Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Jill Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, I just want to start this episode by thanking
Speaker 1: you for those tomatoes you brought me the other day.
Speaker 2: How many tomato references are we going to make it
Speaker 2: in our episodes going forward? How long can we stretch
Speaker 2: this out?
Speaker 1: I don't know, something hit me when, like in my
Speaker 1: mid thirties. You know, it's like when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: the whole excitement of summer is like not being in school,
Speaker 1: and then you get a little older and the whole
Speaker 1: fun of summer is I don't know, like travelering or
Speaker 1: partying or something. And then something hit me in my
Speaker 1: late mid thirties or late thirties where it's like the
Speaker 1: best part of summer is like really fresh tomatoes.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's really sad or great that
Speaker 2: the thing we look forward to in our old age
Speaker 2: is fresh tomatoes. But I'm glad I could do that
Speaker 2: for you, Joe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So for listeners who don't know, Tracy hits a
Speaker 1: garden and she posted some tomato pictures and I was like,
Speaker 1: I need some. So Tracey brought some Anyway, they're the
Speaker 1: best produce I've had in a while. And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say, and this is a contested point, but there
Speaker 1: are people who claim that, by and large, the quality
Speaker 1: of produce in New York City is not what they
Speaker 1: would expect in a world classic.
Speaker 2: Oh now wait a second, Joe, you're attributing this to
Speaker 2: other people. Now you say that New York City doesn't
Speaker 2: have good produce.
Speaker 1: I'm just parroting something I saw. And some people say, like, all,
Speaker 1: the quality of onions here is terrible. I actually do.
Speaker 1: I kind of agree with that. With the onions, by
Speaker 1: and large, I don't really notice it, but I know
Speaker 1: this is popular. I searched on Reddit a bunch of
Speaker 1: people said this, What do people say it? On Twitter?
Speaker 1: There are some New York City produce is controversial.
Speaker 2: So I don't cook enough in New York to have
Speaker 2: an educated opinion about this. I will say one thing
Speaker 2: I noticed moving from Hong Kong to New York is
Speaker 2: it's almost an inverse picture. So in Hong Kong you
Speaker 2: have incredibly chack and incredibly fresh, very accessible fruit and
Speaker 2: vegetables everywhere. You have the wet markets and things like that,
Speaker 2: and meat is very expensive, whereas when you come to
Speaker 2: the States, you can buy like a twenty pound brisket,
Speaker 2: it doesn't actually cost that much. But getting a bag
Speaker 2: of onions is it seems more difficult. It's almost reversed.
Speaker 1: That is interesting, and it does raise this question. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a miracle of a modern economic
Speaker 1: supply chains, capitalism, what have you that we can be
Speaker 1: in this dent area and by and large we get produce,
Speaker 1: but I don't know anything about where it comes from. Really,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I don't know anything about the
Speaker 1: supply chain of produce and so whether it's good or bad.
Speaker 1: And you know, New York is obviously so diverse in
Speaker 1: like the types of places one could go grocery shopping.
Speaker 1: So you have the local change, you have Whole Foods,
Speaker 1: you have the China.
Speaker 2: See what I was going to say, This is what
Speaker 2: I find quite interesting about New York is you do
Speaker 2: have that mix of different retailers, so everything from the
Speaker 2: big chains like Whole Foods that people are probably familiar with,
Speaker 2: all the way down to independent carts basically selling fruit
Speaker 2: and vegetables.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's super interesting. And I literally live on a
Speaker 1: block and at the corner of my block. There's a
Speaker 1: guy twenty four seven three sixty five who sells produce,
Speaker 1: and they say, I don't know how it does it.
Speaker 1: I should probably just go up and like chat with
Speaker 1: him one day about his business.
Speaker 2: Get him on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe he'll come on the podcast. It's a great idea. Anyway,
Speaker 1: produce in New York City so many interesting questions, so
Speaker 1: much controversy, et cetera. I want to know, like how
Speaker 1: New York City gets its produce and where it's coming from,
Speaker 1: and whether the reputation in some corners is a deserved
Speaker 1: or undeserved.
Speaker 2: I will say the hardest thing about bringing you those
Speaker 2: tomatoes was the actual transportation and figuring out a way
Speaker 2: to bring them into New York without getting them super bruised.
Speaker 2: So it seems challenging.
Speaker 1: When you brought them that morning, they had like this nice,
Speaker 1: sort of like crisp fresh field of them. And then
Speaker 1: I left him on my desk and I brought him
Speaker 1: home that night. Oh no, no, no, they're fine. They
Speaker 1: were still delicious. I kind of like the cold tomatoes.
Speaker 1: But I think we're going to use the term the
Speaker 1: cold chain a lot in this episode. And what is
Speaker 1: the cold chain and what does that mean and how
Speaker 1: is that different from other supply chain Let's do it well.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited. We do, in fact have the perfect guests,
Speaker 1: someone who knows all about food produce supply chains. We're
Speaker 1: going to be speaking with Karen karp of Karen carp
Speaker 1: and Partners about how New York City gets its produce. Karen,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, My pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: So so many different questions. I could start by asking
Speaker 1: you whether the quality of produce in New York City
Speaker 1: is an undeserved reputation. I could start by asking you, like,
Speaker 1: you know, what does your background? What is Karen Carpon Partners.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to start though, what is the cold chain?
Speaker 3: The cold chain is really a twentieth century invention which
Speaker 3: allowed produce from all over the United States and Mexico
Speaker 3: for example, and around the world to get to New
Speaker 3: York in a food safety safe way, in other words,
Speaker 3: so that produce wouldn't rot on the way from California
Speaker 3: to New York. As an example, in fact, Iceberg lettuce
Speaker 3: was the first product that was transported from California to
Speaker 3: New York in a train. A railcar that was literally
Speaker 3: packed with ice, and thus it got that let us
Speaker 3: got its name Iceberg because it was packed in ice
Speaker 3: to get its way to New York City.
Speaker 1: So I already learned something.
Speaker 3: The cold chain I'm here to teach you. The coal
Speaker 3: chain basically says. It indicates that from the time a product,
Speaker 3: let's say a fruit or vegetable is picked in the
Speaker 3: field or from a tree or a bush if it's
Speaker 3: a berry, and we are in BlackBerry season, so we
Speaker 3: can talk about blackberries as well as fresh tomatoes on
Speaker 3: this episode, from the moment that it is harvested, how
Speaker 3: it is handled in a way that it gets to
Speaker 3: not only a city like New York, but gets through
Speaker 3: the channels in New York that make that iceberg, lettuce
Speaker 3: or tomato results in the delivery of that piece of
Speaker 3: fruit or vegetable to a supermarket shelf, to a restaurant,
Speaker 3: to a bodega, to your corner produce cart. And the
Speaker 3: whole notion of keep of creating a cold chain and
Speaker 3: keeping it intact from point A to point B right
Speaker 3: the fields in California to your produce cart or your
Speaker 3: refrigerator at home, is to make sure that the product
Speaker 3: doesn't break down in quality, that bacteria doesn't get into it,
Speaker 3: that it doesn't lose its flavor, and as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: that there are no food born illnesses that you could
Speaker 3: get from consuming something as fragile as lettuce that is
Speaker 3: grown three thousand miles away.
Speaker 2: So we talked just then about the cold chain, the
Speaker 2: temperature being important keeping things fresh. How big a factor
Speaker 2: is time.
Speaker 3: Time is the enemy when you're transporting food, because if
Speaker 3: we're talking about fresh produce, which I think is the topic, Yeah,
Speaker 3: well let's stick to that. You know, time is the
Speaker 3: enemy because the minute something is picked, it starts to rot.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's like a very overstatement of the.
Speaker 1: We're all dying from the day we're born.
