The ugly truth about the ugly produce movement

One of the arguments for subsidies to farmers is that they are the "feeders of people". Sounds to me like they want privileges, why not a few obligations for a change?

I do see something wrong with: creating that paying market by lying.

I suspect most of those conscientious people who think they are helping farmers and reducing food waste would not be paying for this produce if they knew that it was being taken away from poor people.

Also, I do a fair amount of work with a local neighborhood center that has as a part of their mission meeting the basic needs of local residents. I haven't been there during fresh produce bank they run, but I've seen pictures and been told by the management that they get some very high quality produce. Apparently the local markets aren't that great at predicting the desire for a product, so they get some pretty high quality produce from every chain in the city.

> Does this mean that we may have to restructure social programs as that food becomes sold rather than donated? Sure might.

Except the former is already happening, while it's highly uncertain whether or not the latter will happen.

Essentially, Imperfect Produce is buying scraps from medium to larger farms and marketing it to people that would normally buy produce from small farmers. They sell you on the concept of buying vegetables and helping the environment and farmers at the same time. They do this by claiming that the food would go to waste if you didn't buy it and they also imply through marketing materials that the food comes from quaint little ma and pa farms.

The thrust of the argument is not "boo, capitalism!", it's that it is deceptive marketing and it's hurting small farmers. Because 1) the food would not go to waste if it wasn't purchased and 2) the food they are selling does not come from small farmers but it's marketed like it does and it's marketed to the same people that would normally buy from small farmers

Said the man who never relied on donated food to survive.

Still, I know I shouldn't be surprised to see this sort of comment on the mother of all capitalist congregations that is HN.

Like when Robin Hood was introduced to capitalism and started “robbing the hood.” Nothing like taking food from the poor and selling it to the rich, just need that good market...I know tell them they are saving the world by buying this food and otherwise it would be waste.

Think of all these “untapped” markets startups can disrupt like soup kitchens and food stamps. These morons out here giving food away when they are just one round of VC money away from creating new markets.

Jokes aside, the article does read like a buzzword soup, and looks like a low blow from someone who is getting outcompited fair and square.

I would also like to see an analysis of the impact in consumer prices, since imperfect food is making a net loss for producers into a net gain.

If these producers are competing this should lower the prices, what could potentially reduce the need for donated food altogether (I know it’s very optimistic, but hey, a man can dream)

"As long as people are only willing to buy pretty produce, then because actual produce inherently contains only a certain fraction of pretty produce, a demand for pretty produce inherently creates a surplus of ugly produce which can then be redistributed. In effect, every purchase of pretty produce hides an invisible tax which goes to buying ugly produce for the homeless. If paying customers no longer demand pretty produce, then stores will be able to only order as much produce as they need for paying customers, and the ugly-food surplus - that virtual tax on produce customers - will disappear. So, in effect, the ugly produce movement is the equivalent of advocating for a repeal of a tax on produce purchases which is used to buy produce for the poor."

And phrased that way - "do you support or wish to abolish the produce tax and the social program based on it" - it becomes a political issue which one can reasonably have opinions supporting the tax on the basis that it helps the poor. Especially as this tax and feed-the-poor social program has been created without government intervention or regulation - they're an emergent product of unforced consumer preferences, and there's no administrative overhead involved in keeping track of the taxes and organizing food purchases because it's just an automatic consequence of spending money to buy produce.

But this is exactly what I got from the article, that the supposed wasted food isn't being wasted. And so the consumer activism behind the appeal of these products is misplaced.

No, I think you're the one who has it wrong. Previously, the "ugly produce" wasn't food waste because it was distributed to the needy through food banks and other social uses.

The problem is that the "imperfect produce" startup used a glitzy marketing campaign to turn that produce into a marketable commodity, redirecting it from social uses to profit-making uses, making the poor worse off to benefit some VCs and midsize-to-large agribusiness companies. To add insult to injury, the marketing tries to pass off the profit-making use as a social one.

The evidence they provide is broad macro-level statistics about how much food is wasted, but not about where the food they're selling comes from.

The parent article claims specifically that they are getting their food from sources that would otherwise be going to food banks.

The fact that this "reply" repeats talking points with country-level statistics instead of directly addressing the question leaves me feeling suspicious of Imperfect Produce.

I'd prefer a better solution, but when one isn't available (and likely not forthcoming), needs of real people outweigh my economic principles: These people need food.

It's the same in engineering: As much as we would wish otherwise, sometimes the 'right' solution isn't available and we need to deliver, so we provide an imperfect solution that works.

Been living here 4 years, still don’t get it. Prob never will.

I’m supposed to only buy expensive produce so the cheap stuff can be left for those less fortunate? Why don’t you just use some of the exorbitant taxes I pay to help the less fortunate directly? Smh

It wasn't a problem before.

And then the problem never gets fixed. You argue against this practice with the reasoning that the "income problem" should be solved directly. Simultaneously, others argue (loudly) against solving the "income problem" directly with the reasoning that practices like this are the answer. At every point, there's an alternative that can be used as an excuse to totally avoid solving or ameliorating the problem.

>Soon, Imperfect’s single-use cardboard boxes began lining the streets on recycling and garbage days in the East Bay.

but I couldn't find the linked URL elsewhere on HN! It's almost a verbatim quote from the original article:

>Soon, their single use cardboard boxes began lining the streets on recycling and garbage days in the East Bay.

The whole paragraphs are nearly identical:

>Within months of its arrival in the Bay Area, Imperfect Produce fliers were showing up on our car windows, their outreach coordinators were pitching at community meetings, their Facebook advertisements popped up daily in our feeds, and they were edging into community centers we had operated at for years. Their marketing blitz paid off. Soon, their single use cardboard boxes began lining the streets on recycling and garbage days in the East Bay. We lost customers, a lot of customers.

>Within months of its arrival in the Bay Area, Imperfect Produce fliers were showing up on our car windows, its outreach coordinators were pitching at community meetings, its Facebook advertisements popped up daily in our feeds, and it was edging into community centers we had operated at for years. The marketing blitz paid off. Soon, Imperfect’s single-use cardboard boxes began lining the streets on recycling and garbage days in the East Bay. We lost customers, a lot of customers.

"'We want to be able to source at least a truckload from these growers each week, so they have to be at least midsize in most cases.' Imperfect Produce is only able to make a profit by working with the larger global agribusinesses, not the picturesque small and mid-sized farms it projects in its marketing campaign."

Social enterprises aren’t responding to a market opportunity in the same way a for profit business is. They are filling a gap that the for-profit market has created or left unfilled and are often doing so by using fragile mechanisms that can easily be destabilised. They don’t really have many options to adapt and they can’t ‘pivot’ to a new customer base to adapt as that would be leaving the original problem unsolved.

In short, I don’t think you can fairly use free market thinking for social enterprises.

I doubt it. This is fresh produce we're talking about, the unsold "pretty beets" will be offered for sale on grocer shelves until they're close to spoiling and them get trashed as food waste.

One of the probable advantages of the "ugly beets," from the food bank perspective, is that they could affordably get access to them earlier in the supply chain while they were still fresh.

Realistically they probably end up on grocer shelves, which are themselves a horrific contributor to food waste. Some small portion of those that will otherwise end up in a dumpster will be redirected to other ends (e.g. 'made fresh' foods offered by various grocers) or donated.

Good, quick talk by Zizek on this phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpAMbpQ8J7g