13 ms·

The Ugly Truth of Ugly Produce

168 points by yoloswagins 8y ago

komali2 8y ago
>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. 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? 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). 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. In other words, why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste?
- marcoperaza 8y ago
  Looking to the government may not be the best approach. See San Francisco, for example, where the local government is more concerned with banning plastic straws than with the absurd homeless population, rampant crime, and drug needles littering the streets.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    How many board of supervisors meetings have you been to? Various programs and policies related to homelessness are discussed constantly. Can you name a supervisor you think is more concerned with plastic straws than homelessness?
    - marcoperaza 8y ago
      If they're just as concerned, they're certainly not as effective. I can't believe they have their priorities straight when they are willing to allocate enforcement resources to a plastic straw ban, which will accomplish absolutely nothing, while there is rampant open defecation, used needles on the streets, openly feuding gangs (which the city protects from deportation), and an absolute epidemic of car break-ins (30,000 smash-and-grabs per year, only 1.7% of which someone is arrested for).
      - ribosometronome 8y ago
        Well, sure? Banning straws is easy. Solving homelessness is not. It's not as if the SF Supes can just have a "No more homelessness" vote.
        door4 8y ago
        Sure they could. Just pay for housing for all homeless SF residents. The only reason it doesn't happen is because people with money and power don't care enough to make the material sacrifices required to solve the problem.
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Homelessness is rooted in two things: very serious personal problems that have no easy answer combined with a dire shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US.* We need to dramatically improve availability of affordable housing. That would get a lot of retirees and the like off the street. But the ones who would, say, burn the house down while you weren't looking need a lot more than a free place to live. If you care deeply about this issue, work on affordable housing. But please stop acting like homeless people are all puppies that need to be adopted by some well-meaning stranger. It's incredibly dehumanizing and tends to compound the problem. * https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
    Sure, blame the local governments, don't blame the tax revolt that happened 40 years ago and has crippled the entire state since then.
  - hw 8y ago
    Yet so many people want to live in SF. In all seriousness, banning plastic straws is a much lower hanging fruit than solving the homeless situation. The money to build and maintain affordable housing has to come from somewhere, probably by raising taxes. Would the SF residents, lots of whom are high income earners and who ironically are the ones feeding the crazy housing and rent prices, be willing to chip in to solve the problem or just sit on the sidelines and complain about the homeless?
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > Yet so many people want to live in SF. They do mainly because of the promises of a high-paying job in the tech industry, not because a politician focuses his policies on plastic straws instead of taking care of people in need.
- couchand 8y ago
  > found a capitalist way to reduce waste? I don't know anything about either of these groups, but the article says that this is simply the marketing of Imperfect Produce that doesn't bear out in reality. Do you have information contradicting their points that you decided not to share?
  - komali2 8y ago
    I don't think I understand what you mean... But I almost certainly have less information than them or probably you, so am happy to hear more.
    - sleepychu 8y ago
      IP assert: "This food was going to be thrown out & going to waste. We are using it for something!" Article asserts: "That food wasn't being thrown out it was going to food banks and homeless shelters." So while IP is almost certainly helping the farmers by paying them for produce they can't normally sell they certainly aren't reclaiming mountains of food otherwise destined for rot.
- Karishma1234 8y ago
  > why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste? They don't. They wont. The article is nonsensical and ignores basic economics. Suffers from "we know better" attitude. Small farmers are struggling. If the ugly produce helps them become little more profitable it is both good for them and also good for the food security of the nation. More available food would mean food will be cheaper for everyone. Will the world be better place if small farmers are out of business and a large businesses like Amazon takes up farming ? Personally do not think there is anything ugly about ugly produce. Note: I am not a rich techie. I earn less than $10K a year.
  - ascorbic 8y ago
    It's not small farmers that this is helping though. The article quotes Imperfect Produce as saying they need to be able to take at least a truckload of produce off a farm each week for it to be economical, so they don't deal with small farms. This is helping the large agribusinesses, not the mom and pop farms.
- evrydayhustling 8y ago
  The article's term "gentrification" has a more specific focus than overall social welfare, and I think it's spot-on. Entrepreneurs notice an "underutilized" resource (housing / food waste) and create a new distribution network, disrupting the old one. This is good ol' competition (which I am a fan of), but it's important to acknowledge that it impacts people who aren't "competing", like food bank visitors. Even if the new network captures more value than the old one, it may also redistribute that value -- as the article contends, from food banks that would get more donations to "conscious consumers" who prefer this to traditional groceries, and of course to Imperfect Produce via profits. Regardless of how you feel about the ethics of the above, it's at least part of Imperfect Produce's identity. If they are marketing to conscious consumers, this article helps those consumers consider more broadly their social impact. For my own value judgement, I feel like I'm missing some important data: - If IP is taking waste produce from larger farms, are they actually competing with BeetBox for the supply of produce? - Downstream of above, has IP's activity actually reduced the amount of food donations being made available to food banks? If IP is mainly competing with BeetBox for the "conscious consumers" that subsidize their charitable work, maybe BB can focus efforts to marketing their distinction from IP. Maybe this article is the first step. Alternatively, if the BB folks are prioritizing social impact, have they tried to convince/train IP to work with the same social gaps they fill? If IP is more efficient in extracting conscious-consumer dollars, they have more surplus that could be poured back into the community.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  I bet Domino's worked with the city and had some sort of explicit permission.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dcgudeman 8y ago
