Food as Community
A few weeks ago, my neighbor rang my bell. She was holding a plastic bag filled with lettuce. “It’s from my garden, Mike,” she said. We both live in a large apartment complex, so I asked her where this garden was. She said, “I’ll show you.” We went downstairs and she led me along the path behind our building. Through the trees I could see the barges going past on the Hudson River. “Make a left.,” she said. “It’s behind these shrubs.” We came upon a fenced area, about 100 feet on a side. There were a dozen discrete gardens, each with the name of its owner on a stick. I saw tomatoes, parsley, beets, carrots, cucumbers, green beans. kale and lettuce growing beautifully in rich soil. She said, “You haven’t really lived until you’ve eaten veggies that you’ve grown yourself. And the friends I’ve made here…wow. It’s a community.” The word “community” triggered a memory of our fruit and vegetable co-op in the earl y1980s. when I returned to my apartment I thought about the co-op and the community it created.
1982: Creating a Food & Vegetable Co-op
I awaken at 5:00 AM on a snowy Monday morning in February 1982. I am 42 years old. My family lives in the Westchester village of Larchmont, about 20 miles north of New York City. I teach physics in the local high school. Today is my turn to shop at Hunts Point Market
A year before, twelve Larchmont families started a fruit and vegetable shopping co-operative. Twice a month, a man and a woman from different families go shopping at Hunts Point market in the Bronx. Each family contributes $12 for their share of the produce, and the $144 is enough money to buy two weeks of the best fruit and vegetables I have ever eaten. From the vantage point of 2023, it seems impossible to buy enough food of any kind for 12 families for this paltry sum. Yet 41 years ago, with access to a world class wholesale market, $144 buys more produce than most of the families in our coop consume in two weeks.
Each participant shops twice a year. Today is my turn to shop with Mary, a woman from the co-op. I often take my small children with me to the market, but today I let them sleep as I don’t have time to get them dressed. I find Mary’s address and the directions to her house. I need these printed directions as the GPS had not yet been invented. At the market, three packers will divide the produce and fruits and put each family’s share into bags for pickup. I also note at whose house we will drop off the fruits and vegetables on our way back. If things go smoothly, I will be done around 8:00 o’clock AM, in time to get to school before my classes begin.
A few minutes later Mary and I are on our way to the Bronx. She is sleepy and doesn’t want to chat. I am wide awake and peering cautiously through the light rain, looking forward to buying a carload of produce, starting with pineapples.
New York’s Hunts Point Market
Hunts Point is a peninsula located where the Bronx River and the East River meet. It is a narrow body rivulet of water connecting Upper NY Bay to Long Island Sound. This makes it vulnerable to flooding. The total land area is approximately 690 acres. Hunts Point Produce Market is a dynamic center for New York City’s food trade since 1790, when the first vendors opened their stalls in the cobblestone streets of Manhattan.
In the 1900s, the market continued to operate downtown before relocating in 1967 to a modernized space on its current site, 113 acres in the Bronx. It houses three independent cooperative markets: a meat market, product market and a fish market. Many of the thirty families who established their produce companies in the market’s early days still operate businesses at Hunts Point. Ironically, the residents in surrounding neighborhoods do not enjoy the produce and fruit that the market sells.
Our co-op shops only at the produce market, the 105-acre lot that houses 155 merchants. It is the largest produce market in the country, with annual revenue estimated at $2 to $2.3 billion. This represents 60% percent of New York City’s produce sales. The produce market supplies the city with the freshest fruits and vegetables. And it’s fun to walk through the rows of vendors, looking for that perfect potato.
Produce of Every Size, Shape and Color
The produce market, under one name or another, has served New York City for more than two centuries. In 1812, it opened as the Washington Market in lower Manhattan. At that time, New York City’s population totaled about 100,000. By 1966, when construction began on the World Trade Center, the population of New York City was approaching 8 million and real estate prices were rising. At that point, the produce market relocated to Hunts Point and hundreds of family businesses that had been feeding the city for years gathered at this new hub to serve the 16 million residents of the New York City metro area. Today, that population has grown to 23 million.
The produce market is a significant contributor to both local and national economies; it employs 10,000 people and supplies produce to 9 percent of the nation, including 23,000 restaurateurs, and it provides 60 percent of produce to the 23 million people in the New York City metro area (as mentioned above). Fresh produce is delivered to the market each day via plane, train, boat, and tractor-trailer from 49 states and 55 countries. Customers pay a fee to enter and are required to purchase full crates.
Operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, the Produce Market has learned to adapt to a growing population and vastly increased demand while still using the infrastructure that was put in place in 1966. But it is now facing criticism of its infrastructure, resiliency, and vulnerability.