Speaker 3: Well, kind of.
Speaker 1: Quite that grim, sorry, but it's kind of the same, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean I actually said something like that to a
Speaker 3: really good friend yesterday on my mother's eighty seventh birthday.
Speaker 3: So we were talking about that. But yeah, so basically,
Speaker 3: the minute something is picked is it starts to decay
Speaker 3: and it starts to break down. And so the cold
Speaker 3: chain was created. And the cold chain really is just
Speaker 3: a bunch of different mechanisms. It can be ice, it
Speaker 3: can be refrigeration, sometimes it's gas, depending on what the
Speaker 3: product is, what temperature it needs to be kept at,
Speaker 3: the duration, the duration for which the product needs to
Speaker 3: be in transport, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 3: when the cold chain is broken again, going back to
Speaker 3: that example from California to New York, when the cold
Speaker 3: chain is broken, that deterioration can set in really quickly.
Speaker 3: Even if the refrigeration starts up again and it gets here,
Speaker 3: that product will not be the product that was promised
Speaker 3: to the buyer.
Speaker 1: So now we are understand sort of the very general
Speaker 1: overview of what the cold chain is and what it
Speaker 1: aims to do. Let's zoom out, what is your background,
Speaker 1: what is Karen Carpon Partners and what do you do
Speaker 1: and what is your role within the sort of produce
Speaker 1: food delivery ecosystem.
Speaker 3: Sure, so, I founded Karen Carpon Partners in nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: so a little over thirty three years ago, initially as
Speaker 3: just a small boutique restaurant consulting firm, because I had
Speaker 3: been working for about sixteen years or so before that
Speaker 3: in the restaurant business managing restaurants. Putting together a group
Speaker 3: of restaurants, building that group from from one to seven
Speaker 3: restaurants in the late nineteen eighties and then then thin
Speaker 3: it was I felt like it was time for me
Speaker 3: to do something else. And there were two directions that
Speaker 3: I could have gone gone into. I could have gone
Speaker 3: to work for Danny Meyer the famous restaurant tour and
Speaker 3: been a restaurant manager in one and actually the only
Speaker 3: restaurant he had at the time. Or I was offered
Speaker 3: a job by a consultant who helps restaurants, hotels, etc.
Speaker 3: Start up their business or their food service, dining services, whatever.
Speaker 3: And I actually wanted to go work for Danny Meyer.
Speaker 3: But and he interviewed me and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm going to offer you the job, but I'm going
Speaker 3: to suggest. I'm going to recommend you don't take this job.
Speaker 3: My advice to you is don't take this job. And
Speaker 3: I said, oh, that's interesting. Why And he said, because
Speaker 3: you're an entrepreneur and you need to find out what
Speaker 3: it is that you're going to do. So yeah, it
Speaker 3: was very cool and it forged, you know, a lifelong
Speaker 3: friendship with him, which I'm very grateful to have. I'm
Speaker 3: the fourth generation agriculture and food entrepreneur. My great grandfather
Speaker 3: came here from the Ukraine in nineteen o seven. I
Speaker 3: believe he drove a Breakstone cottage sheese card. If you
Speaker 3: remember those old commercials for Breakstones cottage sheees. He was
Speaker 3: one of those guys driving a buggy around the Upper
Speaker 3: east Side selling butter eggs and cheese and cottage she
Speaker 3: and milk to consumers who would come out of their
Speaker 3: apartment buildings and buy from a cart because there were
Speaker 3: no supermarkets. Then my grandfather and he converted that into
Speaker 3: a wholesale business for butter eggs and cheese, operating out
Speaker 3: of the Washington market. And then in the nineteen my
Speaker 3: grandfather was born around nineteen oh nine, and then my
Speaker 3: father was born in Brooklyn in nineteen thirty two, and
Speaker 3: by then they had a feed and seed company for
Speaker 3: the farms in Brooklyn, but Brooklyn was rapidly developing because
Speaker 3: of the existence of the Brooklyn Bridge. So they picked
Speaker 3: up everything and moved it out to Long Island to
Speaker 3: a town called Farmingdale, and ran this feed and seed
Speaker 3: company from Farmingdale, shipping feed and seed out to the
Speaker 3: farms on the east end of Long Island where I
Speaker 3: now live.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so cool.
Speaker 3: And my grandfather was recruited from the USDA in the
Speaker 3: late nineteen forties to go to Cornell University to learn
Speaker 3: how to make commercial fertilizer because farmers were trying to
Speaker 3: use this nitrogen and ammonia. They were mixing it up
Speaker 3: in their barns. As he used to say, they were
Speaker 3: blowing up their barns. So you know, somebody came the
Speaker 3: ye done.
Speaker 2: I haven't mixed up any explosions, though I did find
Speaker 2: I did find a load of gunpowder that the previous
Speaker 2: owner left in there.
Speaker 1: So plenty of blowing up opportunity, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So anyway, fast forward, my grandfather grew that company. He
Speaker 3: sold it to a company that eventually sold it to DOO,
Speaker 3: So you know, fertilizers, those kind of fertilizers or chemicals.
Speaker 3: My father then became a sales that became a real
Speaker 3: estate salesperson, working with the farmers on the east end
Speaker 3: of Long Island. And while he did broker lots of
Speaker 3: deals to help farmers sell their property to developers, he
Speaker 3: also broker the first transfer of development rights deal in
Speaker 3: the country. And that is where kind of my story begins.
Speaker 3: By creating that kind of real estate mechanism. It was
Speaker 3: giving Long Island farmers a financial opportunity to stay farming
Speaker 3: when the land values were going up all around them,
Speaker 3: and it would have been much better and more profitable
Speaker 3: to sell to developers. But because of the preservation or
Speaker 3: the transfer of development rights, there is still and it
Speaker 3: is actually growing again. A I don't even it's not
Speaker 3: even nascent, because it's already been going on for fifty years,
Speaker 3: but a very exciting kind of regional local food production community.
Speaker 3: And so when I a few years after I quit
Speaker 3: working for the consultant that I went to work for
Speaker 3: and I started KKA and P, I actually went back
Speaker 3: to school and got a master's degree in sustainability because
Speaker 3: I really wanted to understand the whole ecological, environmental aspect
Speaker 3: of producing food and why, to your point earlier, why
Speaker 3: it's so difficult for local food to get into New
Speaker 3: York City, and why it is difficult and challenging to
Speaker 3: get produced that tastes good one hundred percent of the time.
Speaker 2: So history steeped in agriculture and food, we're gonna have
Speaker 2: to ask you for some Anthony Bourdain style tips about
Speaker 2: like when to order fish or salads in New York restaurants.
Speaker 3: I'll try to channel him as best.
Speaker 2: I can't excelent, but maybe before we get to that.
Speaker 2: I mean, you mentioned it being difficult to get local
Speaker 2: produce into New York. So A, what are the difficulties? Exactly?
Speaker 2: What are the challenges? And then B to Joe's controversial point,
Speaker 2: which he won't take responsibility for in the intro, does
Speaker 2: New York in fact have bad produce?
