Why the F*** Is an Eggplant in the Dumpster?
A brief look at the farm-to-trash lifecycle of food
In the United States, retailers fill their dumpsters with 43 billion pounds of edible food every year. It is not unusual to find fresh food in the dumpster — I do almost every day. In my early days of dumpster diving, I stumbled across a shiny, deep purple eggplant atop a pile of molding bananas.
For some unexplainable reason, this eggplant captivated me.
Perhaps it was because I’d only seen a fresh eggplant a handful of times in my life. Sure, I’ve indulged in my fair share of eggplant parm from my favorite Italian restaurant and tried some creative eggplant-based vegan appetizers, but I’d never held an actual eggplant in my hands. Before this, eggplant was only a concept and a flavor to me.
I am a middle-class, city-dwelling American and so I simply never have to think about what my food looks like before it’s served to me or how it got to my plate. I just eat it.
I held the eggplant in my hands and inspected it as if it were an artifact from another era. I realized my only reference for this tasty food I’d eaten dozens of times in my life was the eggplant emoji. How pathetic is that?
I felt naive and ashamed of how disconnected I was to my own food — the most essential part of my daily life and the reason for continued human existence.
And so I am bringing you along on my journey to learn more about this eggplant.
Where Did This Eggplant Come From?
Produce stickers are sort of like a vegetable’s birth certificate. They tell you their PLU code (which indicates the variety) and usually their birthplace too. For this eggplant, the birth certificate read “4081 — Eggplant” with a logo for Mathis farms.
A quick google search will show you that Mathis Farms is located in Plant City, Florida. The farm is approximately an 11 hour and 29 minute drive — or roughly 805 miles — from the location of my neighborhood grocery dumpster. If the average Semi-truck used for shipping gets 6 mpg, this trip would require approximately 134 gallons of gasoline.
How Was This Eggplant Grown?
In Florida’s climate, eggplants mature from seed to fully ripe in about 90 days. The plants need direct sunlight for most of the day and will not tolerate cold weather. Florida’s climate is ideal for eggplants but oddly New Jersey produces the most eggplants in the United States.
The downside to Florida’s climate is the agricultural pests. Florida eggplant crops must battle aphids, thrips, and the Silverleaf whitefly to survive until harvest.
The Silverleaf whitefly, in particular, poses a dangerous threat to eggplants in Florida. The Silverleaf whiteflies are an invasive species that land on the leaves of a plant and suck the sap from it, slowly killing the plant. These little suckers have wreaked havoc on crops in the United States and left more than a billion dollars of crop loss in their wake since the 1990s.
Naturally (& yet not natural at all), many farmers rely on insecticides to prevent the Silverleaf whitefly from destroying their crops. According to the University of California pest management guidelines, the most effective insecticide for this pest is bifenthrin (commercially known as “Capture”) and is categorized as a possible human carcinogen by the EPA.
Who Grew This Eggplant?
It would be nearly impossible to determine exactly who tended and harvested this specific fruit. However, data suggests it was a migrant worker on a temporary H-2A visa from Mexico or Central America. In FY2021, Florida farms hired more H-2A workers than any other state — more than 24,000.
The H-2A visa program is a dense topic for another article but essentially the program exists so that American farmers can import cheap, seasonal labor. The majority of H-2A visa migrant workers are from Mexico and Central America and leave their families behind for most of the year to work for seasonal operations like Mathis Farms in Plant City.
The H-2A program evolved out of the failed Bracero program and is wrought with fraud and abusive conditions for migrant workers. Fortunately, there is a handful of large, grassroots organizations like Farmworker Justice that monitor and report on H-2A migrant worker’s living conditions and treatment.
Why Was This Eggplant in the Dumpster?
After 90 days of growing by the labor of a migrant worker who risked exposure to harmful insecticides to battle an invasive species and the 805 miles of fossil-fueled commute this eggplant merely sat on a shelf for a few days in the produce section before becoming trash. But why?
The answer is simple: profit.
The grocery store’s modus operandi is to make a profit, not to feed you. For that reason, the store is more inclined to protect their brand reputation by removing less-than-picturesque food from their shelves than to insure edible food gets to hungry mouths. There are many other factors at play too including limited shelf space. If a store has an incoming shipment of produce they must make space on the shelves for the fresher food and thus the older, less attractive, and less fresh produce go straight to the dumpster.
How Can I Stop Food From Being Trashed?
Countless eggplants have been tossed into the trash by grocery stores and food retailers since you began reading this article. To prevent further eggplant loss, call 1–800….
I’m kidding. The answer is actually much simpler than dialing a toll-free line.
- Donate or volunteer with a local food rescue organization. Here’s a tool to help you find a group near you.
- Buy your produce from local farmers or co-ops. These entities are far less likely to trash edible food.
- Shop at stores that clearance food items before tossing them out.
- Talk to a store employee to see if you can be alerted when food is thrown out.
- Eat out of the trash! This is the more intense option but it is probably far less radical than you think. I promise you if you see the inside of a grocery store dumpster that you will think differently about dumpster diving. The amount of fresh, plastic-wrapped, and properly packaged edible food will blow your mind.
The world produces more than enough food to feed every human on it but many factors, including profit-driven business models, disrupt the process of getting nutritious, edible food to the hungriest mouths. The next time you’re waiting for the oven to preheat for dinner or meticulously choosing which tomato you want to buy at the store, take a moment to reflect on the journey the food took to get to you.
