Where will our obsession with perfect fruit — homogeneous, uniform, the idea that pears, apples and oranges must all look identical, as though they had come off a production line — take us? This is one of the questions that arise when reading the latest report by the association Terra!, entitled Siamo alla frutta, dedicated to the aesthetic demands of consumers, supermarkets and the European Union and their effects on the future of Italian agricultural producers.

There are a number of considerations to be made. The first: a bruised, speckled or smaller-than-imagined piece of fruit is not necessarily less tasty or nutritious. The second: not only is nature not a factory, as several producers interviewed by Fabio Ciconte and Stefano Liberti (the report's authors) point out, but the ongoing climate crisis is causing an ever-growing proportion of fruit to display non-uniform characteristics. And yet this climate crisis is nowhere to be seen on the shelves of large retailers, where fruit always looks perfect. Why? According to Terra!, because an ever-larger share of this fruit is rejected at source: supermarkets do not buy it because we would not buy it, and so it ends up in the secondary processing industry (to make juices, for example), with extremely slim margins for farmers, for whom it is sometimes more convenient at that point to withdraw it from the market than to sell it.

How the fruit market works

2021 was declared by the United Nations the International Year of Fruits and Vegetables; in Italy the value of this production is 11.4 billion euros a year, representing 23.2 per cent of the wealth generated by the primary sector, with almost half coming from fruit. It is a sector facing increasing difficulties due to a perfect storm.

On one hand, the unpredictability of the climate: extremely hot summers with sudden frosts, such as last April's. On the other, European rules and a market system that are increasingly ill-equipped to respond to this crisis while protecting agriculture. This is the so-called entry-level selection, which divides fruit into categories based on the parameters of a European regulation (543/2011) that stipulates not only that fruit must be healthy, free of parasites and clean, but also its calibre, colour and shape, based on aesthetic characteristics that have nothing to do with quality.

In this way a two-tier system is created, made up of equally healthy and tasty products: first-class fruit (extra and category I) and second-class fruit (category II). Second-class fruit does not reach the supermarket; it must enter a secondary market where it is perceived as a reject and where farmers no longer have the power to set the price. The alternative, then, is to sell at derisory figures or let it go to waste. According to data from the Institute of Services for the Agricultural and Food Market (Ismea), 57 per cent makes it onto the shelf, while the rest goes to processing, is exported or is withdrawn from the market.

None of this is visible to us, because we obtain all the perfect fruit we demand — often imported (with significant environmental costs from transport) — while those who suffer most from this situation are Italian producers. The Terra! report also consults representatives from the Gdo (grande distribuzione organizzata, i.e. supermarket chains), whose most common response is: we do not buy ugly fruit because there is no market for it — people do not want it.

There is therefore a major issue of education towards informed consumption, based on factual data (taste and nutritional value) rather than aesthetics alone. Otherwise, entire supply chains of excellence face an unsustainable future: the study analyses several of them, and one interesting case is that of pears in Emilia-Romagna, which have come through several very difficult seasons for a number of reasons: the brown marmorated stink bug, brown spot disease, and frosts. The effect: the loss of 6,000 hectares out of a total of 28,000 for what is the leading European pear-producing hub, brought to its knees also by the obsession with perfection, which causes even greater damage to sectors already in crisis because of the climate. "Large retailers won't take smaller fruit even if it tastes exactly the same," the producers interviewed lament. A vicious circle that is dangerous for agriculture and is being replicated across many other supply chains.

stefano liberti @abutiago

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I supermercati vogliono solo frutta bella e grande. Ma nei campi ce n'è sempre meno: così i produttori non ci stanno dentro e spesso abbandonano. Mesi di inchiesta, decine di interviste: ecco il nuovo rapporto di @Terra_aps con @FabioCiconte. 👇

associazioneterra.it/inchieste-camp…

♥ 75💬 1 22 giu 2021 · Apri su X →

Not only bad news

There are, however, positive examples. Terra! cites the Melinda consortium, which since 1989 has succeeded in adding value to the entire Trentino supply chain by bringing producers together, allowing them to approach the market from a position of strength. Part of the credit goes to a clever innovation: the apples are stored in a system of underground chambers in the former Rio Maggiore mine, a one-of-a-kind example of a natural refrigerator. The consortium has also managed to bring second-category fruit to market, using marketing strategies such as the "different twin" — good but less beautiful. Maria Panariello, in the report, lists a long series of European best practices, with supermarket chains in various countries having set up zero-waste sales channels for imperfect fruit, with excellent results. In Italy there is the platform CoopNoSpreco, whose campaigns have made it possible to recover (through the digital platform and an app) 5,000 tonnes of products. Similar objectives for the 2020 campaign by NaturaSì and Legambiente to offer non-standardised but good-quality, organic fruit and vegetables. Some 795 tonnes were sold at prices fifty per cent lower. There are also small startups, such as Bella dentro, which collects ugly fruit from farms across the country, leaving the sellers to set the price themselves, and using restaurants and solidarity purchasing groups as distribution channels.