Waste on soft fruit farms - a necessary evil or a failure of the imagination?
For people who do not work in food and farming, the commonly quoted FAO stat that 1/3rd of food produced globally each year is wasted makes for a shocking read. Unfortunately, for us on the inside, this comes as no surprise at all. Modern supply contracts, often drawn up by super-powerful supermarkets, make the prospect of failing to meet delivery, even by a few crates, incomprehensible. For this reason, it is standard practice amongst growers to overstock/crop/plan as a defence against the worst-case scenario – be it pest pressure, crazy weather or supply chain disruption. Some years, this cushion might be a farmers’ saving grace or at least provide them with piece of mind. But, other years, this system produces a huge quantity of waste.
Surplus Raspberries
This issue is especially prevalent in soft fruit growing, where farmers will commonly plan for a 30% yield drop, generating surplus in a good (bad) year approaching our FAO 1/3rd percentage before the fruit has even left the farm. As many of these farms are locked into single contracts, there is no outlet for this surplus. Even donations to the likes of City Harvest and The Felix Project can come up against volume and logistical logjams that prevent them being taken before spoilage.
At Chefs Farms, we strongly support the mantra that waste is a failure of the imagination. For that reason, we are incredibly excited to introduce a new range of surplus fruit products, manufactured on site by one of our growers in Chichester, West Sussex.
Surplus fruit from the farm, and other local growers, is ground to a pulp before being slowly air dried, concentrating the flavour and nutrition of the original fruit into shelf-stable pieces, and even powders. The water extracted from the fruit is captured within the system and recirculated into the farm irrigation system, going on to feed the next harvest
Surplus blueberries are ground into a pulp before drying
Application wise, as a former chef, I see potential for these powders to be extremely useful in the kitchen. The very low moisture content (0.4%) will allow for its addition to cakes/pastry recipes, giving a bright boost of flavour and colour without having to adjust ingredient ratios. Still in dessert world, ice creams and milkshakes made from scratch could benefit from a spoon of powder, bringing fresh, peak season flavour to the party all year around.
The full range of Lemon, Orange, Lime, Raspberry, Strawberry, Blackberry and Blueberry powders will be made available on Fresho in the coming weeks and will be available to our processing partners in bulk via enquiry.
Raspberry, lemon and orange powders with incredible aroma.
Will Downes - Chefs Farms