A 50 Lb. Bag of Potatoes
We reached the Hunts Point market and were admitted through the gate. We pulled out umbrellas and started walking through the stalls. Within an hour we had sacks and boxes of pineapples, corn, oranges, lemons, salad greens, and a half dozen other veggies and fruits. We even bought a box of Ugli fruit (whatever that was … we had no idea). We realized that if we wanted to get back by 8:00 o’clock we’d have to leave in about ten minutes.
We had $7 left of the $144 that we were supposed to spend, and we wondered if we could find something that would be that cheap. We were walking by a potato and onion purveyor, and I saw a 50 pounds bag of potatoes for $5.
“Look,” I said to Mary, “it’s only $5.” She smiled and said, “Mike, did you read the label? It says not for eating.” I smiled and said, “I don’t care. Someone will eat this.” And so, we bought it and started home.
$144 Buys a Lot of Nectarines
One day, after three years of excellent food at bargain basement prices, to everyone’s surprise the co-op ended. Here’s what happened: one of our twelve families moved out of town, leaving room for new people to come in. A single man who had just moved into Larchmont applied to join the co-op. Although he had no family, we saw no reason to turn him down.
Our bad: On his first shopping trip, he insisted on buying $144 worth of nectarines. His station wagon was filled to the brim. He proudly brought this catch to the baggers, who looked at him as though he were crazy.
One woman holding an empty brown bag shouted, “You were supposed to use the money to buy all kinds of fruit and produce. What’s wrong with you?”
“I just felt like having nectarines,” he said in a small voice “Doesn’t everyone love nectarines?” Then he went home, never to be seen again.
The remaining 11 families were in a tizzy. At an emergency meeting, our first in three years, a man said, “I need my potatoes and my lemons and my oranges and my pineapples. Can’t we put in an extra shopping next week?”
The Death of Our Co-op
We banished the nectarine guy from the co-op and scheduled another shopping. My wife’s childhood friend Eleanor had just moved into Larchmont, and she was eager to participate. One of the men volunteered to go with her but the morning before they were supposed to do the shopping, he had to pull out. Eleanor called Molly and said, “My cousin lives in the next town and I’m sure he’d like to go with me.” “Sounds fine to me,” Molly said. The next morning at 6AM, off they went to the market.
An hour later they were back in Larchmont. Eleanor called my wife and said in a tearful voice, “You won’t believe what happened.” Molly asked, “So tell me. How did you do the shopping in only a half hour?”
Eleanor said that as they neared Hunts Point, her cousin’s truck came to a stop. He had forgotten to fill the gas tank. The truck had enough momentum to coast into a gas station. As they pulled in, they noticed several policemen standing around. They got out of the truck and walked over to see what was going on. There were two dead bodies on the concrete, and a policeman was drawing their outlines with the big black pen that you see them use on television. One cop said, “Please get back in the car and leave. These men were shot about an hour ago.” “Could we just get a little bit of gas, please?” said Eleanor. Our gas tank is on empty.” “OK,” said the cop, “but make it quick.”
“I’m out of this co-op,” said Eleanor, thrusting a handful of bills to Molly. “Here’s the money.” And that was that for fruit and vegetables for the week.
The story quickly circulated among the members. Soon a half dozen families called Molly, who had been keeping the books and generally acting as the co-op manager, to announce that they were dropping out. Thus, our co-op ended.
A few weeks later, some friends called us and said they’d like to start another kinds of co-op. “What did you have in mind?” asked Molly. “We have three ideas: fish, cheese and chickens!” Molly put her hand over the receiver and said to me, “You won’t believe what I just heard.” Then she told me.
“I think it’s a great idea.,” I said. “Your parents’ tenant owns a wholesale chicken business. Let’s talk to him.”
“You can’t be serious,” my wife said. And yet, within a month we were going to the poultry market under the West side highway and filling our car with boxes of semi frozen chickens. We took orders from teachers in the school and from friends. But it was hard to keep the chickens cold. None of us had extra freezer space. And whenever we opened our refrigerator, a dozen semi-frozen chickens would leap out and fall to the floor. It didn’t take long for us to realize this co-op was a mistake, and we ended it.
Then we tried a cheese co-op. I never did the shopping but once a month people would arrive at our door with huge wheels of foul-smelling cheese. There was no place to put them in our small house. No one could eat that much cheese. So, we ended that one.
When a few friends said, “let’s try the fish co-op,” I replied, “Please, no more. I’ve had it with co-ops.”
Food as Community
Now in my 80s, I enjoy going into supermarkets and looking at the fresh produce on shelves with water misting down over them. It makes me think back to those days when our fruit and vegetable co-op was going strong.
I remembered that a popular New York magazine once did a story on on our co-op. The title was something: “Well-off Larchmont Creates Co-op to Purchase Food on the Cheap.”
It was a clever title, but he’d missed the point. Our endeavor wasn’t about saving money. It was about using food to create a community of friends and neighbors. And for a time it worked.
