Certain people claim that New York City has a reputation for... not having the best fruits and vegetables. This is a controversial point and not everyone agrees. But regardless of where you stand on this hot button issue, getting produce into the city has unique challenges for multiple reasons. So how does it all work? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Karen Karp, founder of Karen Karp & Partners and an expert in food supply chains, who works with a range of institutions to help get their produce delivered. We discuss the three main ways that fruits and vegetables come into NYC, the key role of the Hunts Point distribution terminal, and how this important supply chain can be improved. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Key insights from the pod:
What is the cold chain? — 4:46
What does Karen Karp & Partners do? — 8:24
Challenges getting food into NYC — 13:31
How fresh fruit and vegetables get into New York — 18:12
Buying produce at Hunts Point — 22:29
Food deserts and food insecurity — 25:09
The ideal food network and how NYC used to get fresh food — 34:11
Challenges of storing different fruits and vegetables — 42:10
Impact of climate change and local produce — 44:27
Improvements to Hunts Point — 53:35
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Joe Weisenthal: (00:10)
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.
Tracy Alloway: (00:15)
And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Joe: (00:16)
Tracy, I just want to start this episode by thanking you for those tomatoes you brought me the other day.
Tracy: (00:22)
How many tomato references are we going to make in our episodes going forward? How long can we stretch this out, ?
Joe: (00:29)
Well, I don't know. Something hit me in my mid thirties, you know, it's like when you're a kid, the whole excitement of summer is not being in school. And then you get a little older, and the whole fun of summer is, I don't know, like traveling or partying or something. And then something hit me in my late/mid thirties or late thirties where it's like, the best part of summer is really fresh tomatoes.
Tracy: (00:49)
I don't know if that's really sad or great that the thing we look forward to in our old age is fresh tomatoes. But I'm glad I could do that for you, Joe.
Joe: (00:57)
Yeah, so for listeners who don't know, Tracy has a garden and she posted some tomato pictures and I was like, I need some. So Tracy brought some. Anyway, they're the best produce I've had in a while. And I'm just going to say, and this is a contested point, but there are people who claim that by and large, the quality of produce in New York City is not what they would expect in a world class city.
Tracy: (01:19)
Oh, now wait a second. Joe, you're attributing this to other people now. You say that New York City doesn't have good produce.
Joe: (01:25)
No, I'm just parroting something I saw and just, some people say like, ‘oh, the quality of onions here is terrible.’ I actually do I kind of agree with that, with the onions. By and large, I don't really notice it, but I know this is popular. I searched on Reddit. A bunch of people said this. A bunch of people say it on Twitter, there are some… New York City produce is controversial.
Tracy: (01:46)
So I don't cook enough in New York to have an educated opinion about this. I will say one thing I noticed moving from Hong Kong to New York is it's almost an inverse picture. So in Hong Kong, you have incredibly cheap, incredibly fresh, very accessible fruit and vegetables everywhere. You have the wet markets and things like that. And meat is very expensive. Whereas when you come to the States, you can buy like a 20 pound brisket, it doesn't actually cost that much. But getting a bag of onions, it seems more difficult. It's almost reversed.
Joe: (02:20)
Hmm. That is interesting. And it does raise this question. And, you know, it's like a miracle of a modern economic supply chains, capitalism, what have you, that we can be in this dense area and by and large, we get produce. But I don't know anything about where it comes from really. I don't know anything about the supply chain of produce. And so whether it's good or bad. And, you know, New York is obviously so diverse in the types of places one could go grocery shopping. So you have the local chains, you have Whole Foods, you have the Chinatown shops.
Tracy: (02:51)
This is what I was going to say. This is what I find quite interesting about New York, is you do have that mix of different retailers. So everything from the big chains like Whole Foods, that people are probably familiar with, all the way down to independent carts, basically, selling fruit and vegetables.
Joe: (03:08)
Yeah. It's super interesting. And the, I literally live on a block and at the corner of my block, there's a guy 24/7, 365 who sells produce on these things. I don't know how he does it. I should probably just go up and chat with him one day about his business.
Tracy: (03:23)
Get him on the podcast.
Joe: (03:23)
Yeah. Maybe he'll come on the podcast. It's a great idea. Anyway, produce in New York City, so many interesting questions, so much controversy, etc. I want to know how New York City gets its produce and where it's coming from, and whether the reputation in some corners is deserved or undeserved.
Tracy: (03:40)
I will say the hardest thing about bringing you those tomatoes was the actual transportation and figuring out a way to bring them into New York without getting them super bruised. So it seems challenging.
Joe: (03:50)
When you brought them that morning, they had this nice sort of crisp, fresh feel of them. And then I left them on my desk and I brought them home that night…
Tracy: (3:58)
Oh no!
Joe: (3:59)
No, no, they were fine. They were still delicious. I kind of like the cold tomatoes, but I think we're going to use the term, ‘the cold chain’ a lot in this episode. And what is the cold chain and what does that mean, and how is that different from other supply chains? Well, I'm really excited. We do, in fact, have the perfect guest, someone who knows all about food, produce, supply chains. We are going to be speaking with Karen Carp of Karen Carp and Partners about how New York City gets its produce. Karen, thank you so much for joining us.
Karen Karp: (04:29)
My pleasure to be here.
Joe: (04:30)
So many different questions. I could start by asking you whether the quality of produce in New York City has an undeserved reputation. I could start by asking you, you know, what is your background? What is Karen Karp and Partners? I'm just going to start though, what is the cold chain ?
Karen: (04:46)
The cold chain is really a 20th century invention, which allowed produce from all over the United States and Mexico, for example, and around the world to get to New York in a food safety safe way. In other words, so that produce wouldn't rot on the way from California to New York as an example.
In fact, iceberg lettuce was the first product that was transported from California to New York in a train, a rail car that was literally packed with ice. And thus that lettuce got its name iceberg because it was packed in ice to get its way to New York City.
Joe: (05:26)
I already learned something.
