A misshapen strawberry is one of about 230 ‘big’ things across Australia and its makeover is a collaboration between Dash Water — which makes imperfect fruit-infused sparkling water — and northern Victoria's Big Strawberry to draw attention to the issue of food waste.
"It's to spread the word that wonky fruits are just as beautiful and delicious," Dash Water chief executive and founder Jack Scott said.
The Big Strawberry is at Koonoomoo and spent the weekend of April 20 and 21 in its new shape.
Co-owner and purveyor of all things strawberry Tarn Hayes said she couldn't be happier to bring attention to Australia's food waste problem.
"Just because a piece of fruit and veg isn’t perfectly symmetrical, doesn’t mean it needs to go straight to landfill," Tarn said.
Each year Australia wastes about 7.6 million tonnes of food, enough to fill the MCG more than 10 times over. It costs the economy more than $36.6 billion and wastes enough water to fill five Sydney Harbours.
Imperfect fruit and vegetables are the biggest contributor, with around 30 per cent of produce going straight to landfill.
The landmass required to grow Australia's wasted food covers 25 million hectares, an area bigger than the state of Victoria.
End Food Waste Australia and Ozharvest, Australia's biggest food rescue organisation, have been calling for a national food plan and food donation tax incentives for producers and logistics companies, a key recommendation of 2023's parliamentary inquiry into food security.
Killer ram
A sheep is believed to be responsible for the deaths of an elderly New Zealand couple whose bodies were found in a paddock.
The NZ Herald reported a couple, both in their early 80s, were found dead at their rural Waitakere property, west of Auckland, early on April 18 by their son, who was prompted to look for the pair after failing to hear from them.
Police suspect a ram was behind the deaths, with the Herald reporting officers had located and killed the animal on the couple's hobby farm.
"Two people have been located deceased in a paddock at the Anzac Valley Rd property,” a police spokesman said.
"At this stage the circumstances of the death are unexplained."
Lunar agriculture
NASA has announced that when humans take their first steps back on the moon after 50 years during the Artemis III mission, astronauts will cultivate and return lunar-grown plants to Earth for the first time.
Known as Lunar Effects on Agricultural Flora (LEAF), the project will collect plant growth and development data that will help scientists understand the use of plants grown for both human nutrition and life support on the Moon and beyond.
Slated for a September 2026 launch, the consortium of partners who will pioneer this initiative includes a core group from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space (P4S), headquartered at the University of Adelaide.
The LEAF experiment includes a plant growth chamber with an isolated atmosphere, housing red and green varieties of Brassica rapa (Wisconsin Fast Plants), Wolffia (duckweed), and Arabidopsis thaliana.
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