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Boer Poelen from Groesbeek grows various types of pumpkins. The butternut (butternut squash), the Hokkaido (orange squashes), the spaghetti squash (stringy flesh) and the nutmeg squash (nutty flavor). This year, 10,000 kilos of his pumpkins were rejected by the supermarkets.
“The ideal weight is 1.2 kilos, according to the supermarkets,” he says. “They do not want the fruit below 800 grams. They sell them per unit price and not by weight, because weighing is an extra operation for the customer who wants convenience.”
Ideal weight is tricky
Growing a pumpkin that has an exact weight isn’t that easy. The plants go into the ground in June and are harvested in September. There are two to four fruits on a pumpkin plant.
“Those fruits distribute the nutrients they receive such as water and fertilizer. One fruit is therefore a bit bigger and the other a bit smaller. But you have to harvest the plant in one go. So you always have some fruits that are not big enough” , explains farmer Chris. Too small is not good, but neither is too big because only six fit in a box.
Selling to cut into cubes is impossible, the processors want even larger pumpkins for that. There are therefore only two options for Poelen: destroy or sell through other channels.
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Destroy or give away
Poelen is destroyed by milling them under, but that does not earn him a penny. If possible, he looks for other sales markets. For example, the 10,000 kilos were sold this year through Breda Makes Me Happy.
Via this initiative In recent years, asparagus, apples, sunflowers, plums and gladioli, among others, have been saved from destruction. It usually concerns products that supermarkets do not want to have because of their size. Also Boerschappen regularly saves products for which a farmer would otherwise either receive too little or which a supermarket does not want.
“We are regularly approached by farmers”, says Stijn Markusse of the Breda Boerschappen, who puts together meal boxes. “Sometimes supermarkets don’t want a harvest at all because the vegetables or fruit are too small, too crooked or too ugly. And sometimes they pay too little.”
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Prices
A farmer does not know in advance what he will get for his product, he explains. “Very little is sold through an auction clock these days. Most of it goes through middlemen. These are sales organizations or farmers’ corporations that make deals with supermarkets. A farmer produces and hopes to get a good price, but has no influence on that. And supermarkets have a position of power so they pay as little as possible. “
For example, a farmer picks 20,000 kilos of apples. “Then he only hears from the intermediary a few days later what the proceeds were. Sometimes he knows in advance what the approximate market price is. He can then decide whether to destroy it or leave it hanging. But you are also left with shelf life. A Dutch farmer refuses to sell, such a shop will make it abroad. “
Plums too small
For example, fruit farmer Kees Hamelink from Wemeldinge in Zeeland had to throw away almost 60,000 kilos of Opal plums in 2018, because they were 3 millimeters too small. Extra irrigation was not an option in the hot dry summer. In Zeeland there is not enough fresh water, even ditch water is brackish.
We are now two years on, but not much has changed at supermarkets, says Kees Hamelink, who annually produces about 150 tons of plums, making it one of the largest growers in the Netherlands. “It is also difficult to get more than the cost price. I cannot mechanize and thus reduce labor costs. You have to pick plums by hand because they are so fragile.”
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Ugly fruit with a good taste
Stores do take them off below a certain size, but they pay a lot less, explains his sister Annemiek Hamelink. “You have class 1 plums and class 2. You get a certain amount per class. While they are both qualitatively good. A-choice yields 80 percent less than B-choice.”
Some of the plums now go for a ‘fair price’ to other buyers, such as local shops and greengrocers, private individuals, de Krat and Farmerships, she explains. Furthermore, a shipment is now sent to Amsterdam every year jam maker Hell !, who endeavors to make spreads and chutneys of ‘ugly fruit’ under the guise ‘good taste is on the inside’.
“If they didn’t buy it, Kees would leave the fruit hanging from the trees. Then he wouldn’t have to pay pickers. But you still make a loss,” says sister Annemiek.
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Barely able to survive
And there are more farmers, according to Markusse, who barely survive. “You often cannot just stop and start producing something else. A plum orchard has been there for years. Moreover, farmers always hope that they will get a better price the following year.”
One year is better than the other, that varies. “But especially now that the summers are getting warmer, farmers are having a hard time. Their land is worth a lot, but they can only sell it after their retirement.”
Crooked cucumbers
The fact that supermarket chains are getting bigger through takeovers is damaging the business, he explains. “All kinds of systems and standards have been added to large chains such as Jumbo and Albert Heijn. Everything is standardized. For example, 29 cucumbers fit in a crate. So if you would accept curved cucumbers or another size, only 27 would fit in the crate, for example. That creates administrative problems. “
Markusse believes that supermarkets should pay the farmer more anyway. “Farmers should get more for their products. In a week when the farmer got 70 cents for a kilo of plums, many supermarkets asked the customer 6 euros per kilo. So there is enough margin to pay them a little more.”
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The numbers
More than a third of the vegetables and fruit grown never reach store shelves because they have an odd shape or the wrong size. More than 50 million tons of vegetables and fruit are thrown away every year, it turns out from research (2018) from the University of Edinburgh.
According to the researchers, this is due to strict government regulations, the high demands from supermarkets and the expectations of consumers about what fruit and vegetables should look like.
Farmers who have a contract with a supermarket consciously produce extra to compensate for the ‘ugly part’ of the harvest. According to the researchers, consumer awareness must be increased. We need to become less picky. More vegetables and fruit should also be processed in already cut or processed food.
European rules
From Europe there are different marketing standards, stating what fruit and vegetables should look like. These standards were relaxed for 25 varieties a decade ago and no longer apply, for example beans, carrots, cucumbers and leeks. However, the strict rules still apply to ten varieties, such as apples and pears.
In addition, national authorities may exclude products that are, for example, deformed or too small from specific marketing standards, provided that the label includes the words ‘products for industrial processing’, ‘animal feed’ or other equivalent wording.
Kromkommer
Supermarkets also sometimes ban products that do comply with the rules, but in their eyes are still too ugly or too big or too small. In the Netherlands Kromkommer herself therefore strongly support it to use a new definition of quality.
The organization has been trying to persuade supermarkets to change their purchasing requirements for the past five years. It is unclear what these conversations have yielded. Kromkommer did not respond to questions from RTL Z in the past week.
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