Karen: (05:28)
I'm here to teach you. The cold chain basically says, it indicates that from the time a product, let's say a fruit or vegetable is picked in the field or from a tree or a bush, if it's a berry, and we are in blackberry season, so we can talk about blackberries as well as fresh tomatoes on this episode, from the moment that it is harvested, how it is handled in a way that it gets to not only a city like New York, but gets through the channels in New York that make that iceberg lettuce or tomato results in the delivery of that piece of fruit or vegetable to a supermarket shelf, to a restaurant, to a bodega to your corner of produce cart.
And the whole notion of creating a cold chain and keeping it intact from point A to point B, the fields in California to your produce cart or your refrigerator at home, is to make sure that the product doesn't break down in quality. That bacteria doesn't get into it. That it doesn't lose its flavor. And that it, as I said earlier, that there are no foodborne illnesses that you could get from consuming something as fragile as lettuce that is grown 3,000 miles away.
Tracy: (06:41)
So we talked just then about the cold chain, the temperature being important, keeping things fresh. How big a factor is time?
Karen: (06:49)
Time is the enemy when you're transporting food. Because if we're talking about fresh produce, which I think is the topic, let's stick to that. You know, time is the enemy because the minute something is picked, it starts to rot. I mean, that's like a very over overstatement of the…
Joe: (07:05)
We're all dying from the day we're born.
Karen: (07:08)
Well, kind of.
Joe: (07:09)
Sorry, I didn't mean to go quite that grim. Sorry. But it's kind of the same, right? The clock is ticking.
Karen: (07:13)
Yeah, I mean, I actually said something like that to a really good friend yesterday. On my mother's 87th birthday. So we were talking about that. But yeah, so basically the minute something is picked it starts to decay and it starts to break down. And so the cold chain was created, and the cold chain really is just a bunch of different mechanisms. It can be ice, it can be refrigeration. Sometimes it's gas, depending on what the product is, what temperature it needs to be kept at, the duration, the duration for which the product needs to be in transport, etc., etc., etc.
And when the cold chain is broken, again, going back to that example from California to New York, when the cold chain is broken, that deterioration can set in really quickly, even if the refrigeration starts up again and it gets here, that product will not be the product that was promised, right, to the buyer.
Joe: (08:07)
So now we understand sort of the very general overview of what the cold chain is and what it aims to do. Let's zoom out. What is your background? What is Karen Karp and Partners and what do you do and what is your role within the sort of produce food delivery ecosystem?
Karen: (08:24)
Sure. So I founded Karen Karp and Partners in 1990, so a little over 33 years ago, initially as just a small boutique restaurant consulting firm, because I had been working for about 16 years or so before that in the restaurant business, managing restaurants, putting together a group of restaurants, building that group from one to seven restaurants in the late 1980s.
And then it was, I felt like it was time for me to do something else. And there, there were two directions that I could have gone into. I could have gone to work for Danny Meyer, the famous restaurateur, and been a restaurant manager in one of, actually the only restaurant he had at the time.
Or I was offered a job by a consultant who helps restaurants, hotels, etc., start up their business or their food service, dining services, whatever. And I actually wanted to go work for Danny Meyer, but, and he interviewed me and he said, ‘you know, I'm going to offer you the job, but I'm going to suggest, I'm going to recommend you, don’t take this job. My advice to you is don't take this job.’
And I said, ‘oh, if that's interesting, why?’ And he said, ‘because you're an entrepreneur and you need to find out what it is that you're going to do.’
Joe: (9:33)
That's cool.
Karen: (9:34)
So yeah, it was very cool. And it forged, you know, a lifelong friendship with him, which I'm very grateful to have. I'm a fourth generation agriculture and food entrepreneur. My great-grandfather came here from the Ukraine in 1907, I believe. He drove a Breakstone cottage cheese cart, if you remember those old commercials for Breakstone's cottage cheese. He was one of those guys driving a buggy around the Upper East Side selling butter, eggs and cheese and cottage cheese and milk to consumers who would come out of their apartment buildings and buy from a cart, because there were no supermarkets then.
My grandfather, and he converted that into a wholesale business for butter, eggs, and cheese operating out of the Washington market. And then, my grandfather was born around 1909, and then my father was born in Brooklyn in 1932. And by then they had a feed and seed company for the farms in Brooklyn. But Brooklyn was rapidly developing because of the existence of the Brooklyn Bridge. So they picked up everything and moved it out to Long Island to a town called Farmingdale. And ran this feed and seed company from Farmingdale, shipping feed and seed out to the farms on the east end of Long Island where I now live.
And my grandfather was recruited from the USDA in the late 1940s to go to Cornell University to learn how to make commercial fertilizer, because farmers were trying to use this nitrogen and ammonia. They were mixing it up in their barns, as he used to say, they were blowing up their barns.
Joe: (11:07)
Tracy, have you done that yet? Have you blown up your barn yet?
Tracy: (11:08)
No, I haven't I haven't mixed up any explosives or fertilizer. I did find a load of gunpowder that the previous owner left in there.
Joe: (11:20)
Plenty of blowing up opportunities.
Tracy: (11:21)
Yeah, exactly.
Karen: (11:22)
So anyway, fast forward, my grandfather grew that company. He sold it to a company that eventually sold it to Dow. So, you know, fertilizers, those kinds of fertilizers or chemicals. My father then became a sales, became a real estate salesperson working with the farmers on the east end of Long Island.
And while he did broker lots of deals to help farmers sell their property to developers, he also brokered the first transfer of development rights deal in the country. And that is where, kind of my story begins. By creating that kind of real estate mechanism, it was giving Long Island farmers a financial opportunity to stay farming when the land values were going up all around them and it would've been much better and more profitable to sell to developers.
But because of the preservation or the transfer of development rights, there is still, and it is actually growing again, it's not even nascent because it's already been going on for 50 years, but a very exciting kind of regional local food production community. And so when I, a few years after I quit working for the consultant that I went to work for, and I started KK&P, I actually went back to school and got a master's degree in sustainability because I really wanted to understand the whole ecological environmental aspect of producing food. And why, to your point earlier, why it's so difficult for local food to get into New York City. And why it is difficult and challenging to get produce that tastes good a hundred percent of the time.
