The debate on food waste is beginning to be understood at least as far as food and environmental networks are concerned, along with their supporters. Both of these ‘sectors’ seem able to articulate their ideas in the public space and to differing degrees are being heard by policy makers both locally and nationally. The UK food producers (ie  farmers) are also now being listened to, after decades of ploughing perfectly good crops back  into the land just because the items harvested are not sufficiently pretty for us to put onto our plates.

My own interest in this matter began in the mid 1990’s when I was involved in the distribution of a tonne and a half of the EU beef mountain. Shortly after that experience and with the help of a local Supermarket Manager I developed a service that today is known as Brighton FareShare. The project has just published its figures for the last six months. I am delighted with the news that they have handled 223 tonnes of surplus food, a 59% increase on 2012 and substantially more than in any previous 6 month period. Fresh fruit and vegetables represent 39% of the total. If Fareshare did not operate in Brighton & Hove, most of this surplus would have ended up in landfill or at a renderers.

The food that we all eat does not all come from UK growers and as we celebrate the fantastic results achieved by Nathan and his team at FareShare, it is very disheartening to read the headline “Farmers ‘forced’ to throw away up to 40% of food grown for supermarkets” particularly when the farmers concerned live and work in Kenya. What an indictment of our society, that we are in effect willing to inflict the same cultural dogma on poorly paid Kenyan farmers that we have grown accustomed to imposing on our own farmers. In our desire for beautiful food, we have ourselves become incredibly ugly! If like me you are sickened at what we are doing, one thing that we could all do, is visit the FareShare website and offer our support to an immensely inspiring project! Sadly it won’t help the farmers in Kenya, that will require a great deal more work, but as a charity that depends in large part on donations from individuals every little helps. If any UK farmers within easy reach of any one of the network of FareShare schemes are facing the prospect of ploughing up vegetables that don’t pass the test that we as consumers have helped to create, their local scheme would be happy to help out.