PICTURE perfect fruit and vegetables line supermarket shelves around Australia, but offering such ridiculously good looking produce comes at a price.

Farms are forced to waste significant amounts of produce in order to meet the high standards of supermarket chains and their shoppers.

Owner of Warwick Farmers Market and Aratula Market Alf Turrisi estimated 10-20% of produce was lost due to specifications imposed by distributors.

"The farmers do their best to grow the best product they can in hard conditions," Mr Turrisi said.

"Anything that doesn't make the grade is unsellable at those chain stores."

A former commercial farmer, Mr Turrisi said fruit and veggies could be rejected purely on appearance, for example when a cauliflower is yellow.

"There's two reasons a cauliflower will be yellow," he said.

"One is sun, the other is frost.

"Nutritionally there's no difference, it's all fine to eat."

A lack of public education about the how produce is grown is to blame according to Mr Turrisi.

"Like where the crops come from and what season it is.

"People think things come all year round.

"Chain stores are manipulating, in a round-about way," he said.

Mr Turrisi said farmers markets held about 20% of the market share in Australia, with the remaining 80% in the hands of large supermarket chains.

Such a high saturation of supermarket-standard produce not only warps perceptions appearances but also of price.

Mr Turrisi said the cost of tomatoes had sky-rocketed in recent times, but given his market wasn't bound by strict specifications he was able to keep prices consistently low.

Where supermarkets have been offering the popular salad staple for between $7-$9 a kilo, he said his prices haven't pushed past $4 for the past 14 months.

"We can take produce that has a blemish on it," he said.

"It has no bearing on nutrition or taste, it just didn't make grade.

"It's just going to be dumped or put through a processor.

"But we take on that cost saving and pass that onto the people."

The fate of the rejected stock varies, with some unsellable produce being used as fertiliser or to feed livestock.

"In my past of growing cauliflower, it gets turned into mulch, turned back into the ground," he said.

In some cases, farmers are able to sell the produce that doesn't make the grade at supermarkets through other channels.

Simon McCarthy, co-owner of Gracekate Farms and Lochinbar Limousins cattle stud said most of their silverbeet and kale produce could be sold.

"We do the chain stores first and anything that doesn't meet the specs go to the markets," he said.

"They get sold at a reduced price but it's still worth it because the seconds are still good."

Living in a country where food is readily available has turned out to be both a blessing and a curse, according to Mr Turrisi.

As many of us have never had to worry about strawberries turning up on supermarket shelves on Monday morning, we have developed high expectations for what Mother Earth is able to provide.

"We're very fortunate in Australia that we have an abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables," Mr Turrisi said.

"We've never gone through a depression or anything like that, thankfully.

"So all of us in general have a very high standard of what we like to eat."