Speaker 3: Okay, so we need to, I think, start this conversation
Speaker 3: and in a moment in time, right okay, up until
Speaker 3: let's just say the nineteen fifties, let's just put it
Speaker 3: in the middle of the twentieth century, there was some
Speaker 3: produce that was coming in from across the country, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned earlier, coming in a box cars, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Before there was and I think we're going to get
Speaker 3: to this later in this conversation. Before there was the
Speaker 3: Hunts Point Produce Terminal Market, which is responsible now for
Speaker 3: receiving and distributing upwards of twenty five percent of New
Speaker 3: York City's produce. There was an open air market down
Speaker 3: in Tribeca on Washington Street. It was called the Washington
Speaker 3: Street Market, and there were vendors there selling everything fresh produce, beef, chicken, eggs, pork,
Speaker 3: you name it. It was just open air markets. The
Speaker 3: produce that was coming from outside the country, I mean sorry,
Speaker 3: from across the country from the West Coast, for example,
Speaker 3: or from the Midwest would come in by rail and
Speaker 3: then be transferred by rail to ferries that would come
Speaker 3: to the Lower West Side and then be picked up
Speaker 3: by a middleman and brought to the vendors that were
Speaker 3: selling in the Washington market. In those days, the priority
Speaker 3: and the priority, and it made most sense in season
Speaker 3: to buy whatever was possible to buy as close to
Speaker 3: New York City as possible. When you ate those tomatoes,
Speaker 3: yeah they were good.
Speaker 1: Tracy grew the Tracy grew them.
Speaker 3: They were Tracy grew them in Connecticut. They were brandy
Speaker 3: Wine brand, and they were brandy Wine so wonderful. The
Speaker 3: way the food system used to work in any metropolitan
Speaker 3: area is that whatever the transportation methods existed would bring
Speaker 3: the produce either from as far away as possible to
Speaker 3: create a year round supply of things. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: always possible to get tomatoes year round like it is now.
Speaker 3: And when you get those tomatoes year round, in any
Speaker 3: time from October to July. They're gonna be not great
Speaker 3: in a city like New York for the most part,
Speaker 3: because a tomato needs to really be consumed very close
Speaker 3: to when it's picked, its flavor will deteriorate way quicker
Speaker 3: than for example, iceberg lettuce, which doesn't really have much
Speaker 3: flavor per se. It has crunch, it has texture, it
Speaker 3: has water, but it doesn't really have flavor like a
Speaker 3: tomato does. So pretty much it was almost like intuitive
Speaker 3: how food kind of was brought into New York and
Speaker 3: was consumed. And there were always the extraneous things like lemons.
Speaker 3: For example, citrus does not grow does not grow close
Speaker 3: by to New York anytime anytime of the year. Climate change,
Speaker 3: maybe that will change, hopefully not. Things don't get that bad.
Speaker 3: So those things were brought in from far away. But
Speaker 3: it was however, you could get to something when it
Speaker 3: was ripe and ready to be eaten. Those things were
Speaker 3: brought to New York. And so that whole kind of
Speaker 3: intricate web is called the food system. So going back
Speaker 3: to KK and P, what we are. We are food
Speaker 3: systems consultants. So our job is to help our clients,
Speaker 3: which range from government agencies to nonprofit organizations to businesses
Speaker 3: to help them solve their food problems, and the food
Speaker 3: problems they are asking us to help solve is it
Speaker 3: includes creating more access for fresh and healthy food for
Speaker 3: low income people, to rebuild regional farm and food economies,
Speaker 3: which is kind of I think the crux of what
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about here, to work on
Speaker 3: supply chain issues, such as for some of the big corporations,
Speaker 3: help them understand where their ingredients are coming from and
Speaker 3: how they could get better and more sustainable ingredients, as
Speaker 3: well as designing and sometimes teaching higher education programs around
Speaker 3: this whole thing that we call the food system.
Speaker 1: You mentioned one stat already about Hunt's Point and you said,
Speaker 1: roughly a quarter of New York City's produce ghosts through there.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about it. I mean my impression
Speaker 1: is and I think it's, you know, the grocery store
Speaker 1: for grocery stores and this gigantic sort of facility of produce.
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Give us a little bit more
Speaker 1: sort of description of the role that this Hunts Point
Speaker 1: terminal plays in the New York City produce market and
Speaker 1: how unusual or common it is for big cities in
Speaker 1: the United States to have a facility like this.
Speaker 3: Sure, so I will answer that question, but I want
Speaker 3: to say first, if you don't mind, please fresh produce
Speaker 3: gets to New York City now today in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: one of three principal ways okay, okay, going from sort
Speaker 3: of small scale to big scale. The small scale is well,
Speaker 3: the small scale is Tracy bringing you a fe for
Speaker 3: brandywine to me. But a little bit larger than that
Speaker 3: are farmers markets. Right so, there are dozens of farmers
Speaker 3: markets in New York City right now. I don't know
Speaker 3: the exact number, but it could be close to one
Speaker 3: hundred and those markets, however, many days they operate rely
Speaker 3: on farmers, individual farmers picking and packing their produce, trucking
Speaker 3: it into New York City and selling it to people
Speaker 3: like you and me selling it direct to customer.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: The next level up is the level that a wholesale
Speaker 3: market plays, such as the Hunts Point Produce Terminal Market
Speaker 3: in New York City. And later this year they will
Speaker 3: be a wholesale farmers market opening right across the street
Speaker 3: from the Hunts Point Produce Terminal Market. This is a
Speaker 3: project I've been working on since two thousand and two,
Speaker 3: so we're really ready to see a question.
Speaker 1: A wholesale market like could trace it even if it's
Speaker 1: a wholesale could we walk in there? Would we have
Speaker 1: to be like a licensed buyer for.
Speaker 3: Hunts Point or for the wholesale farmers market for either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you let me mention how tomatoes are
Speaker 2: you buying, Joe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let me just mention the third way because and
Speaker 3: then you can go back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the third way that produce gets to New York
Speaker 3: City are through distributors that are picking product up from
Speaker 3: distribution centers that could be vertically integrated. Supermarket chains have
Speaker 3: now vertically integrated supply chains. So your Whole Foods, your Dagasino,
Speaker 3: Sea Town Who or a key food they have very
Speaker 3: much vertically integrated supply chains now, which means those companies
Speaker 3: are contracting directly with farmers across the country for the
Speaker 3: best possible produce at the best time of year, and
Speaker 3: they come directly to their distribution centers which are outside
Speaker 3: of New York City and then in fact many in Cheshire,
Speaker 3: Connecticut just so happens that they're there, and then those
Speaker 3: are trucked into supermarkets and put on the shelves for consumers.
Speaker 2: Sorry, So, just to emphasize this point, the way a
Speaker 2: supermarket like a Whole Foods is getting its produce is
Speaker 2: going to be different to the way an independent seller
Speaker 2: with a cart on the street is going to be
Speaker 2: getting out.
Speaker 3: Yes, and even different from how an independent grocer. So
Speaker 3: a small scale grocer or your fresh fruit and vegetable
Speaker 3: vendor on your corner. Who, by the way, those guys
Speaker 3: sell a lot of stuff, so you know if they
Speaker 3: were in a store, they sell enough stuff to have
Speaker 3: a small store. They're really the good ones, the good
Speaker 3: ones anyway. So the second part of that question was.
Speaker 1: Well, just like, give us Hunts Point how unusual, you know,
Speaker 1: just tell us a little bit more about how the
Speaker 1: terminal system works.
Speaker 2: Can we buy from it?
Speaker 3: Right, So let me go back to the answer that question.
Speaker 3: So typically not, you're not going to go to Hunt's
Speaker 3: Point market and buy produce.
Speaker 1: You could.
Speaker 3: You could. You could show up in a car. You
Speaker 3: would have to pay a gate fee to get in.
Speaker 3: You'd have to go at two or three in the morning.
Speaker 1: That's no problem. Problem, Yeah, neither of both of us
Speaker 1: can do that.
Speaker 3: Okay, And then you would have to buy cases of product, right,
Speaker 3: that might be the problem.
Speaker 2: Maybe we should set up some sort of grocery cooperative
Speaker 2: and just buy cases of tomatoes every week.
Speaker 1: I think we should start, you know what I think
Speaker 1: we should do. We should start what's CSA like those
Speaker 1: like like farm. But our trick was we're just actually
Speaker 1: going to the hunt Point market earlier.