> “Some may claim we have a case of sour grapes. This is capitalism at its best.” Yep sounds about right
p1mrx 8y ago
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. Being transparent about where the food would 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.
- eropple 8y ago
  We are all, at the close of everything, equally human, and I would argue that there is not a human alive who has who does not bear some measure of responsibility for those who have not. Even a small measure at the very least, and getting shady at the expense of nonprofits and foodbanks is probably enough for, y'know...most Americans with the luxury--and it is a luxury, an extreme one--to found a venture-backed startup to surpass theirs.
- xg15 8y ago
  > Does the food industry have a moral obligation to produce waste for the poor? So, if private enterprises have no responsibility (because of free enterprise), the state has no responsibility (because of small government) and charities are strictly voluntary yet still compete against enterprises, then who actually does have responsibility?
fipple 8y ago
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.” No. Feeding the poor is important but there must be a better way than that.
- seem_2211 8y ago
  It's not the strongest supporting argument, but I think you can make the case that Imperfect Produce also do a good job of destigmatizing eating and using ugly produce. If you look at the formation of a lot of Western welfare systems, most had a focus on dignity. It's no fun to be the one kid with the ugly produce, or explicitly going to something that's for the poor kids. We see it a lot with adults as well - how many people don't take advantage of benefits they deserve, because they don't want to be people that have to take these benefits. If we can support a culture that says produce doesn't have to be perfect to be socially acceptable, then I think everyone benefits. While I'm sure Phat Beets do good stuff, I'm not sure if their constant refrain on helping the poor and marginalised is helpful in the long run. In my view, a good local grocery store that sells fresh produce at an affordable price is going to be a massive help, and I think both they and Imperfect Produce do the same thing. Finally Phat Beets only deliver in the East Bay. Imperfect Produce also come to San Francisco.
ggm 8y ago
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. 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. Poor people need jobs and state intervention not food banks
- komali2 8y ago
  What about when there aren't enough jobs?
  - occamrazor 8y ago
    They need other welfare services: food stamps, long-term unemployment benefits, medicaid, vocational training, minimum income guarantees, free daycare for children, etc. These services should be provided by the local government rather than charities.
- darpa_escapee 8y ago
  When they don't get state intervention, they'll need food banks, which is exactly the case right now.
woohuiren 8y ago
Why are the comments dissing about phatbeets produce? Their cause is immeasurably better than Ugly Produce. Remember just recently there was a Chinese browser that received shit tons of money and turned out to be just Chrome browser? There are plenty of shitty startups out there and this is an obvious case that Ugly Produce is one of them.
- peteforde 8y ago
  What comments diss phatbeets produce? I just read literally every one and I haven't seen anyone complain about the product. Look: I live in Canada. I've never heard of phatbeats OR Ugly Produce, so it's fair to say that I don't have much of a horse in the race. However, it seems like your ultimate conclusion (UP is a shitty startup and they should DIAF) is based on logic that isn't nearly as "obvious" as you've decided that it is. Please, feel free to add more information. I find this topic genuinely interesting.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
I spent nearly six years homeless. I ate at soup kitchens and got food from food banks for a small portion of that time. 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. 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. 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.) Soup kitchens and food pantries tend to suck, even the better ones. 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." 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. 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: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > 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. Food stamps tend to suck for a lot of the same reasons food pantries do. You're still telling people what to buy. It's not as bad because there are more choices, but it's still the same general problem where you have a bureaucracy telling you what to buy instead of being able to buy what you need the most like anybody else. Sometimes what you really need is food. Sometimes -- or some specific days -- you have access to food and what you really need is to save up enough for a working car or gas to put in it so you can go to job interviews. Or something else that the person in question knows they need but arbitrary politicians have no way to predict. But if you give people food stamps, they'll buy food with it. Even if they already have suitable food, because it's free money that can only be used for one thing. Then it costs the taxpayer $1 and provides the person with $.05 worth of value, which they take because $.05 is more than $0. Meanwhile just giving the person $1 cash would give the person $1 in value and cost the government less, because then it isn't necessary to administer a system to force people to buy the thing they needed less instead of the thing they needed more. And eliminating that bureaucracy reduces the Shirky principle problem.
Joboman555 8y ago
So they’re complaining that they’re being out-competed?
skybrian 8y ago
Does anyone have a better source than this article on what's really going on in the industry? 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.
eahman00 8y ago
