I spent nearly six years homeless. I ate at soup kitchens and got food from food banks for a small portion of that time.<p>I grew up with a garden in the back yard. My dad hunted and some of the meat on our table was squirrel and deer he killed. My mother cooked from scratch.<p>I'm used to eating well for relatively little money. Most of the food at soup kitchens and food pantries fails to meet my expectations for food quality.<p>Food stamps (EBT) are a good program. You can use them to buy the same food from the same stores as anybody else and you get to decide what to spend it on. (Though the program could use more funding. They tend to last only 3 weeks of the month.)<p>Soup kitchens and food pantries tend to suck, even the better ones.<p>I'm not saying we shouldn't provide compassionate support to anyone. I'm just saying some programs for doing so would be acceptable to people with middle class expectations and some wouldn't be. For many reasons, including germ control, we need to be shooting for programs that fit middle class sensibilities and not act like "beggars can't be choosers."<p>Furthermore, if you are homeless, you are living without a fridge. Produce doesn't keep well under those conditions. When I was around a lot of other homeless people for a time, it wasn't unusual for free produce to go to waste, in part for that reason. Some idiot would give a homeless person some giant bag of apples. They could eat a few of them before they rotted, but not all of them. Maybe they managed to give the rest away. Maybe they didn't.<p>Last, I have serious reservations about creating systems to serve the poor instead of creating systems to help them resolve their problems. Systems designed to serve the poor tend to actively keep poverty alive, a la the Shirky Principle:<p><i>"Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution"</i><p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle</a>
>Our BeetBox CSA supports small farmers of color mostly farming under 50 acres, [...]<p>...<p>>Imperfect Produce is only able to make a profit by working with the larger global agribusinesses, not the picturesque small and mid-sized farms they project in their marketing campaign.<p>Can someone explain what I'm missing? They get their produce from small farmers, Imperfect Produce gets their produce from large farmers, where is the overlap?<p>>it certainly doesn’t help small, local farmers or address the source of waste: overproduction by industrial farms as they produce the perfect produce sold in supermarkets.<p>So in this context, the over production is being considered "waste" but once Imperfect Produce uses it, it's perfectly good food that food banks and soup kitchens no longer have access to.<p>Also, there is a lot of implication that all of the food waste going to support communities is being utilized effectively. But certainly they, too, discard some portion of food, not to mention issues with quality or sanitation.<p>Clearly I'm missing something. That, or they really called it on the "sour grapes" thing.
My girl signed us up for the ugly fruit box, and I’ve done a couple shifts doing processing (sorting) at two food banks. Maybe this is different elsewhere but the two streams of food had very little in common.<p>What has shocked me is that I expected ugly food to get turned into processed food. You know, lopsided potatoes made into soup or Pringles. Weird looking apples into fruit juice.<p>What I get instead is oranges the size of grapefruit, grapefruit the size of oranges, and a reality check. The food I’m picturing is made on machines. Machines like to work with uniform inputs and usually can’t cut out bad bits. So maybe they’re turning all the apples that are between three and four standard deviations below normal size into applesauce, but they probably aren’t turning giant or scabby grapefruit into my breakfast beverage.<p>It does kind of make me wonder if there’s a market for making machines that <i>can</i> do that though. We have to be close to building that sort of tech at a competitive price.
>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.<p>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?<p>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).<p>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.<p>In other words, why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste?
The author seems to be saying “don’t sell imperfect produce to people... only sell them perfect produce so that you have to waste huge amounts of resources in overproduction so that the leftovers can be donated to the poor.”<p>No. Feeding the poor is important but there must be a better way than that.
Food banks are charity which should be tackled by the welfare state. Food banks do good work. They do amazing work. But it's work which shouldn't have to be done, and it's an indicator oF economic failure.<p>Commoditising ugly fruit and veg is good. We should stop treating perfectly good food as reject and we should stop assuming the best use of ugly food is donation to the poor.<p>Poor people need jobs and state intervention not food banks
> It’s a clever money making scheme, but it certainly doesn’t help small, local farmers or address the source of waste: overproduction by industrial farms as they produce the perfect produce sold in supermarkets.<p>No...that's literally exactly what they are addressing. They are creating demand for the imperfect produce. That was the problem in the first place, lack of demand for imperfect produce and the inseparability of imperfect produce production from perfect produce production.
Does the food industry have a moral obligation to produce waste for the poor? It seems they discovered a market segment that had been previously overlooked.<p>Being transparent about where the food <i>would</i> have gone might make people think twice before lowering their quality standards, but in aggregate, I think the technology to route second-rate food to bargain hunters is a genie that won't be easily rebottled.
