No Waste Army, an initiative against food waste from Breda, has started its largest action ever: saving – hold on – almost a million kilos of Dutch vegetables. The farmers who participate are overjoyed. “They save our industry.”
The hundreds of thousands of kilos of vegetables come from six farmers, spread throughout the country. Via No Waste Army, surplus farm products can soon be collected from the farmers themselves. The greens can also be donated to the Food Bank.
Too good a summer
One of the participating farmers is Johan Pals from Lage Zwaluwe. Due to the favorable growing season, his company has far too much white and red cabbage left. This concerns a total of 190,000 kilos of coal – a bizarre amount, he explains.
“It was a really good summer,” says Pals. But yes, space remains limited on the farm. “We don’t have storage space for that much coal. That’s why we were forced to leave the coal on the land longer, while we would normally harvest it at the end of September or beginning of October.”
Supermarkets say no
The end result? Very large coals. That sounds great, of course, but it is disappointing: supermarkets are not interested in such large coals. Pals was stuck with it and didn’t know what to do with tens of thousands of kilos of large coal.
That’s why he approached No Waste Army himself. “I got a call back within a week with the news that they wanted to help. Really fantastic,” he says with a smile from ear to ear. “It would be a shame if it all goes to waste.”
Not online but between the coals
Initiator Thibaud van der Steen from Breda naturally fully agrees with this. “Farmers and growers are just very pure people,” he explains. “When I tell someone like Johan that we have already sold more than 100,000 kilos of vegetables halfway through the first day of action, he is completely surprised.”
According to Van der Steen, the campaign is a success. 245,000 kilos of winter vegetables have already been sold. This concerns cabbages from Pals, but also potatoes and carrots from other farmers.
Pure people
It is difficult to say whether everything will be sold. In any case, Van der Steen is not giving up. In fact, interest in his project is growing, he says. Yet the biggest stumbling block is the farmers themselves: he sometimes has difficulty explaining to them how everything works.
The farmers sometimes find the principle quite complicated, says Van der Steen, laughing. “Then they look at me with a glassy look. They don’t fully understand selling vegetables online yet.”