>As a non-profit dedicated to food justice, we work with small farmers of color Sometimes you can't discern parody from reality. What's worse is that it's reality: it's a racist non-profit that refuses to work with white farmers, like in South Africa.
- ur-whale 8y ago
  You're obviously going to get downvoted into oblivion for daring to say out loud unpleasant truths on HN, but you're nevertheless 100% correct.
  - peteforde 8y ago
    TL;DR: my research suggests that different groups work with significantly different definitions of "racism", which I feel injures all conversations that build on fundamental assumptions - to society's detriment. Recently, I did some research on the subject of white privilege, and I came to some troubling (or at least, intellectually interesting) conclusions that I wish people would talk more about. Humans are notably passionate about naming things and defining terms. Not only do definitions shape the way people experience reality, but there’s a massive cultural and often economic prize to those who define what words mean. The positions of both progressives and conservatives on the subject of white privilege (eg. whether it exists) get interesting when you look at what the conservatives say differently (or in many cases, are not saying), starting with the way that they define “racism”: Jordan Peterson: “To attribute to individuals of a community the attributes of the community on the basis of their racial identity is called racism. That’s what racism is. There’s no other way of defining it.” Wikipedia: “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” Ben Shapiro: “If you’re accusing somebody of something because of the color of their skin, that’s called racism.” Wikipedia: “The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” The conservatives - who both take great pride in their precise language - categorically do not acknowledge that superiority is a fundamental aspect of racism. Instead, their definition speaks to the outrage they feel when they are accused of something because of their race. Conservatives perceive racism as an unfair, deliberate act perpetrated against the individual members of an ethnic group. Progressives perceive racism as a passive, self-righteous system which oppresses members of less-powerful groups to maintain power over them. I believe that both sides are arguing about different phenomena. This is a huge problem because it confuses any further discussion that doesn’t share a similar definition of racism. How can you find true common ground on a provocative subject with someone who is seeing different images and feeling entirely different emotions?
delbel 8y ago
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
jchw 8y ago
>Our BeetBox CSA supports small farmers of color mostly farming under 50 acres, [...] ... >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. 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? >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. 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. 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. Clearly I'm missing something. That, or they really called it on the "sour grapes" thing.
- fovc 8y ago
  The only reasonable interpretation I could come up with was based on this quote: Small, local and urban farmers are losing their CSAs–their lifeline to economic viability. The argument would be: IP took a large chunk of customers away from these farms, which also supplied PB. Not that I buy it necessarily, but it is in keeping with the common theme of manipulating conscious but ignorant consumers. (E.g., how some companies might say "Our crazy amounts of single use packaging are totally recyclable")
- subpixel 8y ago
  They (Phat Beets) are operating under the common misunderstanding that small farms are always 'better' than larger ones, and that 'local' produce is, ipso facto, more sustainable than produce grown elsewhere and transported efficiently in bulk. There are valid arguments to be made against high-input agriculture. None of them are discussed in this blog post, which seems to be not so much a case of sour grapes as one of rigid ideology. As an aside, a valuable lesson here about what matters to consumers: people buy things to address their own needs. The business that makes it easier for consumers to feel good about themselves wins. 'I eat ugly vegetables' is an easier, even more fun consumer story than 'I help fight entrenched societal ills by buying vegetables from bad neihborhoods.' All else being equaly, IP would still dominate here based on resonating with more consumers.
ohthehugemanate 8y ago
I don't understand. Now it's bad for people to buy food waste, because otherwise food waste is donated? 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. 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!
hinkley 8y ago
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. 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. 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. It does kind of make me wonder if there’s a market for making machines that can do that though. We have to be close to building that sort of tech at a competitive price.
- dawnerd 8y ago
  There are some fruit juice places that do use everything. Growing up we toured a couple local farms that would outright use all oranges no matter what. It was kinda gross to watch but I guess that’s part of learning where food comes from. It’s probably more of a cost thing for the large companies. Just cheaper to only use a certain grade to entire their product is consistent.
- maxerickson 8y ago
  My guess would be that the selection of processed foods happens at a different level. Ugly produce is sorted out of batches that go to places sorting produce for retail. Whole other batches go into processed food. They are probably different varieties, harvested at different levels of ripeness. Like no one would can any tomatoes that were harvested for retail, because those canned tomatoes would suck.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  4 standard deviations excludes 63 in a million. Why would a designer of food prep automation design around that? Why would a market for such outliers form? At some point, it’s cheaper and more efficient to compost 0.006% of food than to design ultra-flexible processing equipment. What’s surprising to me is that the alternate market for such outlier food evolved. It would seem cheaper to just compost it. I actually wonder how much of the market is genuine economically driven vs “feel good”/signaling.
darawk 8y ago
> 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. 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.
hycaria 8y ago
