Apologies for the pretentious title. I'm really excited to have just picked the first fruit from
trees I planted myself:
Actually this is the second peach from this tree; the first one was too heavy and broke its twig off the tree several days ago, while still hard green. I ripened it in a paper sack on my counter top and ate it yesterday; it was OK but clearly "picked" too soon. This one I "picked" this morning was in the same boat. It busted the juvenile twig it grew on; I think it needs one more day and it's currently in my paper sack waiting for tomorrow. But this one has color and yields slightly to the touch; it's very close to ripe.
The tree I planted in March of 2014; it was a Walmart potted tree that a very good friend bought me as a
gift. Last year I kept it mulched and watered, but the
deer ate on it every couple of weeks. It threw up a ton of new growth but got eaten back at least five different times. This year it flowered heavily and matured about half a dozen fruit, and is growing lots more new foliage that hasn't (so far) been browsed.
As you can see in the photo, the peach is pretty but imperfect. It has quite a number of small spots of very minor bug damage. I don't spray anything, so this is hardly surprising. But as I was showing it off proudly to various people who humored me by acting suitably impressed, I was struck by the difference in how I value a piece of imperfect fruit or produce that I've grown myself, versus how I value imperfect fruit or produce that's offered for sale. Because, obviously, a commercial orchardist would consider my lovely peach to be completely unmarketable and valueless, as would almost anybody shopping for fruit in just about any context. If offered for sale, it would not
sell. Nobody but me would ever value my lightly-nibbled peach.
A couple of tangents and divergences to explain why this is on my mind.
A while back I watched the documentary "
Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story" on MSNBC:
Quite a bit of the movie involves a discussion with a grower who does farmers markets and with various grocers, about the problem of imperfect produce. Nobody wants it, nobody will buy it, there's no good way to discount it, and so enormous amounts of it get thrown away. As I was watching, I realized "That's me, too. If I'm paying good money for store fruit and veg, I am going to buy the best-looking ones on the shelf, every time. I will buy discounted stuff (some grocers in my area will shrink-wrap the wrinkly stuff and mark it down heavily) but only if the markdown is very substantial and I have a "cook it today" plan for it.
The contrast, of
course, is that I'm a novice gardener, and so every piece of produce I successfully grow that's even remotely edible, I eat with considerable gusto and excitement. I don't mind trimming bad or unsightly bits away, and I don't mind at all if
my stuff has cosmetic damage from bugs or whatever.
So why will I cheerfully eat my own, but I won't touch ugly store/market stuff unless the economic incentive is really huge? Is this hypocritical?
I've been pondering that on and off for several weeks now.
Then, this morning, I was puttering around my garden and listening to one of Diego's
Permaculture Voices podcasts, I think it was
this one. There was a bit in the middle when the farmer (Nigel Walker) and Diego discussed Nigel's courage at putting some imperfect greens in his CSA boxes. The greens were wonderful in every way except for some tiny holes from something called a flea beetle. Nigel talked about how they were utterly unmarketable in any conventional way, but he felt he'd trained his CSA customers to understand his reasoning, and if a couple of them were offended by the imperfection, his implication was that he was happy
enough to lose their business and replace them with customers who appreciate his values. All very sensible, but it reminded me of the proposition that even tiny imperfections render produce almost worthless in the marketplace.
And then I picked my first peach, lovely but imperfect. Why do I so value this peach, when honestly I'd pass it over in the bin at the store, looking for one without the little bug bites and the quarter-inch divot?
Thinking it over, I think
the answer boils down to two things: an information asymmetry, and our weary
experience of being endlessly screwed when buying industrial-ag produce at supermarkets.
First the information asymmetry: I know everything about my peach. I know what I sprayed on it (nothing), I know what chemical fertilizers were used (none), I know who peed on the
roots (me and my dogs), I know what the deer look like that tried to kill the tree last year, I know what the soil it's planted in smells and tastes and feels like. I know that peach. I know it's a good peach, even before I taste it, unless I find a larva buried in it, and even then I'll probably cut away the tunnel part and eat the rest. I also know I put a lot of effort into that peach, and of course we value what we're invested in.
Whereas in the supermarket, I know nothing good about the peaches. All I know is that they are harder than they
should be, and that they've come a long way and were produced using enormous amounts of
petroleum and petrochemicals. I am not inclined to give these supermarket peaches the benefit of the doubt -- and I have
a lot of doubt.
That's the second thing: buying produce at the store (it can be better at farmers markets, but I don't have access to a good one currently) is a never-ending exercise in getting screwed and regretting my purchases. Produce from the store may look good, but way too often it's flavorless, has a bad texture, is crunchy or mushy or bland. Astonishingly often, the item that looks great in the store has used up all of its storage leeway, so it goes bad in the first three days once you get it home. Nine times out of ten (I sometimes think) the store produce turns out to be unfit for human consumption, or so flavorless or ill-textured that consuming it is not a joy. "Anything to make a turd" goes the motto, and too often, we're lucky to get
even that for our supermarket produce money. Eventually we come to feel like Charlie Brown playing football with Lucy:
In some produce categories (for me tomatoes are the worst!) I've just come to feel
abused every time I make a purchasing decision. I know the produce will be a disappointment, but I buy it anyway, because I've got to eat, and produce is a big part of a healthy diet. And then -- as expected -- the produce has a bad texture or a disappointing flavor or a poor shelf life or a nasty wax coating or some other defect.
A lifetime of shopping like this has left me both suspicious and value-conscious when I buy produce. I carefully inspect everything and reject the smallest blemish, because there's a whole bin to pick from and if I'm going to get screwed again buying low-quality produce, I want the best bit of it I can find.
Upon reflection, then, I don't think that I
am a hypocrite. I think there are good reasons for being skeptical of market produce, and thus for giving way too much weight to the only criteria we can easily see (physical perfection and imperfection). And there are equally good reasons for being willing to quite cheerfully eat the substandard imperfect "ugly" produce that we grow ourselves. Guaranteed freshness and the surety that the item was grown to our standards profoundly trumps visual standards! But visual standards are too-frequently the only thing we have to go on, when we go into a big-box store to buy the produce of industrial agriculture. That's what we have, so that's what we use.
What do y'all think?
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