b'What Would Make ConsumersBUY UGLY PRODUCE?Ohio State University looks into the messaging needed for consumers to buy imperfect produce.Alex MartinHAVE YOU EVERwalked to the local grocery stores pro- fect vegetables at. Typically, these ranged somewhere between duce section, only to see a bin full of misfit produce? Think10-40% discounts in comparison to standard produce.about it: lemons with bruises, tomatoes with large buldges, orWhen it came down to the message, Roe says they worked even carrots with two separate roots that look like a pair of legs.to create a message that got across two separate ideas: a social There are plenty marketing campaigns aiming to uplift theseidea and a private angle. imperfect vegetablescalling specifically that while blemishesYou really need to emphasize two aspects of imperfect pro-might lower them from usual grocery standards, they are safe toduce that make it potentially desirable to consumers, he says. A eat and help minimize food waste in the fields.social angle, stating If you buy these, its going to be less food When it comes down to it, though, whats the perfect market- wasted, and thats good for society. Then a private angle, which ing information to sell to the consumer? is that these vegetables are just as nutritious and natural.The food system is really designed around the consumer,Roe found that with these two messages were both included, says Brian Roe, Van Buren Professor in the Department ofconsumers were willing to purchase misfit carrots at a discount Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economicsthan what they would pay in comparison to perfect carrots.at Ohio State University. The success of the food system isRoe says that one potential direction to address this issue is whether or not food is actually consumed by a consumer.to change the national standard. Currently, the national stand-Everything else really has to be set up to ensure that occurs. ard permits a particular fraction of items to be non-standard in When it comes down to it, misshapen produce is no different.shape or sizetypically around 10-20%. Understanding the consumer is fundamental for reducingAnother possibility here is just to increase that tolerance for waste throughout the system, and therefore making it more sus- misshapen items by a few percentage points, he says. Even tainable, he says. Ideally, its the last stop in the food system. if you cant pull off a nationwide marketing campaign where The study measured consumer responses to hypotheticalyou inform people about how wonderful it is, maybe you can questions all around the idea of carrots. Participants were shownincrease the tolerance for misshapen carrots to enter into a different images of carrots to see which theyd be more likely tobunch that still gets graded.choose and in what specific scenario.We have some data showing that if you compared a bunch We had two criteria. One: it had to be something that a lotof carrots with one out of five imperfectly shaped and a bunch of consumers were familiar with, Roe says. Then, it needed towith two out of the five carrots were imperfectly shaped, there work in our research, two-dimensional setting. In two dimen- wasnt much difference in terms of peoples willingness to pay sions, people can pick out whether carrots are ugly prettythe same amount for both.quickly, where other crops, like tomatoes, could be tricker. Roe says this suggests that there could be scope to increase Using discounts from the marketplace where ugly producethe tolerance for imperfect produce before discounting the price.was typically being sold, Roe and his team produced a scale toThey just need graders to get used to allowing a little more see what prices consumers would be willing to purchase imper- wiggle room for wiggly carrots, Roe says.SW6/ SEEDWORLD.COMFEBRUARY 2022'