Campaign takes on the ‘ugly’ truth about fruit and vegetable waste in Utah and beyond

Grotesque. Ridiculous. Disfigured. Inglorious.

These words describe the bountiful harvest of Utah's ugly produce—fruits and vegetables that are misshapen, blighted, scarred, discolored or otherwise imperfect to the eye. And while the state doesn't track statistics of how much produce goes to waste because of beauty (or the lack thereof), there seem to be more brown spots, hail pits and disfigured fruits at the farmers market this season because of the erratic spring weather.

According to endfoodwaste.org, the creators of the @UglyFruitandVeg social media campaign and the What The Fork petition to Walmart and Whole Foods to sell ugly produce in their stores, 26 percent of produce is wasted in the United States. Much of this is due to strict cosmetic standards that large grocers dictate about how the produce they buy (and sell) should look; if the product fails to meet the standard for size, shape or color, it's deemed ugly and unsellable.

This equates to billions of pounds of perfectly edible and nutritious produce left uneaten each year in the United States.

"Sometimes perfectly good fruit or vegetables are a little misshapen," says Jack Wilbur, co-owner of 3 Squares Produce, which farms on nine plots from Bountiful to West Valley. "A potato or carrot, for example, that grew around a rock or root underground might be a bit more difficult to peel, but it is just as edible and can be prepared or cooked just as you would any other potato or carrot."

To demonstrate, Luke Petersen, owner of Petersen Family Farms in Riverton, recently walked through his fields tossing disfigured and cracked tomatoes and curled Japanese cucumbers. "People don't even recognize this as a cucumber when it's twisted up and not completely straight."

Tasting the beauty of imperfect produce • Utah Commissioner of Agriculture and Food LuAnn Adams encourages consumers to realize that cosmetically challenged fruits and vegetables are for the most part just as good as perfect specimens. "Fruit that has been affected by weather may be misshaped and discolored, but the fruit remains safe to eat and use for canning," she says. "When it comes to hail damage, for example, damage is often below the skin. Even then, the fruit remains good to eat."

Petersen has attempted a number of things to keep his imperfect produce from going to waste. "I have tried to do a 'seconds' shelf in my market to sell them for less, but rarely do people purchase those," he says. Instead, he now keeps a list of customers interested in buying the imperfect fruits and vegetables and he'll sell them to those people for a lower rate — typically 50 percent off.

He also has an arrangement with his cousin, who uses the farm's blemished tomatoes to make soup each year. In exchange for her and her sisters' labor picking all the tomatoes — the ugly ones for canning and the perfect ones for Petersen to sell — everyone gets what they need from the deal. "They do dozens of bushels of tomatoes every year this way and save themselves hundreds of dollars," he explains. "We are both very happy."

But agreements like this are not a large-scale solution to waste, says Petersen. "This farming work we do is very sensitive, and we can't let everyone have free rein of our living, delicate plants, soils and production systems."

Instead, Petersen and Wilbur hope to use education at the farmers markets to sell some of their cosmetically challenged produce this year.

Wilbur explains that shoppers often expect heirloom tomatoes to be misshapen — it's part of their character — but he anticipates a more difficult sell of his hail-damaged apples and blight-stricken brown-spotted peaches at the Sugarhouse Farmers Market on Friday evenings and Sunday's Wasatch Front Farmers Market at Wheeler Farm.

The coryneum blight that is affecting much of Utah's peach crop this year came about because of wet conditions in the early spring that caught some fruit farmers off guard. "If you aren't aware you have it, or if there isn't much time between rain events during an extended rainy period to apply fungicide, you can end up with damaged fruit," says Wilbur.

Fruit infected with blight typically has small brown spots about the size of a freckle. "The blight spots on peaches are almost always on the surface only," Wilbur continues. "Once you peel the skin the rest of the fruit is fine. We are going to put some photos and brief literature at our farmers market booth educating people about the spots."

Petersen had a field of watermelons that were badly damaged by hail early in the growing season. "The small fruit had large pits, which have now grown out into even larger scars, and the stress also caused the fruit to be misshapen [not round]," he says. "I am going to try to sell my pocked-up watermelons at the farmers market and just explain what happened and sample them and hope the customers will understand."

Commissioner Adams agrees that these tactics are the best way to educate consumers. "When farmers are selling directly to consumers at roadside stands and farmers markets, they have the chance to explain that the cosmetic problems are only skin deep or barely below the surface," she says. "They can also offer customers a sample so they can taste that the fruit is still good."

The economy of waste • Although cosmetically imperfect produce will always be a part of the farming business, Utah's erratic weather this year will put decisions about produce waste at the forefront. In many cases, the amount of waste will be based on an economy of scale.

For a small farmer like Wilbur, he'll make every effort to sell every last bit of fruit he can. "We don't have enough to discard perfectly usable produce," he explains. "If it is slightly bruised or damaged by hail where a part of the fruit is not usable, we will reduce the price accordingly. Only the fruit we think is completely unusable will be discarded. That's a very last resort for us."

On the other hand, Petersen, who operates among 15 small plots of land across a 5-mile radius, often fights the clock (and nature) just to harvest the most perfect specimens to sell to grocery stores and wholesalers, in addition to his CSA and market customers. "What people don't understand is that it takes more time and care to pick and separate the damaged fruit," he says. "We are very busy trying to get all the good fruit picked and sold before it spoils, so it is really hard for us to deal with the damaged fruit. We don't have extra labor sitting around to pick, pack, market and sell poor-quality produce. It just doesn't make sense businesswise."

Whatever Petersen Family Farms can't or won't sell will stay in the fields and be plowed under. "It doesn't really go to waste this way," Petersen continues. "It's composted and helps to make a new crop next year."

Ugly produce gets a second chance • "What I and other local growers will experience this year is the result of the 'skin deep' mentality that is pervasive in our society, far beyond the appearance of produce," Wilbur concludes.

But change may be on the horizon. The What The Fork petition has been signed by more than 80,000 people to date. And in 2014, the "Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables" campaign was created for Intermarché, a supermarket chain in France, to entice customers to buy imperfect produce at discounted prices. The goal was to reduce the more than 603,835,616 pounds of food wasted in the European Union each day. The campaign was so successful that "inglorious" produce is now being offered in all 1,800 Intermarché stores.

With education and the help of the Ugly Fruits and Veg and Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables campaigns, Utah farmers may slowly see more success with their own inglorious goods.

Petersen encourages shoppers to remember, "It's the same fruit, just not as pretty."