I am highly skeptical. The author of that article makes a lot of claims, but doesn't really go into a lot of how the information was obtained.

I'm not denying there's some marketing involved here--I'm sure there is.

But there's also some element of truth here. I've worked at a food co-op and they definitely composted a lot of food. In the article's logic, that's not food waste, but I think that feeding people is still a lot better.

That article is an interview with an expert in the field. You can look up Sarah Taber and find more information and citations. Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up.

You realize that crops have to have organic material to grow, right? Using leftovers, spoilage, and damaged produce from the previous crop is how agriculture is traditionally done. If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops. You say "feeding people is better", but there's more than enough food for everyone. The answer to hunger is not to force farmers to give the leftover produce to poor folks. Rather, it's to give the poor folks the means with which to buy the food they need. There's plenty to be bought! So much that lots of it gets thrown out! It'd be much healthier for the entire system if we addressed the problem at the source and made use of the systems that are in place rather than trying to short-circuit things, resulting in a lot of unintended side-effects.

> Just because there's not a Works Cited list attached to a Vox interview doesn't mean it's just made up.

For all I know it is just made up. Maybe if media companies got in a better habit of providing citations they'd be more trustworthy.

> If farmers don't use composting, then they have to buy some other source of organic material and fertilizer to grow the next year's crops.

Which, from what I've seen first-hand growing up in the rural Central Valley (and what I continue to see first-hand in other rural areas) is exactly what's happening. Those crops ain't being composted with any sort of regularity (I'm sure some of it might be, since store-bought compost has to come from somewhere, but I'm highly skeptical of the idea that the farms themselves are doing it).

The nugget of truth in the article is that they ain't getting "thrown away", either. Rather, they're typically getting sold to companies using them for raw ingredients on a more industrial scale (think canneries and baked-goods factories and TV dinner makers and such) and/or (more recently) companies that specifically market "ugly produce", and whatever's left over from that often ends up being animal food (whether through manufacture - e.g. dog/cat food - or fed directly to e.g. livestock).

I think it makes sense to be a lot more skeptical of the claims of companies like Imperfect Foods who have a vested interest in getting people to buy unappealing produce (from them, of course) than an independent food scientist staking her personal reputation on these claims.

Thank you, I remember reading this as a tweet but couldn’t find it (twitter search is.... lacking)

when you mentioned a tweet i had a feeling it would be by dr sarah taber, and she was indeed quoted in the vox post. i highly recommend following her on twitter; i have learnt a startling amount about food production and the realities of farming in america.

There's a fundamental question that the article doesn't seem to answer: if "ugly produce" is a myth, then where are these companies getting their ugly produce, and how are they able to sell it at a discount?

I'm fully prepared to accept "it's a marketing gimmick and they're selling at a loss" as the actual answer here, but it seems to go unasked and therefore unanswered.

They aren't selling at a discount, which is why it astounds me anyone pays for it!

https://slickdeals.net/article/buying-guide/imperfect-produc...

> But when a crop is complete, farmers plow everything back into the soil. Some of it ends up as organic matter that is supporting soil health, and that is okay, too.

Basically declaring that the waste is not waste. Solving problems by changing definitions.

If a field is harvested too efficiently it needs to be left fallow to rebuild lost nutrients. Leaving some in the ground is not waste by any definition.

Well... You do need to account for the lost inputs, e.g. fertilizer that runs off instead of being sequestered, water pumped in for irrigation, gasoline to power a tractor, and so forth.

A cover crop (e.g. clover) specifically for building soil that grows without aid of fertilizer or irrigation is a better story in this regard.

No, pointing out that what some people call waste is not actually being wasted, it is serving a useful purpose. "Waste" means it is serving no useful purpose at all.

It's fairly difficult to do something that serves no conceivable purpose. I could buy stuff and throw it straight into the trash and we could say it's not waste as I'm supporting manufacturing and the garbage industry.

If you care about limiting some wasteful practice, you have to pick some definition of what counts as waste.

It's it essentially composting? How is that waste?

If I buy a tomato, and throw it in my garden, eating none of it, most people would say I wasted the tomato.

There are far cheaper methods of fertilizing my garden than tossing food into it, which makes it "wasteful".

At a certain point you have to pick a definition of what counts as food waste, and stick with it. Fiddling with the definition isn't going to make the world a better place.

Plowing it back into the fields means less fertilizer is needed for future crops. How is that waste?

That's like a perpetual motion machine. Energy is wasted, there is no way around it.

The sun is a great source of free energy.

But not necessarily nutrients/fertilizers and most tractors and transportation today run on ICEs. So it's still not a free lunch.

It needed that fertilizer to grow to even be plowed back in to start. It's just a waste of space for a "good product". It's basically a free pass for next year. No money gained means no profits means profits loss.

If the produce is lost, it's tax deductible

If the produce goes back to soil, it's an expense and next time it will result in higher output.