside Organic Gardens explained that “Most processors set up contracts with growers to make sure they have a good, consistent supply.” Processors contract with farmers that operate entirely differently than fresh market growers. Since the end buyer doesn’t care about appearance or sizing the way retail stores do, volume and yield are the names of the game for these growers. They’re paid by how many tons of product they can provide every week. What all of this means is that, for fresh growers, having the option to sell to processors does not mean that this is an option they can meaningfully or consistently rely on.
The processing market won’t always take ugly produce
In addition to sourcing from different farms than the fresh market, the processing market is full of its own booms and busts that often keep fresh growers out entirely. If the market for a certain vegetable is flooded, processors have even less incentive to buy from fresh growers with surplus or ugly produce. Ricardo from Wholesum put it simply by saying, “If you’re growing for the fresh market, the processing market is only open to you in extreme events, like if nobody else has cucumbers and the market is really tight. But that’s the exception, not the rule.” Ricardo explained that when the processing market won’t take a particular commodity like ugly cucumbers, they have to send what they’ve already picked to cattle feed or compost and then stop picking any more of what’s in the fields until the market is less saturated.
Selling fresh produce to the processing market isn’t profitable for farmers
The real elephant in the room when it comes to selling food to processors is that it typically returns about 30% or less of what a grower could get selling on the fresh market. This means that, at best, farmers are breaking even and often lose money once labor and shipping costs are included. Bianca Kaprielian, a citrus grower at Fruit World in California explained that when they sell their ugly Mandarin oranges to a juicer, “We don’t cover the production, labor and processing/packing costs.” Michael, a pear grower with Bridges Produce in Oregon told us that ugly pears can and do get juiced, but that the return on pear juice and puree is low enough that it often doesn’t cover the cost of production. Ricardo from Wholesum echoed this point and added that when they sell to processors, it’s a tough but necessary economic calculation, elaborating that “We lose money selling to juicers but it’s better than nothing. It will cover our variable cost like palletizing, shipping, and marketing the produce, but not our fixed costs like seeds and labor.” Brian Peixoto from Lakeside Organic Gardens shared this sentiment, adding that, “We have to at least break even, which we call covering our growing costs.” The goal of the harvest is not to lose money, and labor is expensive, so they won’t even pick something if they don’t think they’ll get a good return on it. Even when processing is an option for a grower, it is at best a fall-back, since it’s an undesirable outcome financially.
Viable markets for grade 2 produce make farming truly sustainable
Our chats with our growers helped us see the food system from their perspective, which taught us a lot. One of the biggest takeaways was that the economics of farming is a lot more complicated than the narrative you’ll see in the news or on social media. Simply put, while it’s undeniable that processed food is one possible outcome for some ugly produce, this does not mean that it is a viable outcome for all ugly produce or even a good outcome for the farmers that are growing that produce.
From the perspective of a farmer, saying that all ugly produce isn’t at risk of going to waste because some of it can be processed doesn’t just ignore a huge amount of the economic nuance of agriculture, it implies the only goal of growing food is to keep it out of the trash. This perspective assumes that it’s okay for farmers to lose money on edible food as long as it doesn’t end up in a landfill.
While produce decomposing in a landfill is obviously the worst-case scenario of food waste, the goal of sourcing ugly produce from farmers isn’t just to literally keep produce out of the trash. There are many different outcomes for ugly produce between the landfill and the plate, so simply dodging the worst one isn’t enough for us to declare “mission accomplished.” The EPA’s food recovery hierarchy helps put this into focus.
Our chats with farmers also clearly showed us that sourcing ugly produce really matters on an economic and emotional level. After our first season working with a new potato grower in Wisconsin, we received a touching email from the grower about how it had impacted them. Here’s what Brad, a potato farmer with IGL in Wisconsin, had to say: “Having a good market for [our ugly produce] has generated good income for us, which helps to put that back into the farm and invest in machinery or other things that we normally could not justify.” More than just validating the economics of our business model, this email reminded us of the underrated importance of having empathy for farmers. If you’re earnest about wanting to build a more sustainable food system, you have to first understand the challenges and perspective of the people that grow our food.
As Imperfect grows, our ability to exercise this empathy does as well since we’re now at a scale where it makes sense for growers to pick entire “ugly” plots just for us instead of leaving them in the field to rot. For example, for Lakeside Organic Gardens, their partnership with Imperfect means that when they have a field full of cabbage with mild insect damage, they don’t have to write it off as a loss. It’s finally worth their time and labor to harvest this cabbage, since they know they can sell it to us for a fair price. Working with growers across the country has reminded us time and time again that it’s just as important to make farming economically sustainable as it is to make sure that it’s environmentally sustainable. Giving growers a rewarding outlet for their ugly produce is a way to do both. At a time when it’s becoming harder and harder to make a living growing food, we’re proud to be providing another, more sustainable way of doing things.
Ultimately, reducing food waste on farms is just one step of many on the road to a more sustainable food system. Just as processing is a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of food waste on farms, ugly produce boxes like ours are not going to single-handedly end food waste in the US. Consumer choices like buying ugly produce won’t be enough to close the gap on such a massive environmental problem. Since twice as much food goes to waste in our home as goes to waste on farms, we’re going to have to do more than just shop differently to turn this around. We’re also going to look ourselves in the mirror and challenge ourselves to throw away less food. Are you up for the challenge?
