Batlow apple grower Greg Mouat said he was as shocked as the rest of the country to see the wastage of bananas occurring at the farm stage. As many as 40 per cent of perfectly edible bananas are thrown away in Australia before they even make it to the supermarket, because they are too big, small, straight, or curvy to meet supermarket cosmetic specifications.
He said that a large number of his apples also don’t make it to supermarkets due to issues like not being red enough or having a misshapen shape – around 35 per cent, with significant fluctuations depending on the variety and yield. However, he believes the onus should be on the growers to improve their techniques and make more high-quality, supermarket-ready fruit.
“I think its up to us to get better at what we do, because there is good money being paid for good quality fruit, [Cosmetic specifications] are a problem for us to an extent, but it’s not as bad as it is with bananas.
“I think with apples, if you’re growing a good mid-sized fruit, you can sell it. People want mid-sized apples, because they fit in lunchboxes. We sell a lot of smaller fruit out of our farm gate because it’s attractive to mums and dads.”
Apples are also a little different, because imperfect product that is rejected from supermarkets won’t be thrown away, it will be made into secondary products like juice or pies. Mr Mouat said about 65 per cent of his apples are “first grade” fruit that is sold in supermarkets.
The problem, as Batlow grower Ralph Wilson explained, is that while second and third grade fruit isn’t wasted, it also isn’t remotely profitable for growers.
“Apples that go to juice we get as low as 11 cents a kilo for – it’s currently sitting at around 15 cents a kilo. They cost us around a dollar a kilo to grow, so obviously that’s not a good product,” he said.
“If we grow small apples they’re very hard to sell, and if we grow big apples they’re very hard to sell. So to get any money for them they have to be just the right size – but then nature kicks in, and we can’t tell a tree ‘all the apples have to be this size.’ The tree decides.
