Deformed, bruised, and blemished farm produce, which would otherwise end up as cow feed or discarded, was up for grabs for free in Metro Vancouver on Saturday.
Known as the “Ugly Potato Day”, the vegetable giveaway event has become a tradition for Surrey, B.C.’s Heppell family.
“They’re perfectly fine to eat,” said Tyler Heppell, who started hosting the event two years ago on his family farm in South Surrey.
“We believe that the best place for them to go is people’s bellies, and not cows’,” he added.
By giving pounds of visually unappealing vegetables to the community, the Surrey farmer aims to take a bite out of food insecurity and reduce food waste.
“We have people that just look forward to our ugly potato days,” he said. “They can’t afford vegetables outside of that, and nor do they have the time to wait and line up the food banks.”
With the support of the Greater Vancouver Food Bank and a dozen other farms, the Ugly Potato Day saw about 150,000 pounds of vegetables and other food items distributed on Saturday.
The food bank’s chief operating officer Cynthia Boulter says the rising cost of living has driven demand for events such as Ugly Potato Day.
“Job loss, low wages, hours being reduced, just not being able to find work, and the cost of everything,” she said of the struggles being faced by community members.
“We have parents who are spending all their money on rent.”
On The Coast6:38Heppell’s last Ugly Potato Day
Heppell’s is hosting their last Ugly Potato Day event this weekend. Tyler Heppell joins guest host Meera Bains to talk about how he is expanding the event to help reduce food waste and food insecurity in the region.
The Heppells have hosted Ugly Potato Day at their family farm since it began two years ago.
But this year, with the event’s growing popularity, the City of Surrey offered the Cloverdale Rodeo Fairgrounds as a venue, accommodating over 10,000 attendees.
Boulter says the event also raises awareness among local farmers about B.C.’s food donation tax credit, which provides farmers non-refundable tax credits.
The tax credits are equal to 25 per cent of the fair market value of the food that farmers donate to registered food banks.
“It will benefit them at the end of the year in terms of taxes, and for us, it’s amazing,” said Boulter.
However, Heppell notes that not many farmers know about the tax incentive, and many more don’t have time to harvest visually unappealing produce or know how to manage it.
“It’s just a logistics issue,” he said. “At the end of the day, moving 150,000 pounds [of vegetables] is a lot of organizing and it’s an issue that a lot of farmers face where they don’t really know where their extra produce can go.”
Heppell aims to change that, and plans to expand the initiative by co-ordinating with farmers across Canada to hold their own “Ugly Produce Days.”
“We have dozens of farms signed up to be doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. And our goal is just to feed all of Canada.”