Tracy: (12:59)
So a personal history steeped in agriculture and food, we're going to have to ask you for some Anthony Bourdain-style tips about like when to order fish or salads in New York restaurants.
Karen: (13:09)
I'll try to channel him as best I can.
Tracy: (13:11)
Excellent. But maybe before we get to that, I mean, you mentioned it being difficult to get local produce into New York. So A what are the difficulties, exactly, what are the challenges? And then B, to Joe's controversial point, which he won't take responsibility for in the intro, does New York in fact have bad produce?
Karen: (13:31)
Okay. So we need to, I think, start this conversation in a moment in time, right? Okay. Okay. Up until, let's just say the 1950s, let's just put it in the middle of the 20th century, there was some produce that was coming in from across the country, as I mentioned earlier, coming in on boxed cars, etc.
Before there was, and I think we're going to get to this later in this conversation, before there was the Hunts Point produce terminal market, which is responsible now for receiving and distributing upwards of 25% of New York City's produce, there was an open air market down in Tribeca on Washington Street.
It was called the Washington Street Market. And there were vendors there selling everything: fresh produce, beef, chicken, eggs, pork, you name it. It was just open air markets. The produce that was coming from across the country, from the west coast for example, or from the Midwest, would come in by rail and then be transferred by rail to ferries that would come to the lower west side and then be picked up by a middleman and brought to the vendors that were selling in the Washington market.
In those days, the priority, and it made most sense in season to buy whatever was possible to buy as close to New York City as possible. When you ate those tomatoes, they were good.
Joe: (14:57)
They were good. Tracy grew them. They were delicious.
Karen: (14:59)
Tracy grew them, they were delicious. Tracy grew them in Connecticut.
Tracy (15:02)
They were Brandy Wines
Karen: (15:03)
And they were Brandy Wines. So, wonderful. The way the food system used to work in any metropolitan area is that whatever transportation methods existed, would bring the produce either from as far away as possible to create a year round supply of things. But it wasn't always possible to get tomatoes year round like it is now.
And when you get those tomatoes year round in anytime from October to July, they're going to be not great in a city like New York, for the most part, because a tomato needs to really be consumed very close to when it's picked. It's flavor will deteriorate way quicker than, for example, iceberg lettuce, which doesn't really have much flavor per se. It has crunch. It has texture, it has water, but it doesn't really have flavor like a tomato does.
So pretty much it was, it was almost like intuitive how food kind of was brought into New York and was consumed. And there were always the extraneous things, like lemons for example. You know, citrus does not grow close by to New York anytime of the year. Climate change, maybe that will change. Hopefully not. Things don't get that bad. So those things were brought in from far away, but it was however you could get to something when it was ripe and ready to be eaten, those things were brought to New York.
And so that whole kind of intricate web is called the food system. So going back to KK&P what we are, we are food systems consultants. So our job is to help our clients, which range from government agencies to nonprofit organizations to businesses to help them solve their food problems.
And the food problems they're asking us to help solve is, it includes creating more access for fresh and healthy food for low income people, to rebuild regional farm and food economies, which is kind of, I think, the crux of what we're going to be talking about here to work on supply chain issues such as for some of the big corporations, help them understand where their ingredients are coming from and how they could get better and more sustainable ingredients, as well as designing and sometimes teaching higher education programs around this whole thing that we call the food system.
Joe: (17:38)
You mentioned one stat already about Hunts Point, and you said roughly a quarter of New York City's produce goes through there. I don't know much about it. I mean, my impression is, and I think it's, you know, the grocery store for grocery stores and this gigantic sort of facility of produce. But I don't know, give us a little bit of more, sort of description of the role that this Hunts Point terminal plays in the New York City produce market and how unusual or common it is for big cities in the United States to have a facility like this?
Karen: (18:12)
Sure. So I will answer that question, but I want to say first, if you don't mind, fresh produce gets to New York City now today in 2023, one of three principle ways. Okay? Going from sort of small scale to big scale. The small scale is, well, the small scale is Tracy bringing you a few of her Brandy Wine tomatoes, but a little bit larger than that are farmer's markets, right?
So there are dozens of farmer's markets in New York City right now. I don’t know the exact number, but it could be close to a hundred. And those markets, however many days they operate, rely on farmers, individual farmers picking and packing their produce, trucking it into New York City and selling it to people like you and me, selling it direct to customer.
The next level up is the level that a wholesale market plays, such as the Hunts Point produce terminal market in New York City. And later this year there will be a wholesale farmer's market opening right across the street from the Hunts Point produce terminal market. This is a project I've been working on since 2002, so we're really ready to see it open.
Joe: (19:20)
Quick question. A wholesale market, could Tracy, even if it's wholesale, could we walk in there or would we have to be like a licensed buyer?
Karen: (19:26)
For Hunts Point or for the wholesale farmer's market? Or for either?
Joe: (19:29)
Either, both.
Tracy: (19:34)
How many tomatoes are you buying, Joe?
Karen: (19:35)
Yeah, let me just mention the third way, because then we can go back. So the third way that produce gets to New York City is through distributors that are picking product up from distribution centers that could be vertically integrated -- supermarket chains have now vertically integrated supply chains.
So your Whole Foods, your D’Agostino, Sea Town, whomever, Key Food, they have very much vertically integrated supply chains now, which means those companies are contracting directly with farmers across the country for the best possible produce at the best time of year. And they come directly to their distribution centers, which are outside of New York City. And then in fact, many in Cheshire, Connecticut just so happens that they're there, and then those are trucked into supermarkets and put on the shelves for consumers.
Tracy: (20:30)
Sorry, just to emphasize this point, the way a supermarket like a Whole Foods is getting its produce is going to be different to the way an independent seller with a cart on the street is going to be getting it.
