An Australian company is shining a spotlight on the amount of food waste happening between the farm and the supermarket with a new TikTok video.
Farmers Pick (@farmerspickau) is dedicated to reducing food waste by selling boxes of perfectly good produce rejected by other sellers for how it looks. The company rescues everything from apples to zucchini, preventing tons of delicious, fresh fruits and veggies from being thrown away.
In a video from June, a representative of the company showed off a shipment of more than 4,400 pounds of celery root that he says were rejected for being too small.
"Can you believe it? Something this big is 'too small?'" he asked, holding up a fist-sized celery root.
@farmerspickau Help us fight food waste by ordering a box of interesting fruit and veggies from farmerspick.com.au 🥑🍏🫑 rescuing celeriac rejected by the big supermarkets for being too small #farmerspick #fightfoodwaste #foodwaste #celeriac ♬ original sound - Farmers Pick
Unfortunately, this problem is common when buying and selling produce. "At the supermarkets, [celery root] is purchased per piece instead of [by weight]," the Farmers Pick representative explained. "So people prefer bigger pieces."
That preference leads to incredible amounts of waste. "Up to 30% of it gets left on the farm," he claimed.
The issue isn't unique to celery root, either. As one TikTok commenter pointed out, "Unfortunately this … happens with every kind of food out there."
When produce is thrown out for petty reasons like size, shape, or minor defects, it costs farmers money and wastes all the resources that went into making it. This causes the price of growing produce to rise, so farmers have to charge more for their crops, in turn raising prices for buyers.
Meanwhile, all the extra energy and water that goes into growing, sorting, and transporting replacements is a drain on Earth's natural resources, leading to more pollution and water shortages.
Farmers Pick and other companies are trying to change that by selling less attractive produce. "Help us fight food waste by ordering a box of interesting fruit and veggies," the company said in the video description.
Many commenters were on board with the project. "We really need to stop purchasing from conglomerates and buy as direct as we can," said one user.
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