Speaker 3: That would be really bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, sorry, sorry, we'll talk about it after.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But anyway, so you could you could do that,
Speaker 3: and you know, but the thing is you're not going
Speaker 3: to because you're not going to buy a case of
Speaker 3: cantalope for example, Right, You're just not going to do that.
Speaker 3: But the Hunts Point produce terminal market is essential for
Speaker 3: these small fruit and vegetable vendors, whether they be your
Speaker 3: street carts, whether they be a bodega.
Speaker 1: There's like those chains, like I think they're more in
Speaker 1: Brooklyn than Manhattan. They're called like mister Coco and mister Mellon,
Speaker 1: you know those.
Speaker 3: But they're produce stores, right, yeah.
Speaker 1: But would those be the level in which they're part Okay?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And so those guys will typically send their own vans,
Speaker 3: okay up to the hunts Point Produce Terminal market, they'll
Speaker 3: get an order, maybe the order is pre set. Now
Speaker 3: COVID is actually kind of stimulated a whole technological innovation
Speaker 3: at the Hunts Point Produce Terminal market where you can
Speaker 3: order ahead of time, and even some of the distributors
Speaker 3: at Hunt's Point are delivering now, which they didn't used
Speaker 3: to do. But yes, you'd send your guy in a
Speaker 3: van up to the Hunts Point market at three in
Speaker 3: the morning. He have his shopping list. He would probably
Speaker 3: be either with a buyer in the van with him,
Speaker 3: or he would be the buyer himself, trained to find
Speaker 3: the exact right product for that particular market. And I
Speaker 3: don't mean the physical market. I mean the customers that
Speaker 3: shop in that market, and the customers who shop in
Speaker 3: any particular market have a certain price mentality around food,
Speaker 3: or even a price ability around food. So often what
Speaker 3: happens in those markets is that you're not going to
Speaker 3: find the most pristine, perfect product. It's gonna be good,
Speaker 3: but it's going to be more perishable, perhaps than what
Speaker 3: you would find in a supermarket like Whole Foods or
Speaker 3: Associated or some of the others, and especially some of
Speaker 3: the real high end stores because they're buying for how
Speaker 3: the product looks. Right, you go into Whole Foods. That's
Speaker 3: what Whole Foods sold us, all right, how the product looks,
Speaker 3: and they're trying to deliver on flavor, but it's not
Speaker 3: really always possible.
Speaker 2: Well, just on this note, talk to us about what
Speaker 2: are the sort of controversies in the food network right now?
Speaker 2: Because you mentioned, you know, the look of food of
Speaker 2: produce versus the taste. I remember that's been a long
Speaker 2: running one. People talk a lot about food deserts in America.
Speaker 2: I imagine that might be less of an issue in
Speaker 2: New York. But what are people sort of debating, you know,
Speaker 2: if you go to the farmer's market, like, what is
Speaker 2: the hot topic of debate?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the hot topic of debate no matter
Speaker 3: where you are are, where you're functioning anywhere in the
Speaker 3: food system, including as eaters, the hot topic at the
Speaker 3: moment is how are we going to be able to
Speaker 3: grow fruits and vegetables with climate change raging through the world.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the hot topic. That is the only topic,
Speaker 3: and I mean it's not really the only topic because
Speaker 3: the second topic actually is access. So we do not
Speaker 3: use the term food dessert at KK ANDP. In fact,
Speaker 3: policymakers in New York have not used that term for many,
Speaker 3: many years. There day, I'm sorry, that's okay, we'll bring
Speaker 3: up to day.
Speaker 2: What do people say food scarcity?
Speaker 3: Well, we don't talk about the neighborhood so much as
Speaker 3: we talk about the people who Again, I wouldn't want
Speaker 3: to label a person food insecure, but that's the word
Speaker 3: that's used food and security. And people are food insecure
Speaker 3: not because there's no food available. There might not be
Speaker 3: food available right in their neighborhood, but because they don't
Speaker 3: have money. There's not a food problem, there's a money problem.
Speaker 2: Wait, but there are parts of the country where it
Speaker 2: is incredibly difficult to actually get fresh produce.
Speaker 3: Including many neighborhoods in New York City. Absolutely, okay, And
Speaker 3: why is that? You want to know why that is?
Speaker 3: Why that is is more to do with the kind
Speaker 3: of technological and policy innovations throughout the twentieth century. So
Speaker 3: we're going back to the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventies when the the USDA really started subsidizing farmers to
Speaker 3: produce essentially a handful of crops, corn, soy, cotton wheat
Speaker 3: as an example, and they were subsidizing those crops because
Speaker 3: those are the biggest export crops that the United States has,
Speaker 3: And because as there was kind of consolidation in the
Speaker 3: farming sectors all across the United States, there was food
Speaker 3: manufacturing also growing at the same time. Right, there weren't
Speaker 3: supermarkets in the nineteen twenties because I mean there were
Speaker 3: neighborhood stores, because there wasn't a lot of manufactured product
Speaker 3: at the time. It was fresh or minimally what we
Speaker 3: call minimally processed or dried like pasta, rice, etc. Things
Speaker 3: like that. So as the agriculture sector got more industrialized,
Speaker 3: the number of ingredients got fewer. The food manufacturers picked
Speaker 3: up on that and started producing manufacturing what we now
Speaker 3: call highly processed food, right, high process food turning corn
Speaker 3: into corn syrup instead of using sugar, for example, and
Speaker 3: lots of lots of chemical processes to add flavor, to
Speaker 3: add durability, to add texture, whatever. And we ended up
Speaker 3: getting a diet that didn't include a lot of fresh food,
Speaker 3: which is subsidized by the US government. So the US
Speaker 3: government pays commodity farmers of those crops to either grow
Speaker 3: or not grow to the market sort of like the
Speaker 3: market movements, the things that are happening in the market,
Speaker 3: and the USDA does not give subsidies or any favor
Speaker 3: at all to what they define as specialty farmers. Specialty
Speaker 3: farmers are the people that produce fruits and vegetables. So
Speaker 3: people ended up ended up consuming a very highly processed
Speaker 3: diet by the nineteen sixties and into the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: which resulted in the diet related illnesses that we have now,
Speaker 3: which we could go into if you want to, because
Speaker 3: there's a fruit and vegetable approach to diet chronic diet
Speaker 3: related illnesses. But what the other thing that was happening,
Speaker 3: And I mean, this is a perfect topic for you know,
Speaker 3: for here in this building, right because it's about finance
Speaker 3: and markets. As manufacturing jobs in New York City were
Speaker 3: declining and more people from the South were migrating to
Speaker 3: cities for opportunity, landlords got very nervous about having more
Speaker 3: people from very diverse backgrounds living in their buildings, and
Speaker 3: white people left and went to the suburbs. So it's
Speaker 3: like everything happening at the same time. The commodification of food,
Speaker 3: the industrialization of food, manufacturing, the decline of manufacturing in
Speaker 3: cities like New York, which sent white people to the suburbs,
Speaker 3: which created an influx of housing for non white people,
Speaker 3: and supermarkets at the time or the stores that were
Speaker 3: available basically were like, we have to sell the cheapest
Speaker 3: possible food we can to these groups of people because
Speaker 3: they don't have enough money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: So there was a former New York City Commissioner, Tom Farley,
Speaker 3: great guy. He actually was one of the first people,
Speaker 3: first policy people in New York to basically say, we
Speaker 3: can't call this a food desert. It's actually a food swamp.
Speaker 3: So it's a food swamp, meaning there's tons of food,
Speaker 3: it's just very bad quality.