Karen: (20:42)
Yes. And even different from how an independent grocer, so a small scale grocer or your fresh fruit and vegetable vendor on your corner, who by the way, those guys sell a lot of stuff. So, you know, if they were in a store, they sell enough stuff to have a small store. The good ones. Anyway, so the second part of that question was….
Joe: (21:03)
Well just, Hunts Point, how unusual, you know, just tell us a little bit more about how the terminal system works
Tracy: (21:10)
And can we buy from it?
Karen: (21:11)
Sure, right. So let me go back to answer that question. So typically not, you're not going to go to Hunts Point market and buy produce. You could, you could, you could show up in a car, you would have to pay a gate fee to get in. You'd have to go at two or three in the morning.
Joe: (21:27)
That’s no problem for me. Both of us can do that.
Karen: (21:30)
Okay. And then you would have to buy cases of product. That might be the problem.
Tracy: (21:35)
Maybe we should set up some sort of grocery cooperative and just buy cases of tomatoes every week, Joe, and share them.
Joe: (21:41)
You know what I think we should do? We should start one of those CSAs, those sort like farm things, but our trick is we're just actually going to Hunts Point market really early.
Karen: (21:50)
That would be really bad..
Joe: (21:52)
Sorry. Sorry. We'll talk about it after.
Karen: (21:56)
But anyway, so you could do that. And, you know, but the thing is, you're not going to, because you're not going to buy a case of cantaloupe, for example. You're just not going to do that. But the Hunts Point produce terminal market is essential for these small fruit and vegetable vendors, whether they be your street carts, whether they be a bodega.
Joe: (22:18)
You know, there’s those chains, I think they're more in Brooklyn than Manhattan. They're called like Mr. Coco and Mr. Mellon, you know those?
Karen: (22:25)
But they're produce stores, right?
Joe: (22:27)
Yeah, but would those be the level in which they're acquiring?
Karen: (22:29)
Yes, absolutely. And so those guys will typically send their own vans up to the Hunts Point produce terminal market, they'll get an order, maybe the order is preset. Now, Covid has actually kind of stimulated a whole technological innovation at the Hunts Point produce terminal market, where you can order ahead of time. And even some of the distributors at Hunts Point are delivering now, which they didn't use to do.
But yes, you'd send your guy in a van up to the Hunts Point market at three in the morning. He'd have his shopping list. He would probably be either with a buyer in the van with him, or he would be the buyer himself trained to find the exact right product for that particular market. And I don't mean the physical market. I mean, the customers that shop in that market and the customers who shop in any particular market have a certain price mentality around food or even a price ability around food.
So often what happens in those markets is that you are not going to find the most pristine, perfect product. It's going to be good. But it's going to be more perishable perhaps, than what you would find in a supermarket like Whole Foods or Associated, or some of the others, and especially some of the real high-end stores, because they're buying for how the product looks, right? You go into Whole Foods, that's what Whole Foods sold us all on. How the product looks, and they're trying to deliver on flavor, but it's not really always possible.
Tracy: (24:04)
Well, just on this note, talk to us about what are the sort of controversies in the food network right now? Because you mentioned, you know, the look of produce versus the taste. I remember that's been a long running one. People talk a lot about food deserts in America. I imagine that might be less of an issue in New York, but what are people sort of debating, you know, if you go to the farmer's market, what is the hot topic of debate?
Karen: (24:30)
Yeah. I mean, the hot topic of debate, no matter where you are, where you're functioning anywhere in the food system, including as eaters, the hot topic at the moment is how are we going to be able to grow fruits and vegetables with climate change raging through the world?
I mean, that's the hot topic. That is the only topic. And I mean, it's not really the only topic because the second topic actually is access. So we do not use the term food desert at KK&P. In fact, policymakers in New York have not used that term for many, many years.
Tracy: (25:04)
Oh, I'm out of date. I'm sorry. That's
Karen: (25:05)
Okay. We'll bring you up to date.
Tracy: (25:07)
Excellent. What do people say? Food scarcity or..?
Karen: (25:09)
Well, we don't talk about the neighborhood so much as we talk about the people who, again, I wouldn't want to label a person ‘food insecure,’ but that's the word that's used. Food insecurity. And people are food insecure not because there's no food available, there might not be food available in their neighborhood. But because they don't have money, there's not a food problem. There's a money problem.
Tracy: (25:33)
Wait, but there are parts of the country where it is incredibly difficult to actually get fresh produce.
Karen: (25:39)
Including many neighborhoods in New York City. Absolutely. Okay. And why is that? You want to know why that is? That why that is, is more to do with the kind of technological and policy innovations throughout the 20th century. So we're going back to the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, when the USD A really started subsidizing farmers to produce essentially a handful of crops. Corn, soy, cotton, wheat, as an example.
And they were subsidizing those crops because those are the biggest export crops that the United States has. And because as there was kind of consolidation in the farming sectors all across the United States, there was food manufacturing also growing at the same time. There weren't supermarkets in the 1920s, because I mean, there were neighborhood stores because there wasn't a lot of manufactured product at the time. It was fresh or what we call minimally processed or dried like pasta, rice, etc., things like that.
So as the agriculture sector got more industrialized, the number of ingredients got fewer, the food manufacturers picked up on that and started producing manufacturing, what we now call highly processed food, high processed food. Turning corn into corn syrup instead of using sugar, for example.
And lots of chemical processes to add flavor, to add durability, to add texture, whatever. And we ended up getting a diet that didn't include a lot of fresh food, which is subsidized by the US government. So the US government pays commodity farmers of those crops to either grow or not grow to the market, sort of like the market movements. The things that are happening in the market. And the USDA does not give subsidies or any favor at all to what they define as specialty farmers. Specialty farmers are the people that produce fruits and vegetables.
So people ended up consuming a very highly processed diet by the 1960s and into the 1970s, which resulted in the diet related illnesses that we have now, which we could go into it if you want to, because there's a fruit and vegetable approach to diet, you know, chronic diet related illnesses.
