The Origin of Every Product
Quick Recap: Prasenjit and I are students at Cornell Tech doing research on building a model for many farmers with diverse products to collaborate to serve institutional buyers like hospitals or schools. We want to compare local vs. non-local food on price and food miles. Our goal is to show that by buying directly from local farmers buyers can save on both. I used to be a farmer in Upstate New York. Farmers and dining services managers we want your data!
The big news is that we found data about conventional food sourcing that drastically reduces the number of assumptions we have to make.
We thought that we were going to have to guess at the most likely origin of each product. I was imagining something like there’s a 60% chance that orange is from Florida, 30% chance it’s from Mexico, and a 10% chance it’s from California. This would help us show that food miles are reduced, but it would be all guessing.
We were able to get some pricing of conventional products from the dining halls we have data from, but the units of weight or volume are not really clear which makes comparing prices almost impossible.
However, one of the dining halls we’re working with sources their conventional produce from Hunt’s Point Produce Market in the Bronx. We did a little poking around and found that the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service publishes terminal reports everyday for Hunt’s Point and for every other major city in the country.
I had heard of Hunt’s Point before but did not realize that 60% of the food for 23 million people in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area comes through Hunt’s Point Terminal. This means that I have definitely been eating food from Hunt’s Point my whole life. They do $2.3 Billion in sales every year. This is most of the produce for New York City. I had never dreamed we could find this kind of data.
For example, at Hunt’s Point Brussel sprouts in 25 lb cartons, from Belgium, California or Mexico cost $35, $40 and $44 respectively on Thursday March 14th, 2019.
We have real data about conventional produce and can compare it to local produce. There are so many fewer assumptions we need to make now! I was beside myself with excitement. Prasenjit was only sort of kidding when we figured this out and he asked if this was the best day of my life.
Now we know
· How many acres of each product by county — ag census
· How many $ for each product by county — ag census
· Price for every product going through Hunt’s Point — specialty crop report
· Origin of every product going through Hunt’s Point — specialty crop report
· Yield per acre by product — New England Vegetable Management Guide
· Going rate for local products — dining hall partners
· Origin of local products from — dining hall partners + farmer data
We have all the pieces to show how institutions can save money and food miles by buying from local farmers. It’s all happening.
This morning we left Cornell Tech at 6 am to go see the Hunt’s Point Produce Market. It’s open to the public. Why not?
We bought $3 day passes. The security there is pretty heavy duty, but I guess that makes sense for a market terminal with so much traffic. The security guy at the entrance scanned our IDs. There are no photos or videos allowed. I was planning to try to sneak taking some photos, but it felt disrespectful to be gawking at someone else’s place of work. We were already trying not to get in the way.
By the time we got there it was a little after 7:30 am and I suspect after their usual morning rush. We walked through one long bay with loading docks and some of the vendors had little displays set up, but mostly it felt like you were walking through a warehouse with pallets of product being loaded into trucks. There were at least two little lunch spots on the loading dock which I found very charming. There was very serious signage about trading in good pallets when you took a pallet of product. Good pallets are serious business.
I thought we might need a story for why we were there, but no one cared what our deal was. Which is just as well. We probably should talk to someone who actually buys or sells produce through the Hunt’s Point Produce Market and figure out what their routine looks like. The data itself was more exciting than the field trip, but I’m glad we saw it.