Speaker 1: I really like the way you frame it around money
Speaker 1: and income because I mean it's intuitive as you describe it,
Speaker 1: which is that there are plenty of rich people who
Speaker 1: live in very you know, might live in a rural
Speaker 1: area away from a grocery store, and they don't have
Speaker 1: a problem with food and security. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: somehow they get their food. Maybe they might not have
Speaker 1: a grocery store than a mile, but they do. It's
Speaker 1: the people who simply do not have much income, and
Speaker 1: no one is trying to No one is trying to
Speaker 1: create a market for them or trying to deliver fresh produced.
Speaker 3: But that's I don't want to say that you're incorrect
Speaker 3: about that. I think you just don't know. Actually, there's
Speaker 3: tons of organizations, dozens in New York City, maybe even
Speaker 3: hundreds in New York City of organizations that are working
Speaker 3: really really hard to get that fresh produce into these neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're totally right. I in my mind, the way
Speaker 1: I was thinking about it is like sort of like
Speaker 1: for profit chain grocery stores or for profit entities sort
Speaker 1: of like seeing this as a market opportunity.
Speaker 3: But to your point, right, Yeah, But to your point
Speaker 3: of a wealthy person living in the suburbs or you know,
Speaker 3: exerbs or rural if they want to get a food
Speaker 3: item or food items that they want, they're going to
Speaker 3: find a way to get it. And you know what,
Speaker 3: poor people in New York City and in cities across
Speaker 3: the United States do exactly the same thing. There was
Speaker 3: a project many years ago where I was interviewing parents
Speaker 3: of children that were in head start programs. The neighborhood
Speaker 3: was East Harlem, which if we were to label neighborhoods
Speaker 3: in New York City as food deserts, which we're trying
Speaker 3: not to do, it would be one and kind of
Speaker 3: like after the formal interview about how the kids were
Speaker 3: doing in this head Star program and the food that
Speaker 3: they were getting there and whether the parents thought that
Speaker 3: food was good for the kids or not good for
Speaker 3: the kids, et cetera, et cetera, I just sort of
Speaker 3: off the cuff. I asked a group of parents of
Speaker 3: five year olds. I said, do you know the term
Speaker 3: food desert? And they were like, no, what are you
Speaker 3: talking about? And I said, well, do you know that
Speaker 3: some people would say the neighborhood that you live in
Speaker 3: is called a food desert And they say, what does
Speaker 3: that mean? I said, well, how it's defined is that
Speaker 3: you live in a neighborhood where you can't get good quality,
Speaker 3: fresh food. And they say, well, yeah, it's the truth,
Speaker 3: but don't call my neighborhood a desert. That's really insulting
Speaker 3: to me. And I said, well, tell me what you
Speaker 3: do about getting food and they said, you know, wean
Speaker 3: this was a while ago, so like before Uber Bill,
Speaker 3: four of us will go in a taxi across the
Speaker 3: George Washington Bridge to a supermarket in New Jersey and
Speaker 3: stock up. Right, we will take the subway down to
Speaker 3: Chinatown one day a week and buy buy fresh fish. So,
Speaker 3: just like upper income people, lower income people are very
Speaker 3: resourceful and will do the best they can to feed
Speaker 3: their family. But what happened in that period of industrialization
Speaker 3: is that people forgot how to cook.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This was going to be kind of my next question,
Speaker 2: which is, Okay, so incomes are clearly a factor here,
Speaker 2: but it feels like the other limiting factor is, especially
Speaker 2: if you're working a low income job, probably long hours,
Speaker 2: you might not have a lot of time to spend
Speaker 2: either sourcing fresh produce or cooking it correct.
Speaker 3: Nor might you have a kitchen with a good refrigerator
Speaker 3: and a decent stove.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, So I think what happened over maybe those
Speaker 3: years from like the sixties or seventies until I kind
Speaker 3: of want to say until recently, because I feel like
Speaker 3: there's been a little bit of a tipping point. Although
Speaker 3: there's still so much work to do, people just they
Speaker 3: gave themselves over to what was easy and convenient and cheap.
Speaker 2: Right, those darn TV dinners in the eighties.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm guilty of with myself. I'm a busy
Speaker 1: work I have two kids. It's like sometimes, of course
Speaker 1: it's cheap and what I can put in the air fryer.
Speaker 3: Totally, totally. We can't be faulted for making our lives,
Speaker 3: you know, as easy as easy as we can. The
Speaker 3: problem is that lower income people do not have as
Speaker 3: many options and choices as you and I might have.
Speaker 1: For further constraints.
Speaker 2: What what's the ideal food network landscape if you will
Speaker 2: in a city like New York. And the reason I
Speaker 2: ask is because you know, I've traveled a lot, I've
Speaker 2: lived in different places. In a place like Hong Kong,
Speaker 2: it's so easy to get fresh food. You know, on
Speaker 2: your way back from work, you stop at the wet market,
Speaker 2: you stock up on whatever you need for dinner, and
Speaker 2: you do the same thing the next day. In a
Speaker 2: lot of European cities, it's like that as well, you
Speaker 2: buy for the meal that you were actually about to eat.
Speaker 2: Is that what we should be aiming for or how
Speaker 2: would you like to see it develop?
Speaker 3: I mean in a city like New York, where everything
Speaker 3: is at your fingertips, in a way, but everything is
Speaker 3: also complicated logistically, right, you have to plan your whole
Speaker 3: day and how many bags you're going to be carrying
Speaker 3: by the end of the day, that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Let me just kind of back up and say, you know,
Speaker 3: in probably starting in the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties, there
Speaker 3: were retail produce markets all across New York City. And
Speaker 3: the way those things got developed was because like your
Speaker 3: guy on your corner, right, like my great grandfather driving
Speaker 3: a buggy around the Upper East Side selling cottage, cheese
Speaker 3: and butter. There were so much street activity, so many
Speaker 3: people selling and buying food on the street, that it
Speaker 3: was Mayor LaGuardia actually, so it's probably a little bit later,
Speaker 3: because I think he was the mayor in the fifties.
Speaker 3: He basically was like, no, we got to get all
Speaker 3: this activity inside. So he and others built this sort
Speaker 3: of network you mentioned the word network, this network of
Speaker 3: retail produce markets across New York City, and then kind
Speaker 3: of tried to force the people selling on the street
Speaker 3: to go in those markets, which of course they resisted
Speaker 3: because you're gonna have a lot more customers if you're
Speaker 3: just on the street with them. Nevertheless, that kind of
Speaker 3: that migration happened, and those markets really became the source,
Speaker 3: the primary source of accessing fresh fruits and vegetables in
Speaker 3: a neighborhood. And these markets exist in many, many, many,
Speaker 3: many neighborhoods all across New York City. A lot of
Speaker 3: those markets have closed or changed or there or they're struggling,
Speaker 3: and there's there's but the infrastructure, for the most part
Speaker 3: is still there and many of them are being kind
Speaker 3: of rehabilitated and rethought to enable this access across New
Speaker 3: York City.
Speaker 1: Can we just go back and talk like sort of
Speaker 1: like simple or not simple, but supply chain logistics. For
Speaker 1: a second, New York is a dense city. It's surrounded
Speaker 1: by suburbs, and if you're coming into the city via truck,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you're gonna be stuck in traffic
Speaker 1: for a long time. I understand trucks have refrigeration, et cetera.
Speaker 1: But like when it comes to that cold chain, whether
Speaker 1: it's the delivery of food to the terminal and then
Speaker 1: the pickup by the person at the van, or whether
Speaker 1: it's the vertically integrated mega supermarkets that contract directly with
Speaker 1: the farmers and have their distribution points outside the city,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Is it just difficult from it? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to compare New York to say, like
Speaker 1: I used to live in Austin, Texas. It's traffic's getting
Speaker 1: worse there, but it's not nearly as big or as
Speaker 1: dense as crazy Like, yeah, is it just harder, it's harder.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about like those challenges?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can tell, Yeah, it is. It is harder.
