“This is a huge problem for farmers,” said Ravindran. According to Ravindran, the problem starts before it even reaches wholesalers – misshapen produce is ploughed back into the field, left on the tree or goes to landfill.
Ravindran and Vanpoperinghe started talking to wholesalers and large fruit and vegetables suppliers and found that up to 30 per cent of their produce was deemed too ugly for sale. “When we got home, we found perfect-looking tomatoes in supermarkets that were just bland. “We were both struck by how amazing that ugly tomato tasted,” said Ravindran. Local heroesĪ stroll around a street market in Portugal and an encounter with delicious but misshapen tomatoes led Deepak Ravindran and his partner Emilie Vanpoperinghe to set up Oddbox, a south London-based box delivery enterprise dedicated to eradicating food waste. Not only that, ambitious start-ups are challenging the way we think of fresh food and are offering innovative ways of consuming fruit and vegetables that all but eliminate waste from the process. Not only have box deliveries become an everyday (though still relatively small) aspect of modern shopping, the supermarkets are also seeing the benefit in packing and selling fresh produce in boxes. But with box deliveries, smaller scale growers found a model that enabled them to survive and thrive in what was a completely new market.įast forward nearly 30 years and the picture is quite different. Working with supermarkets and higher-volume wholesalers had pushed organic farmers into a system that favoured monoculture and caused waste due to overly stringent cosmetic specifications. Though small-scale produce delivery schemes already existed, this one was the first to really capture the public’s imagination.
The scheme began partly in response to the issue of food miles but also as a way of ensuring economic viability for smaller producers in what was becoming a highly competitive climate for the organic produce market. Hard to imagine now, but when UK-based Northwood Farm began its organic vegetables box scheme in the early 1990s, it caused such a stir that it was covered by a national television channel. This is having a small but growing effect on food waste figures. Whether it’s finding a home for misshapen vegetables or disrupting the way people eat, start-ups and supermarkets have been turning to boxes to deliver fresh produce to consumers. Published 7 December 2017 - 8 min reading time
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