Over the next 2 days, Waste Warriors will distribute 6,000 kilos of “ugly” carrots. The Warriors say they rescued the carrots from 2 farms in Sint-Laureins (East Flanders). 'Ugly' carrots are carrots that do not conform to supermarket rules or European rules in terms of size or shape.
The vegetables can be collected from a farm in Sint-Laureins or from the Winter Circus in Ghent. There are also collection points in Antwerp and Brussels.
Waste Warriors is a young organisation, only founded in January, which wants to fight food waste. They went looking for farmers who had surpluses they could not market. In Sint-Laureins they found 2 farmers, brothers Maarten and Pieter-Jan Noë, who had 6,000 kilos of unsellable rainbow carrots lying around.
To save those 6,000 kilos of carrots, the Waste Warriors organised a sale. In 2 days, they were able to sell all the carrots. Half went to individuals or to a food bank, the other half found its way to companies that process carrots into dishes.
Pressure from supermarkets and weird European rules
That Maarten and Pieter-Jan are left with 6,000 unsellable carrots has nothing to do with the quality, taste or food safety of the carrots, but everything to do with how they look. "Guidelines are imposed on farmers by supermarkets. How big can a cucumber be, or how small a pumpkin, that is all fixed," explains Thomas Schiltz of Waste Warriors. Vegetables that do not meet these guidelines fall into the outsize category and are withdrawn from the market.
But it is not only supermarkets that impose rules on farmers. The European Union also imposes rules on how vegetables or fruit should look. "There are European guidelines on the size and colour of apples, for example. If that apple has so much red or yellow or green, then it falls into a different category and that apple is worth less or more. I think that is absurd," Thomas Schiltz notes.
European directives not only create waste, but they also encourage overproduction as a result of subsidy policies, Waste Warriors claim. "Quantities and prices, that's what European food policy is about, but not about quality. This leads to overproduction, which in turn leads to very low prices. And then Europe adjusts the price with subsidies, so the farmer still gets something for his fruit or vegetables, but it remains a low price."