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Transcript

The ugly fruit movement.

You will hear a lecture on the ugly fruit movement as an effort to prevent food wastage.

Before you listen, you have 45 seconds to read questions 31 to 40.

Lecturer: Good afternoon.

I was in such a hurry I didn’t have breakfast. I’d like to show you these apples that my neighbour grew. This one’s fine, but this one’s an odd shape, you certainly wouldn’t find it on sale at a supermarket in this country. But, it tastes great.

Today, I’d like to discuss food wastage, and a movement attempting to address the issue. There are ugly-fruit exponents throughout Europe, but I’ll focus n a group in Portugal, called Fruta Feia, which means ‘ugly fruit’.

But first, some statistics. According to the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, or the FAO, (31) around 40% of food for human consumption is wasted globally. The direct economic impact of this is a loss of $750 billion dollars each year. Meanwhile, every day, 870 million people worldwide go hurry. The environmental effect of food production is also astounding. (32) in the US, it’s estimated that the transportation of food uses ten percent of the total US energy budget. At the same time, (32) food production consumes 50% of our land and (32) 80% of our available fresh water. The single largest component of solid municipal waste – around 40% - is rotting food, and the gases that produce increased global warming.

Surprisingly, food wastage in developing countries is as high as developed ones. What differs is where the wastage occurs. (33) in a country like Bolivia, Laos, or Zambia, food loss occurs after harvesting and during processing, due to inadequate storage, poor transportation infrastructure and warm climatic conditions, whereas in the developed world, wastage occurs at the retail and consumer level – consumers seldom plan their shopping, which leads to over-purchasing; or, the enormous variety of supermarket food encourages impulse buying. Furthermore, consumers are strongly advised by regulatory authorities to dispose of food that may well be edible but which has passed its use-by date. (34) this overly-cautious labelling with use-by dates is something Fruta Feia has campaigned against. (35) the complex food rules of the European Union began in 1992, and have fuelled great discontent, especially in the UK, where journalists famously lampooned bureaucrats for banning bent bananas and curved cucumbers.

After such criticism, the EU did reduce its list of rules for selling fruit and vegetables from 36 to ten. The difficulty lies with retailers that reject large amounts of food due to aesthetic considerations, believing spinach has to be completely green, and tomatoes perfectly spherical. Any blemish, even one that doesn’t affect the edible contents, signals an item’s description.

To reduce wastage, the FAO recommends three things. Priority should be given to preventing wastage in the first place to by balancing production with demand. Where there is surplus, reuse by donation to needy people or to farm animals should take place. Lastly, if reuse is impossible, recycling and recovery should be pursued.

Back to Portugal and Fruta Feia, Portugal, in Western Europe, is a developed nation of 10.5 million people. It joined EU 30 years ago. In 2011, however, it was severely affected by a (36) debt crisis, and its economy is still shaky. As a result of the (36) debt crisis, unemployment is high, and hundreds of thousands of people have left the country. In these hard times, many Portuguese are hunting for bargains. So, enter the cooperative Fruta Feia, set up in Lisbon in 2013 by Isabel Soares.

Fruta Feia has three aims, to feed people cheaply; to encourage EU rule-makers to overhaul use-by dates; and, to subvert notions of both what is (37) visually acceptable and what is (37) edible. When surveyed, most people who joined Fruta Feia also support local agriculture.

Isabel Soares estimates that one-third of Portugal’s farm produce is thrown out due to artificial standards set by supermarkets. A farmer, Jose Dias, who supplies Fruta Feia said that from his annual production of tomatoes, one (38) quarter did not meet supermarket standards, so were dumped. Now, Fruta Feia buys his ‘reject’ tomatoes at half the price he would sell them to a supermarket. Consequently, Fruta Feia’s members also pay (39) less for tomatoes than supermarket shoppers do.

As to the myriad of regulations set by the EU, Fruta Feia does not contravene any; its own produce is unlabelled and unpackaged. Despite this somewhat unglamorous look, it has sold more than 20 metric tons of food in Lisbon alone.

Personally, even when the contribution of Fruta Feia and its 1000 members is (40) tiny, they are still, literally and metaphorically, eating away at the mountains of food that otherwise go to waste. And I salute that.

That is the end of the Listening test.