Speaker 3: It is harder. And the Hunts Point Produced Terminal Market
Speaker 3: was built in nineteen sixty seven, and that was an
Speaker 3: effort to take all those vendors that were selling wholesale
Speaker 3: on Washington Street and put them indoors. Yeah, and put
Speaker 3: them in a market in U.
Speaker 1: Is it cold there in the market Yeah, no, okay.
Speaker 3: And it's not cold because the market is not completely
Speaker 3: cold shame compliant, which is one of the top five
Speaker 3: reasons why it needs to be redeveloped and why it will.
Speaker 1: There are so there are issues.
Speaker 3: There are issues, of course, So you're going to find
Speaker 3: issues anywhere. That's anywhere that you're transporting and handling food.
Speaker 3: You know, they do the best they can with the
Speaker 3: infrastructure that they have. But the infrastructure, people like to say,
Speaker 3: and I was only seven years old in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 3: so I can't say this from firsthand experience. But people
Speaker 3: say that as soon as the market opened it was obsolete.
Speaker 3: Huh so and that's how many years ago, right, so
Speaker 3: fifty six years ago? So the market?
Speaker 1: Sorry, why why?
Speaker 3: What?
Speaker 1: Why was it? Absolutely? Well, what did people identify right
Speaker 1: away that they say, you know what this is going
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 3: Just to your point, because the city, the city is
Speaker 3: so dense, the population grew, and here you were trying
Speaker 3: to put all of these trucks into the very few
Speaker 3: funnels that exist, meaning the George Washington Bridge or than
Speaker 3: now it's called the RFK Bridge or the Degan Expressway.
Speaker 3: You're trying to get all these trucks. And that protus
Speaker 3: was being brought in more by truck than by train.
Speaker 3: So the usually when a market is called a terminal market,
Speaker 3: it literally means it's the end of the line, and
Speaker 3: it's the end of rail lines. So but rail got
Speaker 3: less and less and trucks got more and more when
Speaker 3: the price of gasoline went down and when buying became
Speaker 3: more specialized.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned this earlier, the rules around food
Speaker 2: safety and regulation. Can you talk a little bit more
Speaker 2: about how those feed into the actual network and the
Speaker 2: logistics of moving produce, especially in New York, because I
Speaker 2: imagine maybe New York has some different laws to other places.
Speaker 3: New York doesn't have different laws to other places. Now,
Speaker 3: there is a national law which actually just went into
Speaker 3: effect a few years ago. It's called the Food Safety
Speaker 3: Modernization Act or catchy FISMA, FISMA FISMA. That is catchy actually,
Speaker 3: and so that became a national requirement for any kind
Speaker 3: of perishable food to be meeting certain government FDA and
Speaker 3: USDA standards for culting compliance. But I think to answer
Speaker 3: your question, if I could tell a little story, please, Okay.
Speaker 3: So I was at the Hunts Point Produce market one day,
Speaker 3: probably in two thousand and nine. Let's say we were
Speaker 3: actually managing a program called the New York City Green
Speaker 3: Cart Initiative at the time, which was a whole class
Speaker 3: of vendor licenses exclusively for selling fresh fruits and vegetables
Speaker 3: in low income neighborhoods that didn't have supermarkets. So my
Speaker 3: office ran that program for the first five years that
Speaker 3: it existed, And I was at the market one day
Speaker 3: with some of the vendors kind of teaching them how
Speaker 3: to buy produce. And we were there when the big
Speaker 3: truck was coming in I don't know where it was
Speaker 3: coming in from. And the very first thing that happens
Speaker 3: you put the you roll up the gate of the
Speaker 3: back of a tractor trailer and there is a little
Speaker 3: black box, just like there's a little black box in
Speaker 3: an airplane. Right, that little black box is taking the
Speaker 3: temperature of the produce every I don't know minute, every
Speaker 3: three minutes. I'm not sure. It's a constant read of
Speaker 3: temperature of the produce in that truck. Okay, And somebody
Speaker 3: who's receiving the goods will get that black box or
Speaker 3: the report from the black box, and they will see
Speaker 3: has this produce maintained its temperature from all away from
Speaker 3: where it came from, let's say California, And if it does,
Speaker 3: then they're going to pay the price they promised. Right.
Speaker 3: If it hasn't, they've got to start testing the food
Speaker 3: to see if there's breakdown, if there's material breakdown of
Speaker 3: let's say it's a tomato right happening on the inside
Speaker 3: of the tomato, and then they'll make a decision about
Speaker 3: whether to buy the product or how to buy the product.
Speaker 3: And so even though there are these rules that things
Speaker 3: must be cold chain compliant, it's a relatively recent rule.
Speaker 3: And so now all the infrastructure needs to be upgraded
Speaker 3: to be able to, at least on the receiving side,
Speaker 3: do what they can to maintain the food.
Speaker 2: I have a kind of random question, but so I
Speaker 2: guess a lot of people might know this, but maybe
Speaker 2: some don't. If you mix certain vegetables together, I think
Speaker 2: the classic is, what is it onions with potatoes or something.
Speaker 2: If you store them together, one of them emits a
Speaker 2: chemical that causes the other one to rot. Yes, are
Speaker 2: those the types of considerations that you have to think
Speaker 2: about at a food market, Like, oh, you can't put
Speaker 2: the onions next to the potatoes.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I don't know if it's exactly those two products,
Speaker 3: but yeah, I can't remember. But to go back to
Speaker 3: our tomato example, tomato tomatoes don't need to be refrigerated
Speaker 3: at the same the same degree of coldness as leafy greens,
Speaker 3: for example, which really need to be at thirty nine degrees.
Speaker 3: I think it's thirty seven or thirty nine degrees to
Speaker 3: stay crisp. For as long as possible. Tomatoes actually can
Speaker 3: be in a fifty degree room with a tomato ripening room,
Speaker 3: And there are and when you go to some of
Speaker 3: the vendors at Hunt's Point have these but more sophisticated
Speaker 3: produce distributors like those that exist outside the market. Baldore
Speaker 3: is a great example here in New York. They'll have
Speaker 3: ripening rooms for tomatoes, They'll have ripening rooms for bananas,
Speaker 3: They'll have different ripening rooms for other things. Potatoes. You
Speaker 3: can pretty much do anything to potato and it will
Speaker 3: still be okay. So, yes, there's a range of temperatures.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely right, Just.
Speaker 1: Going back to the logistics of getting produced into the city.
Speaker 1: What about setting aside the Hunts Point and the terminal,
Speaker 1: what about for the large grocery stores that, as you say,
Speaker 1: completely vertically integrated. They're obviously vertically integrated New York. I
Speaker 1: assume they're all sort of roughly the same model all
Speaker 1: across the country.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 1: Do they face any additional challenges here in New York
Speaker 1: that you wouldn't see in a smaller city or in
Speaker 1: a less dense area.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, the distribution
Speaker 3: centers for four or five supermarket chains that feed New
Speaker 3: York are located in Cheshire, Connecticut. Okay, so if you're growing,
Speaker 3: if you're shipping that lettuce or those tomatoes from California,
Speaker 3: it's going to go to Cheshire, Connecticut, which is, you know,
Speaker 3: an hour away, maybe an hour and a half away,
Speaker 3: but it's going beyond New York. Then it's going to
Speaker 3: sit there, and then it's going to come to New
Speaker 3: York to a supermarket, to a Whole Foods or some
Speaker 3: of the other supermarkets. So it's already like a couple
Speaker 3: more days.