Article is terrible. At the last part >A Case of Sour Grapes? I thought there was going to be something interesting but no, that's only a header no content afterwards to answer that rhetorical question. 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? I already have no sympathy for this organization after reading what should be an unfair case that could help to bring traction about them.
jondubois 8y ago
It seems that industries have become negative-sum games. 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. 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. In effect, they're changing the world for the worse but they're packaging it nicely.
- gertiew 8y ago
  > SaaS services have been replacing free open source solutions even though they are expensive and they take away flexibility from those who use them. What are some examples?
- chillydawg 8y ago
  With SaaS and as a business owner and operator, I see the value in a specialised company offering hosted X and charging for it. My general purpose sysadmin employee will never be as good at looking after whatever niche tool than the SaaS company offering it and charging me $500/mo or whatever. Even at several thousand/month (approaching thr salary of a sysadmin), the economics can work out fine as you're being more productive and the sysadmin can be working on the really custom things that are core to your business like specific CI pipelines or monitoring and optimising our own software. It's the same argument as AWS. EC2 is really expensive, but it's still usually cheaper than actually running your own hardware at the same service level as AWS can provide. Scale of operation changes things, but the vast majority of companies are small enough that spending money on SaaS and IaaS is usually better than building a local team of commodity staff doing nothing unique for the business.
  - jondubois 8y ago
    The idea that it's difficult to self-host these open source solutions is often part of the marketing but it often isn't true. Many times, I've seen companies host their own HTTP servers but outsource their WebSocket servers even though they don't require much additional DevOps skills if they used the right open source tools. Often, those companies would actually have benefited from being able to integrate their backend systems more closely. Regarding back end services; I've used various Amazon AWS services at different companies and, every time, it made development and deployment way more complicated - For example, one corporation I worked at, there was only 1 person in the whole company who had the full knowledge to work with our Lambda setup; this person worked very slowly (probably not their fault) so they were blocking all other teams in the company. It would have been much faster if the company operated the server themselves.
gertiew 8y ago
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.
- calhoun137 8y ago
  I strongly disagree. In my opinion, the relationship between VC and rising inequality is indirect at most. The primary factors which contribute to inequality in a given country are related to the number of available jobs, the distribution of wages among various subsets of the working population, the robustness of social safety net programs, and the underlying distribution of political and economic power. Our startup movement, more so than any other segment of the global economy, embodies the idea of the "American Dream" that if you work hard you can be successful and move up the social ladder. It's not perfect, and clearly it's not a pure meritocracy, but to claim that the VC world is "the most important driving force of rising inequality" is very inaccurate in my judgement. It is true that silicon valley style tech companies are more and more becoming an important part of the economy, but the types of startups which are part of the tech startup eco system are creating jobs and are disrupting existing industries as part of a healthy capitalist process. Here are two factors which I consider to have a much more significant influence than VC's on the global trend of rising inequality: 1) It is well understood that middle class families keep on average the majority of their wealth in the form of a house which they own. The housing crisis, which was fueled by wall street excess, wiped out an incredible amount of wealth from poor and middle class families and the bailout and shorting transferred this wealth to the top 0.1% 2) Approximately 3 trillion is collected by the US government every year in taxes, and approximately 1.5 trillion is borrowed by the government, for a total budget of approximately 4.5 trillion. This money is handed out by congress members to powerful banks and corporations from their state as a form of quid pro quo for campaign donations. The budget deficit is then used to justify a never ending cycle of cuts to social safety net programs.
gandutraveler 8y ago
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. 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.
peteforde 8y ago
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Ranting about how a startup is stealing your thunder / community groups because they are gasp 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. 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. 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. 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.
- 8y ago
sidhuko 8y ago
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.
tribesman 8y ago
Passing a law to shoot the homeless people on first sight will clear it up real quick. Really sick people can be put to medical prison camps where we make them to grow oraginc food food (charging tech companies cafeterias billions) or perform miracle drug testing (charging big pharma billions) on them. We can recruit Americans (Using first amendment for the rescue) with gun for this task based on volunteering. It will cost very less.
- dang 8y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly trolling HN. If you continue to do this we will ban your main account as well.
asfdasdasdasda 8y ago
A CORPORATION selling ugly food. Definitely evil incarnate. I think this calls for protest marches and riots, at the very least.
rabboRubble 8y ago
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. I also don't own a car, and having services like this helps me continue the car-free lifestyle. 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. 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?
raqueldelacruz9 8y ago
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? 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 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. My sources- Feeding America report: http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-produce-one.pdf http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-pr... NRDC report: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf

168 points by yoloswagins 8y ago

>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. 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? 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). 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. In other words, why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste?

marcoperaza 8y ago
Looking to the government may not be the best approach. See San Francisco, for example, where the local government is more concerned with banning plastic straws than with the absurd homeless population, rampant crime, and drug needles littering the streets.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  How many board of supervisors meetings have you been to? Various programs and policies related to homelessness are discussed constantly. Can you name a supervisor you think is more concerned with plastic straws than homelessness?
  - marcoperaza 8y ago
    If they're just as concerned, they're certainly not as effective. I can't believe they have their priorities straight when they are willing to allocate enforcement resources to a plastic straw ban, which will accomplish absolutely nothing, while there is rampant open defecation, used needles on the streets, openly feuding gangs (which the city protects from deportation), and an absolute epidemic of car break-ins (30,000 smash-and-grabs per year, only 1.7% of which someone is arrested for).
    - ribosometronome 8y ago
      Well, sure? Banning straws is easy. Solving homelessness is not. It's not as if the SF Supes can just have a "No more homelessness" vote.
      - door4 8y ago
        Sure they could. Just pay for housing for all homeless SF residents. The only reason it doesn't happen is because people with money and power don't care enough to make the material sacrifices required to solve the problem.
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        Homelessness is rooted in two things: very serious personal problems that have no easy answer combined with a dire shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US.* We need to dramatically improve availability of affordable housing. That would get a lot of retirees and the like off the street. But the ones who would, say, burn the house down while you weren't looking need a lot more than a free place to live. If you care deeply about this issue, work on affordable housing. But please stop acting like homeless people are all puppies that need to be adopted by some well-meaning stranger. It's incredibly dehumanizing and tends to compound the problem. * https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  Sure, blame the local governments, don't blame the tax revolt that happened 40 years ago and has crippled the entire state since then.
- hw 8y ago
  Yet so many people want to live in SF. In all seriousness, banning plastic straws is a much lower hanging fruit than solving the homeless situation. The money to build and maintain affordable housing has to come from somewhere, probably by raising taxes. Would the SF residents, lots of whom are high income earners and who ironically are the ones feeding the crazy housing and rent prices, be willing to chip in to solve the problem or just sit on the sidelines and complain about the homeless?
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > Yet so many people want to live in SF. They do mainly because of the promises of a high-paying job in the tech industry, not because a politician focuses his policies on plastic straws instead of taking care of people in need.
couchand 8y ago
> found a capitalist way to reduce waste? I don't know anything about either of these groups, but the article says that this is simply the marketing of Imperfect Produce that doesn't bear out in reality. Do you have information contradicting their points that you decided not to share?
- komali2 8y ago
  I don't think I understand what you mean... But I almost certainly have less information than them or probably you, so am happy to hear more.
  - sleepychu 8y ago
    IP assert: "This food was going to be thrown out & going to waste. We are using it for something!" Article asserts: "That food wasn't being thrown out it was going to food banks and homeless shelters." So while IP is almost certainly helping the farmers by paying them for produce they can't normally sell they certainly aren't reclaiming mountains of food otherwise destined for rot.
Karishma1234 8y ago
> why suddenly are people starving again because imperfect produce found a capitalist way to reduce waste? They don't. They wont. The article is nonsensical and ignores basic economics. Suffers from "we know better" attitude. Small farmers are struggling. If the ugly produce helps them become little more profitable it is both good for them and also good for the food security of the nation. More available food would mean food will be cheaper for everyone. Will the world be better place if small farmers are out of business and a large businesses like Amazon takes up farming ? Personally do not think there is anything ugly about ugly produce. Note: I am not a rich techie. I earn less than $10K a year.
- ascorbic 8y ago
  It's not small farmers that this is helping though. The article quotes Imperfect Produce as saying they need to be able to take at least a truckload of produce off a farm each week for it to be economical, so they don't deal with small farms. This is helping the large agribusinesses, not the mom and pop farms.
evrydayhustling 8y ago
The article's term "gentrification" has a more specific focus than overall social welfare, and I think it's spot-on. Entrepreneurs notice an "underutilized" resource (housing / food waste) and create a new distribution network, disrupting the old one. This is good ol' competition (which I am a fan of), but it's important to acknowledge that it impacts people who aren't "competing", like food bank visitors. Even if the new network captures more value than the old one, it may also redistribute that value -- as the article contends, from food banks that would get more donations to "conscious consumers" who prefer this to traditional groceries, and of course to Imperfect Produce via profits. Regardless of how you feel about the ethics of the above, it's at least part of Imperfect Produce's identity. If they are marketing to conscious consumers, this article helps those consumers consider more broadly their social impact. For my own value judgement, I feel like I'm missing some important data: - If IP is taking waste produce from larger farms, are they actually competing with BeetBox for the supply of produce? - Downstream of above, has IP's activity actually reduced the amount of food donations being made available to food banks? If IP is mainly competing with BeetBox for the "conscious consumers" that subsidize their charitable work, maybe BB can focus efforts to marketing their distinction from IP. Maybe this article is the first step. Alternatively, if the BB folks are prioritizing social impact, have they tried to convince/train IP to work with the same social gaps they fill? If IP is more efficient in extracting conscious-consumer dollars, they have more surplus that could be poured back into the community.
maxerickson 8y ago
I bet Domino's worked with the city and had some sort of explicit permission.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dcgudeman 8y ago

