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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Eat Your Vegetables: Easier Said Than Done
  • Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 11:37:11 -0600


Eat Your Vegetables: Easier Said Than Done
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/dining/21GREE.html?ex=1091426084&ei=1&en=ad37b56cf3701ccb
July 21, 2004 By JULIA MOSKIN

LAST Friday morning, a few miles and a world away from the
celebrated Union Square Greenmarket, Jack Hoeff- ner, a
fifth-generation farmer, arranged herbs, potatoes and corn
in neat rows on a patch of cracked asphalt under the Major
Deegan Expressway. Mr. Hoeffner and about 20 other "hardy
souls," as he calls the farmers huddled against a
boarded-up corner of the Bronx Terminal Market, are now the
only vestiges of a once-robust direct wholesale trade in
local produce in New York City.

"When my family began selling vegetables here in 1935," Mr.
Hoeffner said, "local produce was the only kind there was."
The Terminal Market, once a prime portal for farmers to
sell to city food markets and restaurants, has been taken
over by a developer, the Related Companies, and will be
demolished to make way for a combined retail center and
public park. Nonetheless, farmers still arrive on this
blighted site at 3 a.m. and stay until about 9 a.m., doing
cash-only business with anyone willing to buy whole boxes
of tomatoes, sacks of corn and flats of herbs.

"Most of us are too big for the Greenmarkets, and too small
for Hunts Point," Mr. Hoeffner said, referring to the huge
market in the Bronx that attracts produce from all over the
world and sells it to most of New York's supermarkets and
greengrocers.

Where these Bronx Terminal farmers, and their few remaining
customers, will go next is part of a much larger question:
How can New York City support area farms and nourish its
citizens at the same time? It is a balancing act the city
has never attempted, though there are programs that tackle
parts of the issue - from poverty and obesity, to botany
and immigration.

No one doubts the value of getting fresh, seasonal, local
produce to New Yorkers - and not just the ones who shop at
farmers' markets. And there are innumerable ideas - large
and small, current and projected - on how to do the job.

One key project would be the development of a wholesale
farmers' market where supermarkets and bodegas could buy
local produce at competitive prices.

"There is no good reason why the only apples I can buy
should come from California," said Victor Cruz, owner of
Bodega del Mundo in Elmhurst, Queens. "The system now makes
no sense."

More far-reaching would be the establishment of a New York
City food policy council, which would oversee all the
food-related issues in the city - from wholesale markets to
school lunches to the safety of the food supply.

Both programs have received research grants, and could be
up and running, in some form, in time for next year's
harvest.

This summer, one hothouse of ideas about farming,
nutrition, business and urban communities is the Red Hook
Farmers' Market in Brooklyn, which opened for the season on
July 10. Red Hook is one of many low-income communities in
New York that has no supermarket. "This is the only place I
can walk to now that sells fresh fruit," said Dorothy
Savarese, at 84 a lifelong resident of Red Hook.

Alongside the usual Ronnybrook farm yogurt and local
cherries lay bins of mizuna and mesclun grown by
neighborhood teenagers on a half-acre of topsoil at the
corner of Sigourney and Columbia Streets. This year's peat
moss was left over from a video shot nearby by the rapper
50 Cent; the farm's manure comes directly from the Bronx
Zoo.

Terrell Smith, 16, is in his second summer at the farm, and
has become the program's resident vermiculturist (a k a the
compost guy). "We get a lot of rats from over there," he
said, gesturing toward the crumbling shipyards on the other
side of the chain-link fence. "But we get great garbage
from the restaurants on Van Brunt," he said, referring to
new spots like Hope & Anchor and 360, which buys salad
greens from the farm.

On the same morning, a few subway stops away at the
Greenmarket in Sunset Park, more big ideas were playing out
on a small stage. Buyers were paying for their apricots,
bok choy and flores de calabaza with state and federal
money, in the form of $2 vouchers issued by the New York
State Farmers' Market Nutrition Program.

"It's the W.I.C. money that keeps the markets going," Mr.
Hoeffner said, referring to the national Women, Infants and
Children nutrition grant program. "Not the chefs.
Restaurants come and go, but people always need to feed
their families." In 2003, New Yorkers spent $2.5 million
dollars in the vouchers at city farmers' markets.

