New Taipei City will start selling imperfect (NG) vegetables; crooked cucumbers taste just as good

To reduce food waste, the New Taipei City Government will launch a trial "NG produce" sales area at farmers' associations and farmers' markets within its jurisdiction starting this month, selling out-of-spec produce at prices below current market rates. Many farmers welcome the move, but they also remind the city government to keep an eye on the source, so that wholesalers do not buy at rock-bottom prices and then resell to distributors at high prices. At the same time, it must be paired with food and agriculture education so that the public understands why crops look ugly and how they grow. Only by working on both fronts can the public's preference for only buying pretty produce be corrected.

NG produce may be available as soon as next week

Many people have eaten cucumbers, but have you ever seen an arc-shaped or even S-shaped cucumber? Cucumbers on the market are usually straight, as if stamped from the same mold, but this phenomenon actually hides food waste and the hardships of farmers.

Cucumber farmer Zhong Yiyu said helplessly that in the early stage of cucumber growth, about 10 percent are curved, and later that can reach 50 percent. But these out-of-spec cucumbers cannot be presented for sale. A box of 18 kg of "normal" cucumbers can sell for about 400 to 500 yuan at the auction market, while out-of-spec ones can only sell for 150 yuan, and sometimes a box earns only 20 to 30 yuan, which is out of proportion to the time and labor invested. But farmers cannot bear to let the cucumbers rot in the field, so most still sell them cheaply, and sometimes when they cannot be sold, they can only be fed to chickens.

Starting this month, the New Taipei City Agriculture Department will guide distributors to sell "NG produce." Zhang Lizhen, section chief of the Agriculture Department's Farming and Animal Husbandry Management Section, said NG produce only looks bad but has the same nutritional value, and the hope is to encourage consumers to cherish food while also increasing farmers' income. If acceptance is good, it can be promoted in the future to other channels such as hypermarkets.

The sales locations for NG produce will mainly be farmers' associations and New Taipei City farmers' markets, and prices will be lower than market prices, but the detailed prices and items will be communicated by farmers and sellers themselves, focusing mainly on seasonal produce, with no special restriction to organic or pesticide-free. The detailed setup methods and locations are still being planned. Chen Pinxian, director of the Agriculture Department, said NG produce may be available as soon as next week.