I signed up for Imperfect Produce about 6 months ago. I'm relatively happy with the service. Despite calling the produce "imperfect" often the freshness and taste is better than what I find at the store. Caveat, I have not liked the quality of the fruit so I stick to their vegetable offerings. The main driver for me sticking with the service so long is that a) we do not have to make grocery trips as frequently, b) my diet has improved. I feel a pressure to eat the veg we have on hand before the next delivery, which means eating veg for breakfast many days. And lunch. And twice for dinner.<p>I also don't own a car, and having services like this helps me continue the car-free lifestyle.<p>I am sympathetic to phatbeets' criticism. Despite leaning towards not changing my consumer habits, I will have to mull over their points and evaluate my priorities.<p>At some point though, I need to eat and if the service fits within my overall lifestyle but I care about community hunger, maybe I can donate a box of produce to a food shelter through IP?
I’m beginning to think VC is the most important driving force of rising inequality. It replaces natural flourishing of community connected entrepreneurship with a winner take all market. It crushes the less connected and resourced with tactics that would be called dumping in other markets.
Article is terrible. At the last part<p>>A Case of Sour Grapes?<p>I thought there was going to be something interesting but no, that's only a header no content afterwards to answer that rhetorical question.<p>Also I am kinda bothered by the repetitive use of small farmers of color. This also surprisingly seems to be mentioned nowhere else on their pages. Why not just Precarious ? local? Engaged for affordable quality or whatever? Is really color the most accurate and essential way to describe the farmers in this project?<p>I already have no sympathy for this organization after reading what should be an unfair case that could help to bring traction about them.
Social programs should really plan for these types of disruptors more often. We've had Asda (Walmart to you US folk) trying to do the same by adding boxes of below commercial grade into supermarkets couple years ago. It really pressured our local small suppliers by people seeing the cost of two trips higher than the difference in prices. I don't think the author should feel more cornered though - imperfect food still makes perfect meals at a higher margin - perhaps they should use this encouraging response from their community to take their stock, teach to cook healthy and retain profitablity to support their existing programs? They would even be able to maintain a reliable % for food banks and reducing waste by converting excess into food for a later time.
Does anyone have a better source than this article on what's really going on in the industry?<p>I don't know anything about it, but I'm skeptical. I would have thought that an ugly carrot would end up as carrot juice or sliced up into bits and put into soup.
Many here are not getting the point of this article. Imperfect produce claim that most of the ugly produce used to get wasted , which is not true. Imperfect produce is also killing small non profits like Beetbox by taking away their customers.<p>Also, what happens when Imperfect produce gets big enough that there isn't enough ugly produce to source. This is a problem with investor driven, profit hungry companies. Other example is SeatToTable which claimed to deliver fish from local fishermen to your doorstep was actually sourcing from other parts of world.
It seems that industries have become negative-sum games.<p>In the software development industry, there is a similar problem; SaaS services have been replacing free open source solutions even though they are expensive and they take away flexibility from those who use them.<p>Advertising has become too powerful - It allows for-profit companies to use big VC funding to fund campaigns to trick people into making bad decisions. They end up paying more for the same thing.<p>In effect, they're changing the world for the worse but they're packaging it nicely.
Why are the comments dissing about phatbeets produce? Their cause is immeasurably better than Ugly Produce.<p>Remember just recently there was a Chinese browser that received shit tons of money and turned out to be just Chrome browser?<p>There are plenty of shitty startups out there and this is an obvious case that Ugly Produce is one of them.