On the corner of 59th Street in Brooklyn was a stall
covered with fluffy bunches of papalo, pepicha and other
Mexican herbs, grown on the seven acres Martin Rodriguez
leases upstate in Orange County. Mr. Rodriguez, a Mexican
immigrant who lives in Sunset Park and commutes to his farm
at night, belongs to the New Farmer Development Project, a
joint attempt by the Greenmarket network and the Cornell
Cooperative Extension to identify and support immigrant New
Yorkers with the kind of agricultural skills that younger
Americans are less and less likely to have.

"We are trying to get them back to the land," said Bob
Lewis, the chief marketing officer for the New York State
Department of Agriculture and Markets. "God knows someone
has to get out there, or we won't have any farms left at
all."

This year's harvest is about to swell from a trickle to a
flood. The cool spring, then long sunny days followed by
rain, have produced ideal growing conditions for July, said
Maire Ullrich of Orange County's Cornell Cooperative
Extension. Pennsylvania peaches are in; Suffolk County corn
and Columbia County apples are on the way.

But New York, like other cities, has a hard time getting
this kind of produce into the kitchens of its residents.
Practically, the argument against local produce is
compelling enough to prevent most city supermarket chains
and produce markets from stocking it regularly. Such large
markets, whether a local shop like Fairway or a regional
chain like Pathmark, require dependable supply and
consistent quality. Miniature plums and green-streaked
tomatoes are not as charming to wholesale buyers as they
are to the home cooks at the Greenmarkets.

At a recent forum about New York's farmers' markets, Amy
Nicholson, a farmer from Red Jacket Orchards, said that a
produce buyer once berated her for bringing him a load of
apples that were smaller than usual, with less-than-perfect
skins. "Customers should be aware that cosmetics are a very
serious issue for us," she said. "Our fruit might never
look like New Zealand Granny Smiths."

Both wholesalers and farmers would benefit from a new
market designed for them, argues Mr. Lewis, whose agency is
conducting a feasibility study. Buyers would be able to
select the best of the local crop, while farmers would have
access to bigger markets. "The dream is an enlightened
facility to support regional growers," he said. "And it's
tempting to imagine it as part of a rebuilt Hunts Point
market."

The Hunts Point cooperative has never been receptive to
individual growers selling at the market, but Mr. Lewis
says that things are changing: Matthew D'Arrigo, the
cooperative's president, recently joined the advisory
committee for the study.

"Greenmarket supports 30,000 acres of local agriculture,"
Tom Strumolo, the Greenmarket director, said last week, as
the July sun glinted off the facade of Rockefeller Center
and the white tents of the new Thursday Greenmarket there.
"But a wholesale market could support 500,000, and could
raise the level of food for all New Yorkers."

Like the group of children from the New Settlement Day Camp
in the Bronx who sat nearby, munching on Cheez Doodles.

"Food and nutrition issues are currently addressed by about
40 different city government agencies and committees," said
Lynn Fredericks, who has applied to the federal Agriculture
Department to finance a food policy council for New York
City. Beyond city government, countless organizations are
involved - like Earth Pledge, the Bodega Owners Association
of the United States and the Community Food Resource
Center, which helped bring about the forthcoming
nutritional improvements in the New York City public school
lunch program.

"It's simply insane that there is no oversight for these
issues," said Elizabeth Ryan, a farmer in Dutchess County.
"New York needs a food policy."

A food policy council would have little formal authority,
Ms. Fredericks said, but would be an attempt to see the big
picture for food in New York, including everything from
hospital food to heirloom cucumbers. A few American cities
already have such councils in place, including Hartford,
where the local council persuaded the Connecticut
Department of Correction, one of the biggest food buyers in
the state, to give preference in purchasing to
Connecticut-grown produce. In 2003, the department bought
more than three million pounds of local produce, according
to Robert E. Frank, its food services director.

Since 9/11, the Agriculture Department has set aside
millions of dollars for projects like food policy councils,
which work to provide a measure of food security in
America, whether that means knowing where your next meal is
coming from or protecting the food supply from terrorism.

"Look how quickly we were able to restock the city after
9/11," Ms. Ryan said of the local farmers. "How can anyone
doubt the need to support local agriculture now?"






  • [Livingontheland] Eat Your Vegetables: Easier Said Than Done, Tradingpost, 07/21/2004

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