But the other thing that was happening, and I mean this is a perfect topic for, you know, for here in this building, right? Because this, this is about finance and markets, as manufacturing jobs in New York City were declining and more people from the south were migrating to cities for opportunity, landlords got very nervous about having more people from very diverse backgrounds living in their buildings. And white people left and went to the suburbs. So it's like everything happening at the same time, the commodification of food, the industrialization of food manufacturing, the decline of manufacturing in cities like New York, which sent white people to the suburbs, which created an influx of housing for non-white people.
And supermarkets at the time, or the stores that were available, basically were like, ‘we have to sell the cheapest possible food we can to these groups of people because they don't have enough money, etc., etc., etc.’ So there was a former New York City commissioner, Tom Farley, great guy. He actually was one of the first policy people in New York to basically say, ‘we can't call this a food desert. It's actually a food swamp.’ So it's a food swamp, meaning there's tons of food. It's just very bad quality.
Joe: (29:30)
I really like the way you frame it around money and income because, I mean, and it's intuitive as you describe it, which is that there are plenty of rich people who live ivery, or you know, might live in a rural area away from a grocery store, and they don't have a problem with food insecurity. I mean, you know, somehow they get their food, maybe they might not have a grocery store within a mile, but they do. It's the people who simply do not have much income. And no one is trying to create a market for them or trying to deliver fresh produce to them.
Karen: (30:02)
But that's, I don't want to say that you're incorrect about that. I think you just don't know. Actually, there's tons of organizations, dozens in New York City, maybe even hundreds in New York City of organizations that are working really, really hard to get that fresh produce into these neighborhoods.
Joe: (30:20)
Yeah. You're totally right. In my mind, the way I was thinking about it was, sort of like for-profit chain grocery stores or for-profit entities, sort of seeing this as a market opportunity, but to your point…
Karen: (30:32)
But to your point of a wealthy person living in the suburbs or exurbs or rural, if they want to get a food item or food items that they want, they're going to find a way to get it. And you know what? Poor people in New York City and in cities across the United States do exactly the same thing.
There was a project many years ago where I was interviewing parents of children that were in Head Start programs. The neighborhood was East Harlem, which if we were to label neighborhoods in New York City as food deserts, which we're trying not to do, it would be one. And kind of like after the formal interview about how the kids were doing in this Head Start program and the food that they were getting there, and whether the parents thought that that food was good for the kids or not good for the kids, etc, etc.
I just sort of off the cuff, I asked a group of parents of, you know, five year olds, I said, do you know the term food desert? And they were like, ‘no, what are you talking about?’ And I said, ‘well, do you know that some people would say, the neighborhood that you live in is called a food desert?’ And they say, ‘what does that mean?’ I said, ‘well, how it's defined is that you live in a neighborhood where you can't get good quality fresh food.’
And they say, ‘well, yeah, it's the truth, but don't call my neighborhood a desert. That's really insulting to me.’ And I said, ‘well, tell me what you do about getting food.’ And they said, you know, we, I mean, this was a while ago. So like, before Uber. ‘We'll, four of us will go in a taxi across the George Washington Bridge to a supermarket in New Jersey and stock up. We will take the subway down to Chinatown one day a week and buy, buy, buy fresh fish.’ So just like upper income people, lower income people are very resourceful and will do the best they can to feed their family. But what happened in that period of industrialization is that people forgot how to cook.
Tracy: (32:27)
Right. This was going to be kind of my next question, which is, okay. So incomes are clearly a factor here, but it feels like the other limiting factor is, especially if you're working a low income job, probably long hours, you might not have a lot of time to spend either sourcing fresh produce or cooking it?
Karen: (32:46)
Correct. Nor might you have a kitchen with a good refrigerator and a decent stove. So, yes. So I think what happened over maybe those years from like the sixties or seventies until, I kind of want to say until recently, because I feel like there's been a little bit of a tipping point, although there's still so much work to do. People just, they gave themselves over to what was easy and convenient and cheap.
Joe: (33:11)
Right.
Tracy: (33:12)
Those darn TV dinners in the eighties, it's their fault.
Joe: (33:16)
I mean, I'm guilty of this myself. I'm busy, I work, I have two kids. It's like sometimes, what's cheap and what I can put in the air fryer is..
Karen: (33:25)
Totally, totally. We can't be faulted for making our lives, you know, as easy as we can. The problem is that lower income people do not have as many options and choices as you and I might have.
Tracy: (33:38)
What's the ideal food network landscape, if you will, in a city like New York? And the reason I ask is because, you know, I've traveled a lot, I've lived in different places. In a place like Hong Kong, it's so easy to get fresh food. You know, on your way back from work, you stop at the wet market , you stock up on whatever you need for dinner and you do the same thing the next day. In a lot of European cities, it's like that as well. You buy for the meal that you are actually about to eat. Is that what we should be aiming for? Or how would you like to see it develop?
Karen: (34:11)
I mean, in a city like New York where everything is at your fingertips in a way, but everything is also complicated logistically, you have to plan your whole day and how many bags you're going to be carrying by the end of the day, that kind of thing.
Let me just kind of back up and say, you know, in probably starting in the 1920s, 1930s, there were retail produce markets all across New York City. And the way those things got developed was because like your guy on your corner, right? Like my great-grandfather driving a buggy around the Upper East Side selling cottage cheese and butter. There were so much street activity, so many people selling and buying food on the street that, it was Mayor LaGuardia actually. So it's probably a little bit later because I think he was the mayor in the fifties.
He basically was like, no, we gotta get all this activity inside. So he and others built this sort of network -- you mentioned the word network -- this network of retail produce markets across New York City, and then kind of tried to force the people selling on the street to go in those markets. Which of course they resisted because you're going to have a lot more customers if you're just on the street with them.
Nevertheless, that kind of, that migration happened and those markets really became the source, the primary source of accessing fresh fruits and vegetables in a neighborhood. And these markets exist in many, many, many, many neighborhoods all across New York City. A lot of those markets have closed or changed, or they're struggling. But the infrastructure for the most part is still there. And many of them are being kind of rehabilitated and rethought to enable this access across New York City.