I debated whether to say anything or not because this seems zero-sum and the potential for downside is huge. Yet, here I am at 4:30am, in Canada, being opinionated about a problem that I am far-removed from.<p>20 years ago, I was a 20y/o radical activist. I spent a significant amount of my time, energy and money participating in street-level activist organizing - all while holding down a job as a software developer by day.<p>I have protested the KKK (the Ohio police put us in a big cage while robed Klansmen hung out with a PA on the courthouse steps). I have personally been involved with shutting down white power skinhead concerts, which often involved physical confrontation. I wasn't "in Seattle" but I was "in Washington", for those of you old enough or inclined to catch the reference. I've held placards at Free Mumia rallies. I almost got arrested for jabbing Fred Phelps (the God Hates Fags asshole) with an umbrella.<p>I offer this - if you're willing to trust me - not to brag or signal virtue, but to offer some context when I say that holy fuck the language that they use in their call-to-arms manifesto is irritating to me.<p>Maybe it's true, what they say about getting old making you conservative. Maybe this post is giving me an existential crisis. And yet, I don't think so. What I actually think is that perhaps East Bay food activists are just guileless in their messaging and are completely tone-deaf to how incredibly elitist that this kind of intentionally polarizing propaganda actually sounds to anyone who might not shake their fist at the concept of capitalism still existing in the bathroom mirror every morning.<p>Ranting about how a startup is stealing your thunder / community groups because they are <i>gasp</i> effective is the literal definition of sour grapes. It has nothing to do with capitalism, which is true regardless of how many comments you delete.<p>Seriously, phatbeats: when did you get so scared to innovate? You don't have to do it in a capitalist framework, but you have to get creative and try new things or you won't have a legitimate argument to make to 99.9% of the population. Even Canadians who are moved to tears by Bernie Sanders find your tone to be grating.<p>I want so badly to support people who spend their energy making the world better for people. Maybe these Imperfect Produce folks really do have blood boys and drink the tears of orphans. But my knee-jerk reaction to your post, as life-long self-identified progressive, is to cheer for them. That should not be what's happening, and it's not just because I got old and sold out.<p>Meta: I am genuinely impressed at how civil this discussion is. We HN commenters often get a bad rap. We often++ deserve it, but today, we can have nice things.
Is anyone else extremely frustrated with Phat Beets about this article? Or are we all too busy burning down a conveniently placed straw man? Phat beets haven’t produced any stats or facts of their own here. They just keep tearing down the ones that Imperfect is providing. Nitpicking statistics and shaming a company for trying to feed more people with less waste is just as bad as whatever greenwashing they claim to despise so much. It’s pretty undeniable that Imperfect is making an impact on food waste and until they or any other company are using all of the billions of pounds of food that aren’t getting eaten every year, it’s utterly counterproductive to try to tear them apart for trying to help this food find a home on someone's table. Why are they so obsessed with fact-less mudslinging? Why is Imperfect the chosen target and not a real villain of the food industry like Bayer/Monsanto, Walmart, or McDonalds?<p>Here are some facts for you: In 2017, Feeding America reported that they received over 1.47 billion pounds of produce. As a reference, Imperfect claims to have recovered 30 million pounds of produce to date. Feeding America and the NRDC also reported that over 6 billion pounds of crops go unharvested or unsold ever year. This study was based on 7 key crops so the total is likely much higher, but let’s assume its 6 billion to be conservative. This means that even if Imperfect went through 100 times the amount of ugly produce every year that they’ve recovered to date, they would still be using less than half of the available supply. Phat Beets, your math doesn’t add up! Provide meaningful statistics and facts to back up your argument or everyone will see through your emphatic nourishment of the outrage machine of social media for the reactionary<p>Zooming out, there’s also a huge aspect of this that’s a messed up apples to oranges comparison. Imperfect is a business with a social mission related to food waste, not a nonprofit solely focused on ending hunger. It’s great that they are making a difference while also making money but it’s not fair to ask a company to overthrow capitalism. Do you expect Lyft to overthrow the freeway system, or ask the computer that you wrote these words on to end exploitative mining practices that provided the copper for the circuitry? It seems like you’re making the good the enemy of the perfect and in so doing ignoring the reality of the situation which is much more nuanced than you portray it. Isn’t there a way for community CSAs to work alongside companies like Imperfect? It seems to me that these two groups are working towards admirable, but very different goals at different scales and this is actually a good thing. There is plenty of work left to be done and there is clearly more than enough food for both of you to achieve your goals and then some. Save the abstract critique of capitalism for philosophy class, the rest of us live in the real world where we have to make compromises and embrace the grey areas.<p>My sources-
Feeding America report:
<a href="http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-produce-one.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-pr...</a>
NRDC report:
<a href="https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf</a>
I don't understand. Now it's bad for people to buy food waste, because otherwise food waste is donated?<p>TFA smells like anti-capitalism, upset that someone is doing something profitable with the source of their charity work... And double upset that capitalists might have a (gasp) positive impact.<p>Personally, I am angry and upset at this Phatbeets, for taking food waste away from the hard working farmers who would otherwise use it for compost. But I'm also angry at the farmers who, by using ugly food for compost, are stealing jobs from the good folks of the waste department. Stop undermining our social systems, you capitalist farmers!
The ugly food should be ground up, fermented, and turned into whiskey moonshine for the homeless. The spent grain should be fed to pigs to make bacon. Any other waste should be ran in my flattop 1946 Ford 9n tractor to make more ugly food, with manure from the pigs and free labor from the homeless, in exchange for the whiskey moonshine and bacon diet. Win/win