Our war on waste answer is to use fruits that would otherwise be thrown out to create gourmet delights.
Most growers find they have grown fruits that cannot be shipped to market. This is perfectly good fruit to eat. Reasons this can occur are:
- Too many outside blemishes on the skin
- Wrong size for the supermarkets to accept (too small or too large fruit)
- Oddly shaped fruit
- They are too ripe to travel to from the farm to the supermarkets
- There is an oversupply of fruit due to growing conditions perfect for all farmers at once and not enough eaten at once
- A cold snap in the south of the country can lead to less people wanting to eat tropical fruits that are made ripe by warmer northern conditions
What happens to this fruit? There are thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fruit that this happens to each year. The fruit can either:
- Be left on the trees, vines or bushes
- Be thrown out in the paddock on farm
- Given to livestock to eat
- Dumped in dumps near markets as they have already been sent
At Gin Gin and Dry we have found a way to utilise some of this waste (otherwise known as perfectly good fruit to eat!). We dry it and create tasty fruit delights.
Want to see an example of product thrown as per ABC for the recent strawberry crop? Check out the following link…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-22/strawberry-glut-waste/10146520
