Chef helps farmers boost income by turning waste fruit and veg into fine food
Peter Wolfe is helping farmers turn their farm 'seconds' into valuable gourmet food products (Photo : Marty McCarthy)
Australian consumers only want fruit and vegetables that look perfect, and that can be a major problem for many farmers.
Produce that is not suitable for market is known as 'seconds', and often goes to waste.
However, a farmer turned chef on Queensland's Sunshine Coast recently started up a business to help farmers value add to their 'seconds', to save them from going to waste.
Peter Wolfe said value adding to blemished or small fruit could sometimes be more valuable than its fresh, unprocessed counterparts.
"If you can use your waste product, you've got to make a profit," he said.
"I normally take their seconds that are not good for market, not as attractive, and I turn it into something that has a longer shelf life and normally has a greater financial value than their fresh product," he said.
"I make the products for them at a price per jar. I develop the recipes for nothing, which are my intellectual property, and they can market it however they like."
Mr Wolfe uses the produce to make chutneys, sauces, jams and even ice cream and said the proceeds the farmers generated from it could sometimes account for up to 25 to 30 per cent of their income.
Mr Wolf said that until consumers got over the concept of the 'second', farmers needed to be smart about what they did with their waste crop.
"They shouldn't be called 'seconds'. We're in this strange place where we think if a piece of fruit or vegetable is not exactly the right shape, exactly the same colour on it or has a spot on it, then it's not good enough to eat," he said.
"It's just crazy and I don't know where it came from, but we should go on flavour and nutritional value and not appearance.
"We tend to buy with our eyes and it really is a fault that Australians and a lot of Europeans have."
Mr Wolfe specialises in recipes that use native Australian ingredients, such as lemon myrtle, finger lime, wattle seed, pepper berries and bunya nuts.
"Anything that grows native I can produce something out of," he said.
"There are some wonderful recipes here and we should use the old-fashioned methods. People these days are into preservatives and chemicals, but food 50 to 100 years ago was naturally preserved."
Source : ABC Rural Marty McCarthy March 12th 2015
