Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

>Imperfect Produce claims they’re saving the world by reducing food waste–and helping farmers by buying surplus ugly produce that would have been thrown out. Sounds great. The reality is that this produce would have otherwise gone to food banks, to be redistributed for free.

I've been chewing on this for a while. Who's in charge of setting up a social safety net? Whose responsibility is it to make sure people don't starve in the streets?

I thought I paid taxes to my government to socialize the issue across my representative district, but my government (in the USA) has disagreed with me - that money is to be spent on fighter jets (to quote the executive branch), while the churches are responsible for taking care of the homeless. And by the way, the homeless are responsible for policing themselves (to quote my mayor).

A couple weeks ago Domino's Pizza filled a bunch of potholes and stamped their logo on the asphalt after. I thought that would cause a national discussion. I thought at the very least, the city that it happened in would be humiliated enough to make the foolish mistake of maybe trying to slap back at Domino's for putting their logo all over the street. Nope, business as usual.

In other words, why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste?

The article's term "gentrification" has a more specific focus than overall social welfare, and I think it's spot-on. Entrepreneurs notice an "underutilized" resource (housing / food waste) and create a new distribution network, disrupting the old one. This is good ol' competition (which I am a fan of), but it's important to acknowledge that it impacts people who aren't "competing", like food bank visitors. Even if the new network captures more value than the old one, it may also redistribute that value -- as the article contends, from food banks that would get more donations to "conscious consumers" who prefer this to traditional groceries, and of course to Imperfect Produce via profits.

Regardless of how you feel about the ethics of the above, it's at least part of Imperfect Produce's identity. If they are marketing to conscious consumers, this article helps those consumers consider more broadly their social impact.

For my own value judgement, I feel like I'm missing some important data: - If IP is taking waste produce from larger farms, are they actually competing with BeetBox for the supply of produce? - Downstream of above, has IP's activity actually reduced the amount of food donations being made available to food banks?

If IP is mainly competing with BeetBox for the "conscious consumers" that subsidize their charitable work, maybe BB can focus efforts to marketing their distinction from IP. Maybe this article is the first step.

Alternatively, if the BB folks are prioritizing social impact, have they tried to convince/train IP to work with the same social gaps they fill? If IP is more efficient in extracting conscious-consumer dollars, they have more surplus that could be poured back into the community.

I bet Domino's worked with the city and had some sort of explicit permission.

> found a capitalist way to reduce waste?

I don't know anything about either of these groups, but the article says that this is simply the marketing of Imperfect Produce that doesn't bear out in reality. Do you have information contradicting their points that you decided not to share?

I don't think I understand what you mean... But I almost certainly have less information than them or probably you, so am happy to hear more.

IP assert: "This food was going to be thrown out & going to waste. We are using it for something!"

Article asserts: "That food wasn't being thrown out it was going to food banks and homeless shelters."

So while IP is almost certainly helping the farmers by paying them for produce they can't normally sell they certainly aren't reclaiming mountains of food otherwise destined for rot.

> why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste?

They don't. They wont. The article is nonsensical and ignores basic economics. Suffers from "we know better" attitude.

Small farmers are struggling. If the ugly produce helps them become little more profitable it is both good for them and also good for the food security of the nation. More available food would mean food will be cheaper for everyone. Will the world be better place if small farmers are out of business and a large businesses like Amazon takes up farming ?

Personally do not think there is anything ugly about ugly produce.

Note: I am not a rich techie. I earn less than $10K a year.

It's not small farmers that this is helping though. The article quotes Imperfect Produce as saying they need to be able to take at least a truckload of produce off a farm each week for it to be economical, so they don't deal with small farms. This is helping the large agribusinesses, not the mom and pop farms.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com