Joe: (36:07)
Can we just go back and talk like, sort of simple, or not simple, but supply chain logistics for a second. New York is a dense city. It's surrounded by suburbs. And if you're coming into the city via truck, there's a good chance you're going to be stuck in traffic for a long time. I understand trucks have refrigeration, etc., but when it comes to that cold chain, whether it's the delivery of food to the terminal and then the pickup by the person at the van, or whether it's the vertically integrated mega supermarkets that contract directly with the farmers and have their distribution points outside the city, etc. Is it just difficult from, you know, if you wanted to compare New York to say, I used to live in Austin, Texas. Traffic's getting worse there, but it's not nearly as big or as dense or as crazy. Like, is it just harder?
Karen: (36:59)
Yeah, it's harder.
Joe: (37:00)
Can you talk about those challenges?
Karen: (37:02)
Yeah, it is harder. It is harder. And the Hunts Point produce terminal market was built in 1967, and that was an effort to take all those vendors that were selling wholesale on Washington Street and put them in indoors, and put them in a market…
Joe: (37:22)
Is it cold in there
Karen: (37:23)
In the market? No. And it's not cold because the market is not completely cold chain compliant. Which is one of the top five reasons why it needs to be redeveloped and why it will be redeveloped.
Joe: (37:35)
So there are issues.
Karen: (37:38)
There are issues of course. But you're going to find issues anywhere, anywhere that you're transporting and handling food. You know, they do the best they can with the infrastructure that they have, but the infrastructure -- people like to say, and I was only seven years old in 1967, so I can't say this from firsthand experience, but people say that as soon as the market opened, it was obsolete. And that's how many years ago? So 56 years ago. So the market..
Joe: (38:07)
Sorry, why? Why was it obsolete? What did people identify right away that they say, you know what, this is going to be obsolete?
Karen: (38:14)
Just to your point, because the city is so dense, the population grew and here you were trying to put all of these trucks into the very few funnels that exist, meaning the George Washington Bridge or, now what's called the RFK Bridge or the Deegan Expressway, you're trying to get all these trucks and that produce was being brought in more by truck than by train.
So usually when a market is called a terminal market, it literally means it's the end of the line. And it's the end of rail lines. But rail got less and less, and trucks got more and more when the price of gasoline went down and when buying became more specialized.
Tracy: (38:58)
You know, you mentioned this earlier, the rules around food safety and regulation. Can you talk a little bit more about how those feed into the actual network and the logistics of moving produce, especially in New York, because I imagine maybe New York has some different laws to other places.
Karen: (39:15)
New York doesn't have different laws to other places. No, there is a national law Hmm, which actually just went into effect a few years ago. It's called the Food Safety Modernization Act or FISMA.
Tracy: (39:28)
FISMA, FISMA! That is catchy actually.
Karen: (39:31)
And so that became a national requirement for any kind of perishable food to be meeting certain government -- FDA and USDA -- standards for coaching compliance. But I think, to answer your question, if I could tell a little story. Okay.
So I was at the Hunts Point Produce market one day, probably in 2009, let's say. We were actually managing a program called the New York City Green Card Initiative at the time, which was a whole class of vendor licenses exclusively for selling fresh fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods that didn't have supermarkets. So my office ran that program for the first five years that it existed. And I was at the market one day with some of the vendors kind of teaching them how to buy produce.
And we were there when a big truck was coming in. I don't know where it was coming in from. And the very first thing that happens, you roll up the gate of the back of a tractor trailer and there is a little black box, just like there's a little black box in an airplane, right? That little black box is taking the temperature of the produce every, I don't know, minute, every three minutes, I'm not sure.
It's a constant read of temperature of the produce in that truck. And somebody who's receiving the goods will get that black box or the report from the black box, and they will see, has this produce maintained its temperature all the way from where it came from, let's say California. And if it does, then they're going to pay the price they promised. If it hasn't, they've got to start testing the food to see if there's breakdown, if there's material breakdown of, let's say it's a tomato, right? Happening on the inside of the tomato, and then they'll make a decision about whether to buy the product or how to buy the product.
And so even though there are these rules that things must be cold chain compliant, it's a relatively recent rule. And so now all the infrastructure needs to be upgraded to be able to at least on the receiving side, do what they can to maintain the food.
Tracy: (41:38)
I have a kind of random question, so I guess a lot of people might know this, but maybe some don't. If you mix certain vegetables together, I think the classic is, what is it? Onions with potatoes or something? If you store them together, one of them emits a chemical that causes the other one to rot. Are those the types of considerations that you have to think about at a food market? Like, ‘oh, you can't put the onions next to the potatoes.’
Karen: (42:06)
Absolutely. And I don't know if it's exactly those two products.
Tracy: (42:09)
Yes, I can’t remember.
Karen: (42:10)
But to go back to our tomato example, tomatoes don't need to be refrigerated at the same degree of coldness as leafy greens, for example, which really need to be at 39 degrees, I think it's 37 or 39 degrees to stay crisp for as long as possible. Tomatoes actually can be in a 50 degree room, a tomato ripening room.
And when you go to -- some of the vendors at Hunts Point have these -- but more sophisticated produce distributors, like those that exist outside the market. Baldor is a great example in New York, they'll have ripening rooms for tomatoes, they'll have ripening rooms for bananas, they'll have different ripening rooms for other things. Potatoes, you can pretty much do anything to potato and it will still be okay. So yes, there's a range of temperatures. You're absolutely right.
Joe: (43:00)
Just going back to the logistics of getting produce into the city, setting aside the Hunts point and the terminal, what about for the large grocery stores that, as you say, completely vertically integrated, they're obviously vertically integrated in New York. I assume they're all sort of roughly the same model all across the country, do they face any additional challenges here in New York that you wouldn't see in a smaller city or in a less dense area?