Speaker 2: I just want to go back to one thing you
Speaker 2: said when I asked about what are the sort of
Speaker 2: hot topics of debate in food network land at the moment,
Speaker 2: and the first pick was climate change. At some point,
Speaker 2: are the complicated logistics of bringing fresh produce into New
Speaker 2: York going to be complicated or perhaps even untenable in
Speaker 2: an age of weather related, climate related disruptions?
Speaker 3: Right, So, there's a couple interesting things that are happening
Speaker 3: in the food system right now relative to that. On
Speaker 3: a very macro scale, there are large organizations, usually agricultural
Speaker 3: Those organizations, along with some nonprofit organizations that do scientific
Speaker 3: research and understand sustainability. Are working on developing drought resistant,
Speaker 3: rain resistant, heat resistant crops so that produce still can
Speaker 3: be grown in a variety of places and sent to
Speaker 3: a city like New York. That's kind of one very
Speaker 3: mac level on another kind of macro level. In some ways,
Speaker 3: climate change further gives a rational might be a little
Speaker 3: bit hard to kind of put together, but maybe we can,
Speaker 3: the three of us can work it out right for
Speaker 3: more regional produce production and distribution. So going back to
Speaker 3: that moment in time in the middle of the twentieth
Speaker 3: century that I painted earlier, as soon as we could
Speaker 3: get produce from really far away. I'll get back to
Speaker 3: the climate in a second. As soon as we could
Speaker 3: get produce from really far away, we started doing that
Speaker 3: because those farmers could produce more quantity, have more consistency.
Speaker 3: They were invested in by the big by big food
Speaker 3: companies and the regional farmers. Let's say around here in
Speaker 3: New York City. The first let's take the fifty miles
Speaker 3: and one hundred and one hundred and fifty miles around
Speaker 3: New York City, which is generally the distance considered for
Speaker 3: local food is either one hundred and fifty miles or
Speaker 3: a day's drive. They're two definitions. There's no technical deface,
Speaker 3: but those are the two that are kind of floated
Speaker 3: and used the most. Those farmers that were producing the
Speaker 3: specialty crops, right the potatoes, the carrots, the onions, but
Speaker 3: more importantly the greens, the broccolis, the spinach, the whatever,
Speaker 3: the bound the cornucopia of produce products. Those farmers were
Speaker 3: in effect in competition with farmers on the West Coast
Speaker 3: who were being invested in MY companies and places like hunt.
Speaker 3: The Hunts Point market wanted to only deal with the
Speaker 3: big guys because they could contract ahead, they could plan,
Speaker 3: they knew what they were going to get, and there
Speaker 3: was a year round supply in lieu of contracting with
Speaker 3: the regional guys for which there was only maybe a
Speaker 3: few months supply of any one product. What climate change
Speaker 3: is doing is first of all, making people and making
Speaker 3: people understand a little bit more the seasonality of things
Speaker 3: and appreciating that great tomato when it's in season, and
Speaker 3: if it gets too hot next time, your tomatoes might
Speaker 3: not grow. Right.
Speaker 2: I mean, last summer in Connecticut we had drought, and
Speaker 2: that was a terrible, terrible year. For my tomatoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this year on Long Island, it's been raining like
Speaker 3: crazy and it's the middle of August and we're only
Speaker 3: seeing our first good tomatoes. So every year is a
Speaker 3: little bit like a crapshoot. Whereas in more controlled environments
Speaker 3: and controlled by pesticides, controlled by irrigation, etc. You don't
Speaker 3: have as much for variables, except now you do. Right
Speaker 3: when they had those terrible floods out in Monterey on
Speaker 3: the West coast between Santa Cruz and Monterey last spring,
Speaker 3: it wiped out the entire strawberry crop. So I don't
Speaker 3: really eat strawberries that frequently, especially ones that are brought
Speaker 3: in from far away, but they were just not on
Speaker 3: the shelves. So I also think COVID made people understand
Speaker 3: the fragility of our food system, and that's why I
Speaker 3: think there's an opening for a general public growing awareness
Speaker 3: of appreciating the food that they can get, and that
Speaker 3: will help with seasonality. Right if you accept I can't
Speaker 3: get that great that tomato that I love all year long,
Speaker 3: but I can get it in July and August when
Speaker 3: it's great. I think COVID kind of broke down some
Speaker 3: of our expectations about consistent supply, which is good for
Speaker 3: regional food tracy.
Speaker 1: You know, where they don't have to worry about flooding
Speaker 1: risk for agriculture. Where Arizona it's like, we got to
Speaker 1: keep growing produce in the Arizona Desert, no surprise of floods.
Speaker 2: You and Arizona, Joe just go no.
Speaker 3: But Joe, you know the problem with Yeah, we've done,
Speaker 3: we've done, We've done.
Speaker 1: We've done several episodes on a water Yeah water.
Speaker 2: Wait, but can I can I go back to the
Speaker 2: agricultural policy issue that you described earlier at this idea
Speaker 2: that we subsidized you know, exportable crops like soybeans and
Speaker 2: corn over maybe fresh produce producers. Could that change in
Speaker 2: an era of climate change? Is their political appetite or
Speaker 2: will to actually reconc some of that?
Speaker 3: You know there there is I mean I worked on
Speaker 3: a project exactly around this question. We finished that project
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen. I think looking at a region called
Speaker 3: the Mid South Delta, which is about ninety counties that
Speaker 3: span that goes across five states, so it's along the
Speaker 3: Mississippi River, so it's not the Delta like in Louisiana.
Speaker 3: But it's the Mid South Delta. So it was Tennessee, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and a little bit of Mississippi. And in that region,
Speaker 3: seventy six percent of the crops are just four products corn, soy, cotton,
Speaker 3: and wheat. No rice, sorry, corn, soy, cotton, and rice.
Speaker 3: And what was happening or what's still happening, but the
Speaker 3: investments are starting to like maybe make a turn there.
Speaker 3: What's been happening in that region is because it's a
Speaker 3: wet region and because ninety percent of the product is
Speaker 3: put on a bar large and shipped out of the country,
Speaker 3: there was no way to gain value for that product
Speaker 3: for the farmers. And when you look at, for example,
Speaker 3: deforestation in Brazil to produce crops like soy, when you
Speaker 3: look at rice, when the US is a huge rice producer,
Speaker 3: but you see climate impacting those things. In a generation
Speaker 3: and a half, three of those four crops won't be
Speaker 3: able to be produced in that region, which is seventy
Speaker 3: six percent of their of the receipts. So yes, so
Speaker 3: there are efforts to say, well, what else can we
Speaker 3: grow there? And in a region like the Mid South Delta,
Speaker 3: for example, that used to grow lots of watermelon and cucumbers,
Speaker 3: things that actually require water, which they have, but which
Speaker 3: lost their markets to the West when that whole thing
Speaker 3: was happening. That we've already talked about a couple of times.
Speaker 1: I have one small question and then one regular question.
Speaker 1: I know, we just have a couple minutes left. Farmers' markets.
Speaker 1: You mentioned them. I think you said they're about one
Speaker 1: hundred in New York City.
Speaker 3: I wish I had this precise about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we talked about the big grocery stores. We talked
Speaker 1: about maybe the more midsize where they get their produce
Speaker 1: at the terminal. You described how the produce got into
Speaker 1: the farmer's market, But how big of a role are
Speaker 1: they playing in the sort of the diet of New Yorkers.
Speaker 3: Well, an increasing percentage, right. I think when we first spoke,
Speaker 3: I told you about this wholesale farmers market, the project
Speaker 3: I've been working on for a long time, and it's
Speaker 3: going to be called the New York Regional Food Hub,
Speaker 3: and it's going to be operated by Grow NYC, which
Speaker 3: is an operator of farmers markets here in New York City.
