Unshapely potatoes and other potato wastage

“We’re not talking about greening, bruising or mechanical damage or damage due to storage, we’re talking entirely about the way they look,” Robbie Davis - Potatoes SA CEO

Last night on Catalyst they were talking about potato wastage. The focussed on a huge processing plant - Mitolo (largest in the southern hemisphere) - which washed, graded and packaged potatoes. And also discarded tons because they did not meet the supermarket standards of aesthetics. Most of the discards were either used as stockfeed - at a huge loss to the farmers, or ploughed back in the ground. Well I think that's what happened. Not used usefully anyway.

As an aside, whilst I was 'researching' this I found an article in Stock Journal about this particular company, dated June 2018, which reported that the company was being investigated by the ACCC for their dealings with the farmers who supplied them:

"The contract terms, which the ACCC alleges are unfair, include terms that allow Mitolo to unilaterally determine or vary the price Mitolo pays farmers for potatoes, unilaterally vary other contractual terms, declare potatoes as “wastage” without a mechanism for proper review, and prevent farmers from selling potatoes to alternative purchasers." Stock Journal

It will be interesting to see how that plays out. But it's not really what this post is about. The issue the program was presenting was that the supermarkets, who are, of course, the major sellers of potatoes, were insisting on perfectly shaped and unblemished potatoes. And that therefore tons and tons (20-40% of production was quoted) were being wasted. And I have no doubt that this is true.

When, I wondered, did this happen and why? When I was young there were no supermarkets and you bought your vegetables from the greengrocer or the market. You didn't get to choose them either, the greengrocer did that. I remember he scooped his weighing tray into the pile of potatoes, weighed them and tipped them into your bag. Going to France was a bit of a revelation - the French individually picked out their potatoes - or anything else for that matter - from the piles on display. And to be fair to the supermarkets you can still do that here. However, the potatoes you select from have also been previously graded and sorted - I don't know whether this is a less rigorous standard - but doubtless tons of those have been discarded too. And if you buy at the market whether it be the cheap Queen Victoria market and its ilk, or the expensive farmers' markets, you can pick them out there too. But I'm guessing they have also been presorted.

Now it's certainly fair enough to reject the diseased, mouldy and damaged ones, but are we, the consumer, really fussy about the shape? Is it we who have influenced the supermarkets or the supermarkets who have influenced us?

In a way you would think that the supermarkets could get away with less beautiful specimens, because they are, after all, packed in plastic bags on the whole, so you can't actually tell what you are getting a lot of the time. And surely most people would accept the odd 'off' potato. As for difficulty of peeling - maybe you shouldn't always peel them? The peel has the most nutritious part of the potato and it tastes good too. You can even include it in mash. Come on Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules - push that idea.

Many supermarkets around the wold now offer misshapen produce with various catchy names - Woolworth's The Odd Bunch springs to mind. The Europeans and the British have been doing this for much longer than the Australians. This is not an area in which Australia is ahead of the pack - some 10-20 years behind in fact. And yes this does use the misshapen vegetables and they are cheaper, but, of course, you can't win - this is not really fair to the farmers.

"charging lower prices for ugly fruit and vegetables also neglects the fact that the same labour is required to produce and harvest crops, regardless of their appearance." The Conversation

And certainly in Woolworths anyway, the number of items available in this category is not large, and, it seems to me, shrinking, so I'm guessing that only a select few misshapen vegetables get saved this way.

The supermarkets also give a lot of food that would otherwise be wasted, to charities these days. And this is an extremely good thing for them to do. Back in 2016 France actually legislated for supermarkets to do this.

"France has become the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food, forcing them instead to donate it to charities and food banks." The Guardian 2016

They were also legislating for the supermarkets not to spoil what was thrown out into bins so much (by pouring bleach over them for example), thus preventing the poor from salvaging the discarded stuff. They were hoping that other countries would follow suit, but I do not know if they have.

None of this, however, solves the problem of wastage at the processing stage. Which is where most of the wastage occurs. Everyone is blaming the supermarkets and this may well be the case, but the SA Potatoes CEO seems to think it is futile to make them change their demands.

"changing attitudes to imperfect produce would be hard and the best way to tackle waste was to value-add. I think it is much more rational and sensible to deal with the waste than try to change the supermarket attitude to this,” Robbie Davis - Potatoes SA CEO

Really? Has anybody tried?

I did look at other ways of dealing with the processing wastage - and there are literally hundreds of innovative ideas out there - some of them very scientific and chemical, and I confess I didn't really understand - but also there were new products being developed - potato peel chips, strawberry desserts, flour, bread, alcohol ... You name it - somebody has thought of it. And I do so hope that somebody will come up with a really brilliant idea which will make use of the wastage without the farmers losing out.

And finally, who are the other big wasters of potatoes? Well us of course. We buy too much (guilty), or we cook too much (also guilty). If we buy too much they go off, and if we cook too much we throw them out. Well not me. I rarely throw out a potato. Even if they are sprouting I just peel them and soak them in water for a bit so that they firm up a bit. What I should do with those that are a bit far gone, is plant them and grow my own. Not that I am a gardener so I don't really know if you can just stick a sprouting potato in the ground to get potatoes of your own. Do you have to buy special potatoes? As for wasting cooked potatoes. Never. There are so many things you can do with them. Mine mostly end up in an omelette, but you can mash them and use them as toppings, in fish cakes ... I even saw them used as a pie base and edging - and that came from a Coles Magazine.

In England Jamie and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have worked hard to get people not to waste food. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has an absolutely brilliant book on leftovers. Buy it. And we need some hugely popular blogger or food personality here to push the message that misshapen does not mean untasty. Hope the ACCC gives Mitolo what it deserves, and that the supermarkets change their attitudes. If they can make us use recyclable bags (they will get there with that), then they can make us buy misshapen potatoes. I'm sure it's possible to discard only the rotten and diseased ones.