> “Some may claim we have a case of sour grapes. This is capitalism at its best.” Yep sounds about right

p1mrx 8y ago

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. Being transparent about where the food would 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.

eropple 8y ago
We are all, at the close of everything, equally human, and I would argue that there is not a human alive who has who does not bear some measure of responsibility for those who have not. Even a small measure at the very least, and getting shady at the expense of nonprofits and foodbanks is probably enough for, y'know...most Americans with the luxury--and it is a luxury, an extreme one--to found a venture-backed startup to surpass theirs.
xg15 8y ago
> Does the food industry have a moral obligation to produce waste for the poor? So, if private enterprises have no responsibility (because of free enterprise), the state has no responsibility (because of small government) and charities are strictly voluntary yet still compete against enterprises, then who actually does have responsibility?

fipple 8y ago

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.” No. Feeding the poor is important but there must be a better way than that.

seem_2211 8y ago
It's not the strongest supporting argument, but I think you can make the case that Imperfect Produce also do a good job of destigmatizing eating and using ugly produce. If you look at the formation of a lot of Western welfare systems, most had a focus on dignity. It's no fun to be the one kid with the ugly produce, or explicitly going to something that's for the poor kids. We see it a lot with adults as well - how many people don't take advantage of benefits they deserve, because they don't want to be people that have to take these benefits. If we can support a culture that says produce doesn't have to be perfect to be socially acceptable, then I think everyone benefits. While I'm sure Phat Beets do good stuff, I'm not sure if their constant refrain on helping the poor and marginalised is helpful in the long run. In my view, a good local grocery store that sells fresh produce at an affordable price is going to be a massive help, and I think both they and Imperfect Produce do the same thing. Finally Phat Beets only deliver in the East Bay. Imperfect Produce also come to San Francisco.

ggm 8y ago

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. 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. Poor people need jobs and state intervention not food banks

komali2 8y ago
What about when there aren't enough jobs?
- occamrazor 8y ago
  They need other welfare services: food stamps, long-term unemployment benefits, medicaid, vocational training, minimum income guarantees, free daycare for children, etc. These services should be provided by the local government rather than charities.
darpa_escapee 8y ago
When they don't get state intervention, they'll need food banks, which is exactly the case right now.

woohuiren 8y ago

Why are the comments dissing about phatbeets produce? Their cause is immeasurably better than Ugly Produce. Remember just recently there was a Chinese browser that received shit tons of money and turned out to be just Chrome browser? There are plenty of shitty startups out there and this is an obvious case that Ugly Produce is one of them.

peteforde 8y ago
What comments diss phatbeets produce? I just read literally every one and I haven't seen anyone complain about the product. Look: I live in Canada. I've never heard of phatbeats OR Ugly Produce, so it's fair to say that I don't have much of a horse in the race. However, it seems like your ultimate conclusion (UP is a shitty startup and they should DIAF) is based on logic that isn't nearly as "obvious" as you've decided that it is. Please, feel free to add more information. I find this topic genuinely interesting.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I spent nearly six years homeless. I ate at soup kitchens and got food from food banks for a small portion of that time. 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. 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. 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.) Soup kitchens and food pantries tend to suck, even the better ones. 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." 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. 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: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shirky#Shirky_principle

AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> 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. Food stamps tend to suck for a lot of the same reasons food pantries do. You're still telling people what to buy. It's not as bad because there are more choices, but it's still the same general problem where you have a bureaucracy telling you what to buy instead of being able to buy what you need the most like anybody else. Sometimes what you really need is food. Sometimes -- or some specific days -- you have access to food and what you really need is to save up enough for a working car or gas to put in it so you can go to job interviews. Or something else that the person in question knows they need but arbitrary politicians have no way to predict. But if you give people food stamps, they'll buy food with it. Even if they already have suitable food, because it's free money that can only be used for one thing. Then it costs the taxpayer $1 and provides the person with $.05 worth of value, which they take because $.05 is more than $0. Meanwhile just giving the person $1 cash would give the person $1 in value and cost the government less, because then it isn't necessary to administer a system to force people to buy the thing they needed less instead of the thing they needed more. And eliminating that bureaucracy reduces the Shirky principle problem.

Joboman555 8y ago

So they’re complaining that they’re being out-competed?

skybrian 8y ago

Does anyone have a better source than this article on what's really going on in the industry? 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.

eahman00 8y ago

>As a non-profit dedicated to food justice, we work with small farmers of color Sometimes you can't discern parody from reality. What's worse is that it's reality: it's a racist non-profit that refuses to work with white farmers, like in South Africa.

ur-whale 8y ago
You're obviously going to get downvoted into oblivion for daring to say out loud unpleasant truths on HN, but you're nevertheless 100% correct.
- peteforde 8y ago
  TL;DR: my research suggests that different groups work with significantly different definitions of "racism", which I feel injures all conversations that build on fundamental assumptions - to society's detriment. Recently, I did some research on the subject of white privilege, and I came to some troubling (or at least, intellectually interesting) conclusions that I wish people would talk more about. Humans are notably passionate about naming things and defining terms. Not only do definitions shape the way people experience reality, but there’s a massive cultural and often economic prize to those who define what words mean. The positions of both progressives and conservatives on the subject of white privilege (eg. whether it exists) get interesting when you look at what the conservatives say differently (or in many cases, are not saying), starting with the way that they define “racism”: Jordan Peterson: “To attribute to individuals of a community the attributes of the community on the basis of their racial identity is called racism. That’s what racism is. There’s no other way of defining it.” Wikipedia: “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” Ben Shapiro: “If you’re accusing somebody of something because of the color of their skin, that’s called racism.” Wikipedia: “The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.” The conservatives - who both take great pride in their precise language - categorically do not acknowledge that superiority is a fundamental aspect of racism. Instead, their definition speaks to the outrage they feel when they are accused of something because of their race. Conservatives perceive racism as an unfair, deliberate act perpetrated against the individual members of an ethnic group. Progressives perceive racism as a passive, self-righteous system which oppresses members of less-powerful groups to maintain power over them. I believe that both sides are arguing about different phenomena. This is a huge problem because it confuses any further discussion that doesn’t share a similar definition of racism. How can you find true common ground on a provocative subject with someone who is seeing different images and feeling entirely different emotions?

delbel 8y ago

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

jchw 8y ago

>Our BeetBox CSA supports small farmers of color mostly farming under 50 acres, [...] ... >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. 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? >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. 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. 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. Clearly I'm missing something. That, or they really called it on the "sour grapes" thing.

fovc 8y ago
The only reasonable interpretation I could come up with was based on this quote: Small, local and urban farmers are losing their CSAs–their lifeline to economic viability. The argument would be: IP took a large chunk of customers away from these farms, which also supplied PB. Not that I buy it necessarily, but it is in keeping with the common theme of manipulating conscious but ignorant consumers. (E.g., how some companies might say "Our crazy amounts of single use packaging are totally recyclable")
subpixel 8y ago
They (Phat Beets) are operating under the common misunderstanding that small farms are always 'better' than larger ones, and that 'local' produce is, ipso facto, more sustainable than produce grown elsewhere and transported efficiently in bulk. There are valid arguments to be made against high-input agriculture. None of them are discussed in this blog post, which seems to be not so much a case of sour grapes as one of rigid ideology. As an aside, a valuable lesson here about what matters to consumers: people buy things to address their own needs. The business that makes it easier for consumers to feel good about themselves wins. 'I eat ugly vegetables' is an easier, even more fun consumer story than 'I help fight entrenched societal ills by buying vegetables from bad neihborhoods.' All else being equaly, IP would still dominate here based on resonating with more consumers.

ohthehugemanate 8y ago

I don't understand. Now it's bad for people to buy food waste, because otherwise food waste is donated? 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. 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!

hinkley 8y ago

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. 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. 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. It does kind of make me wonder if there’s a market for making machines that can do that though. We have to be close to building that sort of tech at a competitive price.

dawnerd 8y ago
There are some fruit juice places that do use everything. Growing up we toured a couple local farms that would outright use all oranges no matter what. It was kinda gross to watch but I guess that’s part of learning where food comes from. It’s probably more of a cost thing for the large companies. Just cheaper to only use a certain grade to entire their product is consistent.
maxerickson 8y ago
My guess would be that the selection of processed foods happens at a different level. Ugly produce is sorted out of batches that go to places sorting produce for retail. Whole other batches go into processed food. They are probably different varieties, harvested at different levels of ripeness. Like no one would can any tomatoes that were harvested for retail, because those canned tomatoes would suck.
sokoloff 8y ago
4 standard deviations excludes 63 in a million. Why would a designer of food prep automation design around that? Why would a market for such outliers form? At some point, it’s cheaper and more efficient to compost 0.006% of food than to design ultra-flexible processing equipment. What’s surprising to me is that the alternate market for such outlier food evolved. It would seem cheaper to just compost it. I actually wonder how much of the market is genuine economically driven vs “feel good”/signaling.