Speaker 3: I think they operate sixty or seventy maybe a few
Speaker 3: more farmers markets, what farmers' markets, what farmers were experiencing,
Speaker 3: would be chefs coming to the markets and saying, you know,
Speaker 3: I want to buy all the tomatoes you have right
Speaker 3: or or a super a local supermarket would come and
Speaker 3: say I want to buy all of those blackberries that
Speaker 3: you have. And this was happening for years. It started
Speaker 3: kind of in the in the eighties and into the nineties,
Speaker 3: and then you know, by the end of the nineties,
Speaker 3: people at the New York State Department of Agriculture were
Speaker 3: realizing this is unsustainable and not really the best way
Speaker 3: to transper produce anyway. We need a wholesale facility to
Speaker 3: focus on this local stuff. So it's very difficult to
Speaker 3: quantify exactly how much local produce is in the system
Speaker 3: at any one time. But what I can tell you
Speaker 3: is that it's grown from being something really minuscule to
Speaker 3: something that is more quantifiable. So just for an example,
Speaker 3: in two thousand and four, what we quantified was that
Speaker 3: there was a two hundred million dollar demand for local
Speaker 3: food among restaurants and retailers and distributors, and there was
Speaker 3: just ten percent of that available in the marketplace. But
Speaker 3: local farmers and local farms have there's been a revival
Speaker 3: and they are starting to meet that much greater demand
Speaker 3: because people and including businesses are willing to pay a
Speaker 3: little bit more and to understand the seasonality.
Speaker 1: So final question, and I don't know, maybe this isn't
Speaker 1: even I'm going to frame this is a hypothetical question.
Speaker 1: But I know you've worked with a watch of people,
Speaker 1: so maybe it's not hypothetical. But our mayor in New
Speaker 1: York City is a fan of produce generally supposedly he's
Speaker 1: a vegan, or he's claimed to be multiple times. If
Speaker 1: he calls you up tomorrow, maybe and again maybe he
Speaker 1: has or maybe someone you've worked so, but like he
Speaker 1: calls and says, what are the three big things that
Speaker 1: we should focus on to approve the produce supply chain
Speaker 1: in New York City? What do you say?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Well, I haven't spoken to the mayor directly, but I
Speaker 3: do work for the Mayor's Office of Food Policy.
Speaker 1: Okay, there you go, So this is not hypothetic.
Speaker 3: No, it's not hypothetical. I would say the three things
Speaker 3: that the city is focusing on right now is the
Speaker 3: rebuild of the Hunts Point produce terminal market because twenty
Speaker 3: years ago it distributed sixty percent of the city's produce
Speaker 3: and now it's a little bit, it's more like twenty
Speaker 3: or twenty five percent. That piece of infrastructure is critical
Speaker 3: for maintaining competition in the marketplace and for enabling accessed
Speaker 3: for fruits and vegetables across the diversity of outlets that
Speaker 3: we have in.
Speaker 1: New York City. Right, So without it, we would really
Speaker 1: just be at the whim of the big st Right.
Speaker 3: That the other thing that the city is focusing on
Speaker 3: there is this policy effort called the Good Food Purchasing Initiative,
Speaker 3: and the Good Food Purchasing Program has this list of
Speaker 3: criteria of what sustainable healthy food is and the New
Speaker 3: York City has signed on for all of the public
Speaker 3: institutions to participate in this Good Food Purchasing Program, which
Speaker 3: is creating criteria for not only where product is created
Speaker 3: more local product, for example, but also how it's produced
Speaker 3: in terms of an equity perspective, the sustainability of that product,
Speaker 3: the healthfulness of it, etc. So I would say that's
Speaker 3: the second thing, and the third thing. I think the
Speaker 3: third thing is really related to the So I guess
Speaker 3: it's infrastructure access and overall sustainability.
Speaker 1: Just on the Hunts point of the one thing you
Speaker 1: mentioned is that it's not that cold. What else sort
Speaker 1: of needs to be done?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there, I mean there's a lot. The biggest issue,
Speaker 3: the biggest issue at Hunt's point right now are that
Speaker 3: there are hundreds of tractor trailers that park and run
Speaker 3: their diesel trucks all day to keep produce cold in
Speaker 3: them because there's not enough space in the market itself.
Speaker 3: So that's not only a cold chain compliance issue and
Speaker 3: ease of merchandising and selling and all of that, but
Speaker 3: it's a major environmental issue that's responsible for a lot
Speaker 3: of the asthma and other bronchial related illnesses in the bronx.
Speaker 3: So that's one thing. The other thing is we need
Speaker 3: to have a facility that is operated with green energy
Speaker 3: that maybe produces food on the roof itself, maybe and
Speaker 3: that also has a greater mechanism. And the Hunts point
Speaker 3: produce terminal market work does a lot on this, but
Speaker 3: it needs to be more that creates a better system
Speaker 3: for what's called the rescuing of food and the redistribution
Speaker 3: of food that is not being sold to charitable organizations.
Speaker 1: Karen Carr. Thank you so much. I learned so much
Speaker 1: about how we get our produce. Really appreciate you coming
Speaker 1: on odline my pleasure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you, Tracy. I'm still just mostly gonna get
Speaker 1: my tomatoes from your garden.
Speaker 2: That's your supply chain solution.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: I might have bad news for you, Joe. I don't
Speaker 2: have that many tomatoes.
Speaker 1: Okay, there's always so many.
Speaker 2: Some of them are splitting too, because you know, we
Speaker 2: mentioned there's been a lot of rain this summer, so
Speaker 2: last year was drought. This summer is just torrential rain
Speaker 2: in the Northeast and not that much sun. Actually, so
Speaker 2: a lot of my tomato are also splitting.
Speaker 1: But I did find that conversation really fascinating. I was
Speaker 1: particularly interested in that point at the end that like,
Speaker 1: if you didn't have the terminal and that it's shrunk,
Speaker 1: then that really would create like the sort of market
Speaker 1: structure competition issues for the New York City market since
Speaker 1: obviously not every vendor can have their own vertically integrated
Speaker 1: supply chain for produce.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. The other thing
Speaker 2: that I found fascinating was, I guess my outdated use
Speaker 2: of the term food desert, but also the discussion of
Speaker 2: some of the agricultural policy choices, and I guess also
Speaker 2: the corporate decisions that kind of went into creating that outcome.
Speaker 2: And I guess the question is, you know, as we
Speaker 2: become more cognizant of these issues, and as climate change
Speaker 2: becomes a bigger factor affecting the food supply chain, whether
Speaker 2: or not some of those policies start to be reconsidered.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, totally fascinating conversation.
Speaker 2: And we got to do I guess we got to
Speaker 2: take a trip out to the terminal.
Speaker 1: We do when the farmers market is particularly when the
Speaker 1: wholesale farmers market opens. Yeah, the regional food hub.
Speaker 2: All right, Adlots outing at two am in the morning.
Speaker 2: It'll be fun.
Speaker 1: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the Oddlots podcast. I'm
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: You can follow me at the Stalwart. Follow our producers
Speaker 1: Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman and dash Ol Bennett at dashbot,
Speaker 1: and check out all of the Bloomberg podcasts under the
Speaker 1: handle at podcasts and for more odd loots content, go
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where we have transcripts.
Speaker 1: Tracy and I blog and publish a newsletter every Friday.
Speaker 1: And for more go to our discord Discord dot gg
Speaker 1: slash odd lots Lots of supply chain talk. In fact,
Speaker 1: this episode came out of request someone wanted to learn
Speaker 1: more about the cold chain et cetera, and so I
Speaker 1: was like, I got on. Then that's how he found Karen.
Speaker 1: So check it out Chat twenty four to seven with
Speaker 1: fellow od loots listeners.
Speaker 2: And if you enjoy all blog, if you appreciate our
Speaker 2: discussions of cold chain storage, then please leave us a
Speaker 2: positive review on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening.