4 ms·

It's waste for the producer. If you stop giving a reason for producers to produce goods, the goods stop being made.

tivert 8y ago
> It's waste for the producer. If you stop giving a reason for producers to produce goods, the goods stop being made. Not in this case: we're talking about growers not manufacturers. A farmer can't tell his beet not to grow in unaesthetic shapes at scale. If he wants to produce X tons of produce, Y% will be edible but "ugly," and there's not a lot he can do about it (absent an uneconomic increase in costs or some fantasy bit of genetic engineering).
- beat 8y ago
  Yes, but in our imaginary world of perfect capitalism, the inherent market flaw is that farmers should simply stop growing ugly vegetables, and only grow beautiful ones. Problem solved!
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    That seems to be the contract model supermarkets operate with. Of course if supermarkets still took "ugly" produce it would sell just fine. Just like it does at the local greengrocers.
    - beat 8y ago
      There are already good markets for a lot of ugly produce. They wind up in a lot of prepared foods. Good example - baby carrots. They're not "baby carrots", they're lathed-down cores of regular carrots that had the misfortune of being ugly - crooked, lumpy, or broken. And the stuff that gets shaved off in the lathe? It winds up carrot juice, or stock, or animal feed, or any number of other things. Another example of reducing waste, though not ugly... one of our local co-ops recently started selling "pulled chicken" fresh in plastic containers, great for making dinner. Where does it come from? Their rotisserie chickens that don't sell by the end of the day. They reduce waste and get a valuable new product. (My daughter was raving about it while cooking dinner the other day - stripping chicken carcasses is one of her least-favorite bits of kitchen labor, and she's happy to be able to buy what someone else did for her already.)
- jimmywanger 8y ago
  You can tell your vegetables and fruit not to grow into unaesthetic shapes or colors at the very least. That's why commercial tomatoes and apples don't have as much flavor as heirloom varieties. They spend a lot of money on such things as travel durability, skin toughness, size, and color at the expense of taste. If you make it so that farmers can actually sell blemished food, that will increase the profits of farmers, making it a more attractive to be a farmer. Otherwise they'll get another job.

> It's waste for the producer. If you stop giving a reason for producers to produce goods, the goods stop being made. Not in this case: we're talking about growers not manufacturers. A farmer can't tell his beet not to grow in unaesthetic shapes at scale. If he wants to produce X tons of produce, Y% will be edible but "ugly," and there's not a lot he can do about it (absent an uneconomic increase in costs or some fantasy bit of genetic engineering).

beat 8y ago
Yes, but in our imaginary world of perfect capitalism, the inherent market flaw is that farmers should simply stop growing ugly vegetables, and only grow beautiful ones. Problem solved!
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  That seems to be the contract model supermarkets operate with. Of course if supermarkets still took "ugly" produce it would sell just fine. Just like it does at the local greengrocers.
  - beat 8y ago
    There are already good markets for a lot of ugly produce. They wind up in a lot of prepared foods. Good example - baby carrots. They're not "baby carrots", they're lathed-down cores of regular carrots that had the misfortune of being ugly - crooked, lumpy, or broken. And the stuff that gets shaved off in the lathe? It winds up carrot juice, or stock, or animal feed, or any number of other things. Another example of reducing waste, though not ugly... one of our local co-ops recently started selling "pulled chicken" fresh in plastic containers, great for making dinner. Where does it come from? Their rotisserie chickens that don't sell by the end of the day. They reduce waste and get a valuable new product. (My daughter was raving about it while cooking dinner the other day - stripping chicken carcasses is one of her least-favorite bits of kitchen labor, and she's happy to be able to buy what someone else did for her already.)
jimmywanger 8y ago
You can tell your vegetables and fruit not to grow into unaesthetic shapes or colors at the very least. That's why commercial tomatoes and apples don't have as much flavor as heirloom varieties. They spend a lot of money on such things as travel durability, skin toughness, size, and color at the expense of taste. If you make it so that farmers can actually sell blemished food, that will increase the profits of farmers, making it a more attractive to be a farmer. Otherwise they'll get another job.