Pictures of the week: Defective Carrots by Tim Smyth

Stunted, split, branched or blackened by fungal attacks, these carrots are the unlucky 10-20% rejected by the sorting machines at Poskitts farm in north Yorkshire. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

They are destined, therefore, not for supermarkets but to be sliced into salads or ground up into animal feed. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

Steel machines resembling oversized baggage scanners monitor the vegetables as they pass along high-speed conveyors, ejecting those too crooked for consumers’ perceived preference for ruler-straight carrots. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

Photographer Tim Smyth scooped up as many cast-offs as he could carry and brought them back to his studio in London. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

They may be irregular and, in some cases, downright pornographic, but all these carrots are edible. A curved carrot simply had to circumnavigate a stone on its journey into the earth; a split down the middle probably means it encountered a piece of straw early on in its life. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

'I was staggered when Tim, who grew up in a city, told me that the ‘defective’ carrots he encountered looked alien to him,' says author and food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart, who wrote the introduction to Smyth’s book on the project. 'When I first visited Poskitts’ sorting plant, what struck me was how little variety there was, even among those rejected as insufficiently perfect for supermarkets.' →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

Last month, supermarkets came under pressure to stop offers that led to customers wasting millions of tonnes of food; campaigners believe they should also relax their criteria on what is considered fit to sell. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

Alternatively, we can avoid these food giants altogether and buy imperfect, but perfectly edible, veg direct from farmers – or grow them ourselves. →
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

Aside from avoiding waste, having these amusing characters in your kitchen will make getting your five-a-day a lot more fun.
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth

• Defective Carrots, by Tim Smyth, is published by Bemojake, at £30.
Photograph: ©Tim Smyth