darawk 8y ago

> 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. 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.

hycaria 8y ago

Article is terrible. At the last part >A Case of Sour Grapes? I thought there was going to be something interesting but no, that's only a header no content afterwards to answer that rhetorical question. 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? I already have no sympathy for this organization after reading what should be an unfair case that could help to bring traction about them.

jondubois 8y ago

It seems that industries have become negative-sum games. 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. 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. In effect, they're changing the world for the worse but they're packaging it nicely.

gertiew 8y ago
> SaaS services have been replacing free open source solutions even though they are expensive and they take away flexibility from those who use them. What are some examples?
chillydawg 8y ago
With SaaS and as a business owner and operator, I see the value in a specialised company offering hosted X and charging for it. My general purpose sysadmin employee will never be as good at looking after whatever niche tool than the SaaS company offering it and charging me $500/mo or whatever. Even at several thousand/month (approaching thr salary of a sysadmin), the economics can work out fine as you're being more productive and the sysadmin can be working on the really custom things that are core to your business like specific CI pipelines or monitoring and optimising our own software. It's the same argument as AWS. EC2 is really expensive, but it's still usually cheaper than actually running your own hardware at the same service level as AWS can provide. Scale of operation changes things, but the vast majority of companies are small enough that spending money on SaaS and IaaS is usually better than building a local team of commodity staff doing nothing unique for the business.
- jondubois 8y ago
  The idea that it's difficult to self-host these open source solutions is often part of the marketing but it often isn't true. Many times, I've seen companies host their own HTTP servers but outsource their WebSocket servers even though they don't require much additional DevOps skills if they used the right open source tools. Often, those companies would actually have benefited from being able to integrate their backend systems more closely. Regarding back end services; I've used various Amazon AWS services at different companies and, every time, it made development and deployment way more complicated - For example, one corporation I worked at, there was only 1 person in the whole company who had the full knowledge to work with our Lambda setup; this person worked very slowly (probably not their fault) so they were blocking all other teams in the company. It would have been much faster if the company operated the server themselves.

gertiew 8y ago

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.

calhoun137 8y ago
I strongly disagree. In my opinion, the relationship between VC and rising inequality is indirect at most. The primary factors which contribute to inequality in a given country are related to the number of available jobs, the distribution of wages among various subsets of the working population, the robustness of social safety net programs, and the underlying distribution of political and economic power. Our startup movement, more so than any other segment of the global economy, embodies the idea of the "American Dream" that if you work hard you can be successful and move up the social ladder. It's not perfect, and clearly it's not a pure meritocracy, but to claim that the VC world is "the most important driving force of rising inequality" is very inaccurate in my judgement. It is true that silicon valley style tech companies are more and more becoming an important part of the economy, but the types of startups which are part of the tech startup eco system are creating jobs and are disrupting existing industries as part of a healthy capitalist process. Here are two factors which I consider to have a much more significant influence than VC's on the global trend of rising inequality: 1) It is well understood that middle class families keep on average the majority of their wealth in the form of a house which they own. The housing crisis, which was fueled by wall street excess, wiped out an incredible amount of wealth from poor and middle class families and the bailout and shorting transferred this wealth to the top 0.1% 2) Approximately 3 trillion is collected by the US government every year in taxes, and approximately 1.5 trillion is borrowed by the government, for a total budget of approximately 4.5 trillion. This money is handed out by congress members to powerful banks and corporations from their state as a form of quid pro quo for campaign donations. The budget deficit is then used to justify a never ending cycle of cuts to social safety net programs.

gandutraveler 8y ago

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. 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.

peteforde 8y ago

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Ranting about how a startup is stealing your thunder / community groups because they are gasp 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. 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. 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. 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.

8y ago

sidhuko 8y ago

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.

tribesman 8y ago

Passing a law to shoot the homeless people on first sight will clear it up real quick. Really sick people can be put to medical prison camps where we make them to grow oraginc food food (charging tech companies cafeterias billions) or perform miracle drug testing (charging big pharma billions) on them. We can recruit Americans (Using first amendment for the rescue) with gun for this task based on volunteering. It will cost very less.

dang 8y ago
We've banned this account for repeatedly trolling HN. If you continue to do this we will ban your main account as well.

asfdasdasdasda 8y ago

A CORPORATION selling ugly food. Definitely evil incarnate. I think this calls for protest marches and riots, at the very least.

rabboRubble 8y ago

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. I also don't own a car, and having services like this helps me continue the car-free lifestyle. 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. 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?

raqueldelacruz9 8y ago

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? 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 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. My sources- Feeding America report: http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-produce-one.pdf http://www.feedingamerica.org/assets/pdfs/feeding-america-pr... NRDC report: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-food-IP.pdf