Eat Your Vegetables: Easier Said Than Done

The New York Times
Julia Moskin
July 21, 2004

Last Friday morning, a few miles and a world away from the celebrated Union Square Greenmarket, Jack Hoeffner, 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?''