About 20% of all watermelons are left to rot. USDA says those spoiled and misshapen watermelons can be biofuel feedstock. Farmers just junk them now. Instead, they could be an income stream.
The wonderful image of a watermelon VW comes from Inhabitat, who has more on the story too.
Whoa — they junk them!? Around here, excess produce gets fed to livestock. That includes chickens, pigs and (of course) goats. Seriously, Freecycle just carried an ad asking for your weevil-contaminated grains as chicken feed. I ran an ad earlier in the month asking for yard trimmings– which netted me several truckloads of branches and perhaps a ton (so far) of fallen apples.
In a farming community, virtually nothing need go to waste. But these folks obviously aren’t community farmers. Just one more black eye on the face of corporate farming I guess.
I assumed they junked them. Could be wrong. The article quotes USDA ““About 20% of each annual watermelon crop is left in the field because of surface blemishes or because they are misshapen; currently these are lost to growers as a source of revenue.”
I would love to power something with watermelon juice! It is amazing how much goes to waste in this world. They leave the watermelons in the field because of skin blemishes — I guess all things must be perfect.