Karen: (43:27)
Well, yeah, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, the distribution centers for four or five supermarket chains that feed New York are located in Cheshire, Connecticut. So if you're growing, if you're shipping that lettuce or those tomatoes from California, it's going to go to Cheshire, Connecticut, which is, you know, an hour away, maybe an hour and a half away, but it's going beyond New York. Then it's going to sit there and then it's going to come to New York, to a supermarket, to a Whole Foods or some of the other supermarkets. So it's already like a couple more days.
Tracy: (44:00)
I just want to go back to, to one thing you said when I asked about what are the sort of hot topics of debate in food network land at the moment, and the first pick was climate change. At some point are the complicated logistics of bringing fresh produce into New York going to be complicated or perhaps even untenable in an age of, you know, weather-related, climate-related disruptions.
Karen: (44:27)
Right. So there's a couple interesting things that are happening in the food system right now relative to that, on a very macro scale, there are large organizations, usually agricultural, those organizations, along with some nonprofit organizations that do scientific research and understand sustainability are working on developing drought resistant, rain resistant, heat resistant crops.So that produce still can be grown in a variety of places and sent to a city like New York. That's kind of one very macro level.
On another kind of macro level, in some ways climate change further gives a rationale -- this might be a little bit hard to kind of put together -- but maybe the three of us can work it out, right?
For more regional produce, production and distribution. So going back to that moment in time, in the middle of the 20th century that I painted earlier, as soon as we could get produce from really far away -- I'll get back to the climate in a second – as soon as we could get produce from really far away, we started doing that because those farmers could produce more quantity, have more consistency. They were invested in by the big, by big food companies and the regional farmers, let's say around here in New York City, the first, let's take the 50 miles, then a hundred, then 150 miles around New York City, which is generally the distance considered for local food -- either 150 miles or a day's drive.
They're two definitions. There's no technical definition, but those are the two that are kind of floated and used the most. Those farmers that were producing the specialty crops -- the potatoes, the carrots, the onions, but more importantly, the greens, the broccolis, the spinach, the whatever, you know, the cornucopia of produce products -- those farmers were in effect in competition with farmers on the west coast who were being invested in by companies and places like the Hunts Point market wanted to only deal with the big guys because they could contract ahead, they could plan, they knew what they were going to get.
And there was a year-round supply in lieu of contracting with the regional guys, for which there was only maybe a few months’ supply of any one product. What climate change is doing is, first of all, making people and making people understand a little bit more the seasonality of things and appreciating that great tomato when it's in season. And if it gets too hot next summer, your tomatoes might not grow.
Tracy: (47:02)
Last summer in Connecticut we had drought and that was a terrible, terrible year for my tomatoes.
Karen: (47:07)
Yeah. This year on Long Island, it's been raining like crazy and it's the middle of August and we're only seeing our first good tomatoes. So every year is a little bit like a crapshoot, whereas in more controlled environments and controlled by pesticides, controlled by irrigation, etc., you don't have as much variables except now you do. When they had those terrible floods out in Monterey on the west coast between Santa Cruz and Monterey last spring, it wiped out the entire strawberry crop.
So I don't really eat strawberries that frequently, especially ones that are brought in from far away, but they were just not on the shelves. So I also think Covid made people understand the fragility of our food system. And that's why I think there's an opening for a general public growing awareness of appreciating the food that they can get. And that will help with seasonality. If you accept, I can't get that great, that tomato that I love all year long, but I can get it in July and August when it's great. I think Covid kind of broke down some of our expectations about consistent supply, which is good for regional food.
Joe: (48:15)
Tracy, you know, where they don't have to worry about flooding risk for agriculture. Uh,
Tracy: (48:20)
Where?
Joe: (48:20)
Arizona
, that's why we gotta keep growing produce in the Arizona desert. No surprise floods there.
Tracy: (48:27)
You and Arizona, Joe, just go, go.
Karen: (48:29)
But Joe, you know, the problem with growing produce in Arizona.
Joe: (48:32)
Yeah. We've done many, we've done several episodes on Arizona on water. Yeah.
Karen: (48:37)
Water, yeah.
Tracy: (48:38)
Wait, can I go back to the agricultural policy issue that you described earlier, this idea that we subsidized, you know, exportable crops like soybeans and corn over maybe fresh produce producers. Could that change in an era of climate change? Is there political appetite or will to actually reconsider some of that?
Karen: (49:01)
You know, there is. I mean, I worked on a project exactly around this question, and we finished that project in 2018, I think, looking at a region called the Mid-South Delta, which is about 90 counties that span, that goes across five states. So it's along the Mississippi River, so it's not the delta like in Louisiana, but it's the Mid-South Delta. So it was Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and a little bit of Mississippi.
And in that region, 76% of the crops are just four products. Corn, soy, cotton and wheat, no, rice, sorry, corn, soy, cotton and rice. And what was happening, or what is still happening, but now the investments are, are starting to, maybe make a turn there. What’s been happening in that region is because it's a wet region and because 90% of the product is put on a barge and shipped out of the country, there was no way to gain value for that product for the farmers.
And when you look at, for example, deforestation in Brazil to produce crops like soy, when you look at rice when the US is a huge white rice producer, but you see climate impacting those things in a generation and a half, three of those four crops won't be able to be produced in that region, which is 76% of their, you know, of the receipts.
So Yes. So there are efforts to say, well, what else can we grow there? And in a region like the Mid-South Delta, for example, they used to grow lots of watermelon and cucumbers, things that actually require water, which they have, but which lost their markets to the west when that whole thing was happening that we've already talked about a couple times.
Joe: (50:48)
I have one small question and then one regular question. I know we just have a couple minutes left. Farmers’ markets, you mentioned them, I think you said they're about a hundred in New York City.
Karen: (50:58)
I wish I had the precise number.
Joe: (51:00)
Somewhere in that ballpark. We talked about the big grocery stores. We talked about maybe the more mid-size where they get their produce at the terminal. You described how the produce got into the farmers’ market, but how big of a role are they playing in the sort of the diet of New Yorkers?
Karen: (51:13)
Well, an increasing percentage, right? I think when we first spoke, I told you about this wholesale farmer's market, the project I've been working on for a long time, and it's going to be called the New York Regional Food Hub, and it's going to be operated by Grow NYC, which is an operator of farmers’ markets here in New York City. I think they operate 60 or 70, maybe a few more, farmers’ markets.
What farmers’ markets, what farmers were experiencing would be chefs coming to the markets and saying, you know, ‘I want to buy all the tomatoes you have,’ right? Or a local supermarket would come and say, ‘I want to buy all of those blackberries that you have.’ And this was happening for years. It started kind of in the eighties and into the nineties.
And then, you know, by the end of the nineties, people at the New York State Department of Agriculture were realizing this is unsustainable and not really the best way to transport produce anyway. We need a wholesale facility to focus on this local stuff. So it's very difficult to quantify exactly how much local produce is in the system at any one time, but what I can tell you is that it's grown from being something really minuscule to something that is more quantifiable.
So, just for an example, in 2004, what we quantified was that there was a $200 million demand for local food among restaurants and retailers and distributors. And there was just 10% of that available in the marketplace. But local farmers and local farms have, there's been a revival and they are starting to meet that much greater demand because people and including businesses are willing to pay a little bit more and to understand the seasonality.
Joe: (52:59)
Okay. So final question, and I don't know, maybe this isn't even, I'm going to frame this as a hypothetical question, but I know you've worked with a bunch of people, so maybe it's not hypothetical, but our mayor in New York City is a fan of produce generally, supposedly he's a vegan or he has claimed to be multiple times. If he calls you up tomorrow, maybe, and again, maybe he has, or maybe someone you work with. But he calls and says, what are the three big things that we should focus on to improve the produce supply chain in New York City? What do you say?
Karen: (53:28)
Right, well, I haven't spoken to the mayor directly. But I do work for the Mayor's Office of Food Policy.
Joe: (53:34)
Okay. There you go. So this is not hypothetical.
Karen: (53:35)
No, it's not hypothetical. Okay. I would say the three things that the city is focusing on right now is the rebuild of the Hunts Point produce terminal market because 20 years ago it distributed 60% of the city's produce, and now it's a little bit, it's more like 20% or 25%. That piece of infrastructure is critical for maintaining competition in the marketplace and for enabling access for fruits and vegetables across the diversity of outlets that we have in New York City.
Joe: (54:05)
Right. So without it, we would really just be at the whim of the big supermarkets.
Karen: (54:08)
Right. Okay. The other thing that the city is focusing on there is this policy effort called the Good Food Purchasing Initiative. And the Good Food Purchasing program has this list of criteria of what sustainable healthy food is. And the New York City has signed on for all of the public institutions to participate in this good food purchasing program, which is creating criteria for not only where product is created, more local product, for example, but also how it's produced in terms of an equity perspective, the sustainability of that product, the healthfulness of it, etc. So I would say that's the second thing.
And the third thing, I think the third thing is really related to, so I guess it's infrastructure access and overall sustainability.
Joe: (54:58)
Just on the Hunts Point upgrade, the one thing you mentioned is that it's not that cold. What else sort of needs to be done there?
Karen: (55:05)
I mean, there's a lot. The biggest issue at Hunts Point right now are that there are hundreds of tractor trailers that park and run their diesel trucks all day to keep produce cold in them. Because there's not enough space in the market itself.
So that's not only a cold chain compliance issue and ease of merchandising and selling and all of that, but it's a major environmental issue that's responsible for a lot of the asthma and other bronchial related illnesses in the Bronx. So that's one thing.
The other thing is we need to have a facility that is operated with green energy that maybe produces food on the roof itself maybe, and that also has a greater a mechanism and the Hunts Point produce terminal market work does a lot on this, but it needs to be more, that creates a better system for what's called the rescuing of food and the redistribution of food that is not being sold to charitable organizations.
Joe: (56:14)
Karen Karp, thank you so much. I learned so much about how we get our produce. Really appreciate you coming on Odd Lots.
Karen: (56:20)
My pleasure.
Tracy: (56:21)
Yeah, that was fascinating.
Joe: (56:35)
Tracy. I'm still just mostly going to get my tomatoes from your garden.
Tracy: (56:39)
That's your supply chain solution here? I might have bad news for you, Joe I don't have that many tomatoes.
Joe: (56:46)
Okay. There's only so many?
Tracy: (56:48)
A lot of them are splitting too, because, you know, we mentioned there's been a lot of rain this summer, so last year was drought. This summer is just torrential rain in the Northeast and not that much sun actually. So a lot of my tomatoes are also splitting.
Joe: (57:01)
But I did find that conversation really fascinating. I was particularly interested in that point at the end that like, if you didn't have the terminal and that it shrunk, then that really would create like this sort of market structure competition issues for the New York City market since obviously not every vendor can have their own vertically integrated supply chain for produce.
Tracy: (57:22)
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. The other thing that I found fascinating was, I guess my outdated use of the term food desert. But also the discussion of some of the agricultural policy choices. And I guess also the corporate decisions that kind of went into creating that outcome.
And I guess the question is, you know, as we become more cognizant of these issues and as climate change becomes a bigger factor affecting the food supply chain, whether or not some of those policies start to be reconsidered.
Joe: (57:54)
No, totally fascinating conversation.
Tracy: (57:56)
And we gotta do, I guess we gotta take a trip out to the terminal, right?
Joe: (57:59)
Yeah, we do. Especially when the when the farmers’ market, particularly when the wholesale farmers’ market opens. The regional food hub.
Tracy: (58:05)
All right. Odd Lots outing at 2:00 AM in the morning. It'll be fun.
Joe: (58:09)
Let's do it.
Tracy: (58:09)
Shall we leave it there?
Joe: (58:10)
Let’s leave it there.
You can follow Karen Karp & Partners at
@kk_andp
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