Customers ask me this all the time. "Good question" I say, and one that should be asked to farmers and grocery store buyers directly when given the opportunity but to answer your question:

Over 20 billion pounds of produce is lost on farms every year in the USA alone.

Food loss on farms occurs for a variety of reasons and not for just one. I explain to customers that I’m not the actual farmer but a small business owner who sources and produces these “ugly” vegetables from a network of 29 + regional farms.

We take whatever they deem as "imperfect" and cook, can and pickle them into pantry products that can be enjoyed by customers year round. All the produce that gets categorized as "ugly" or “imperfect” by farmers, grocery buyers and distributors get sent to our Brooklyn facility where we process them into shelf-stable products that last an entire year. Again, at the end of the day, farmers have a business to run and no time to really waste, and I get that, so stores are not purchasing their imperfect veggies for cosmetic reasons really. So, they either toss them back into the field or into the trash. 

I understand when farmers throw their rejected tomatoes back into their field. I don't understand, however, tossing them into the garbage and I really don't understand why these ugly tomatoes are not more accessible to producers like us. (Again, we only work with a network of 29 + farmers.) You'd think these rejected tomatoes would be, but they are not. We'll take whatever we can get at this stage of our small and growing food brand. All in all, farms are businesses and so are we and we have products to produce and can for you and your loved ones’ hungry mouths and we’re just thankful that you love what we're doing because we love doing it for you!

Cosmetic imperfections are a significant source of food waste on farms, before and after harvest, as consumers (that’s you) are less interested in over-ripe, oddly shaped or bruised fruits and vegetables.

Food safety scares and improper handling can also force farmers to throw out otherwise perfectly edible food. Finally, in recent years, farmers have been forced to leave food in the fields due to labor shortages caused by ever-changing immigration laws (which is a whole other topic to discuss another time).