This farmer says he reluctantly throws away enough cauliflower to feed a province

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Richard Melvin hopes there comes a time when the majority of food waste from his farm ends up in the mouths of people who need it most.

Despite being "perfectly good to eat," up to 40 per cent of Melvin's 36 hectares of cauliflower gets plowed back into the ground each year, according to the Nova Scotia farmer's estimates.

"We waste enough cauliflower on our farm to feed everybody in Nova Scotia, or the Maritimes for that matter," he told Cross Country Checkup's Ian Hanomansing. 

Many farmers aren't in a position to afford to harvest, box and transport produce that isn't being purchased, Melvin says — especially for vegetables like cauliflower that can spoil in two weeks.

"This is fresh produce, so we're talking about a fairly short shelf life. We often get into a situation where we try to do something and the market demand is not quite as good as what we thought it would be."

According to a 2019 federal government report, an estimated 13 per cent of fruits and vegetables grown in Canada go unharvested or are discarded. 

And Melvin says grocery and retail standards are strict when it comes to acceptable product size and colour.

"If it's a little bit too creamy coloured — people might call it kind of a snow white kind of colour — people don't like that," he said. "If it's too small, too large, then that's another area [of concern]," adding the ideal size for cauliflower is 13 to 18 cm in diameter. 

The seed of a solution

A new funding stream for growers is required, Melvin says, to get leftover produce into the food bank system.

Feed Nova Scotia is one possible option to accomplish that.

The registered charity — which serves food banks, shelters and meal programs in the province — is in discussions with Melvin.

Executive director Nick Jennery says the organization currently buys products from farmers on an ad-hoc basis, but he's hoping to solidify a longer-term agreement with Melvin, depending on quantity, cost and quality.

"We would periodically call him or another farmer to say, 'Gosh, we need more root vegetables for our Christmas program or more potatoes, because there seems to be more of a need for that,'" said Jennery. "From our standpoint, we need a consistent supply."

Jennery says they also use food transformation strategies, such as making soup out of vegetables like cauliflower and then freezing it, to save costs and extend produce shelf life.

"Would that final product be cheaper than the cost of buying a canned product? It certainly would be more nutritious. So we're going through that right now."

Jennery says not everyone eats vegetables like cauliflower, or knows how to cook it, so it's critical to gauge the need and demand of the communities and programs Feed Nova Scotia serves.

"If we buy or bring in more perishable products than we can distribute, then we end up with waste and have to spend money to get rid of that waste. That's money that could go towards helping people have access to the foods that they need."

Second Harvest CEO Lori Nikkel isn't surprised to hear that farms have to get rid of so many edible crops.

Billed as a food rescue charity, Second Harvest collects surplus food from across the supply chain and redistributes it. According to the organization's 2022 annual report, Canadians waste 58 per cent of their food each year.

"No farmer grows food to then plow it under," Nikkel said. "What we find with farms is if they can harvest it and put it in large bins, then we will take it and we can repackage it or we can change it. 

"We're used to working in agriculture to just make sure that we can move this perishable food as fast as possible."

Federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says the Trudeau government is committed to addressing food waste issues in Canada, citing food rescue and food waste reduction initiatives and policies that have been put in place the past few years.

"The Government of Canada will continue to look for opportunities to make food waste reduction a priority issue, convene stakeholders to drive meaningful reduction throughout food systems and stimulate innovative solutions," Bibeau said, in an emailed statement to CBC.

By encouraging Canadians to reduce food loss, she noted, it can save businesses and consumers money, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expand food availability.

Bibeau did not say whether the government would consider specific funding for farmers to salvage some of their crops, which would otherwise go to waste.

But there is a "silver lining" to what's happening right now with food waste and high food prices, according to Sylvain Charlebois, professor and director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University.

"More people are actually focusing on food waste," Charlebois said. "Up the food chain, companies are being careful because they're paying more for ingredients, so they're trying to upcycle some of the ingredients."

As food prices rise, people tend to value food more, he adds, so they're careful with how they manage their inventory — which can impact the demand from farms.