Do the right Shape

Picture the scene: an orchard full of delicious, big Howgate Wonders, cooking English apples. Clive used to sell them to the supermarkets but now they only want Bramley apples. Howgate Wonders are too large and big for the supermarkets specification.
40 tons of apples could go to waste and the orchard grub up and burn.
Did you know? Supermarkets control our supplies and our tastes.
They decide what we have to eat and which fruit and vegetables are suitable for our tables. They don’t care about our health or environment, the only goal is cheap food and huge profit.
The agribusiness industry set a sort of commercial selection that is getting poor our lunches: since the start of the 20th century we have lost 75% of genetic diversity from agricultural products and today fewer than 30 plants feed 95% of the global population.
While the UK’s national fruit collection contains more than 2,300 varieties of apples, only a handful of (mainly imported) varieties are available in most supermarkets.
This globalisation and standardisation of our food is repeated in other areas of UK and global agriculture.
On the supermarkets shelves there isn’t space for ugly, knobbly and misshapen products. Supermarkets reject some fruit and vegetables just because they have the wrong size or shape.
75% of food we buy comes from supermarkets chains. For every pound spent 55 p goes to the supermarket, but, on average, only 10 p goes to the person who actually grew the food.
Supermarkets have been forcing down prices paid to farmers for years, and can force farmers to sell at or below the cost of production.
But a perfect, good looking apple requires a lot of pesticides.
According to the Friends of the Eart, an environmental organization, between 1998 and 2003, 47 per cent of supermarket apples tested contained pesticide residues, and some other fruit contained a cocktail of pesticides above legal and safety limits. Intensive farming methods effect our health but also our wildlife and our environment.
The Environment Agency estimated that intensive farming costs the country £500 million each year because of water pollution, soil erosion and resulting flood damage.

We have to find a different approach and the best way to do this is to support sustainable farming -like organic farming- and farmers markets.