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In Jackson Heights, Queens, community organizations are making significant efforts to bring locally-grown produce to those who need it most and putting an end to the idea that only the wealthy can afford farm-fresh foods.
Under the cover of a pop-up tent in the most diverse neighborhood in New York, GrowNYC employee Winnifred Lee explained how New York City’s largest farmers market operator helps bring attention to the benefits of eating locally and works to educate people to shop with awareness.
“We really focus on what it means to be local and in season because with supermarkets we’ve forgotten which foods are supposed to come when,” said Lee, who has been working with the organization for four years and currently oversees the majority of the Queens’ branches. “Because the produce in our markets doesn’t have to be transported as far, it’s ripe and it’s healthier.”
Photo 1 The Jackson Heights Greenmarket, located on 34th Ave. between 79th and 80th Sts.
Lower-income communities, such as Jackson Heights, are limited in the amount of nutrient rich produce available. And while the neighborhood Greenmarket spreads across the tree-lined corner of a quiet, brick-clad residential block, a five-minute walk in either direction reveals the community’s diverse background. Bakeries where Spanish is required sit next to Korean fish markets, and Russian bodegas.
Grocery stores in the area tend to carry only conventional fruits and vegetables which have travelled halfway across the world and been heavily with sprayed pesticides. In the rare chance they have organic produce, the prices are high, a carton of raspberries costing anywhere from $4 to $6. By failing to get the full nutritional value of fruits and vegetables, people become more susceptible to diabetes, obesity, high blood-pressure and a variety of other nutritionally related illnesses.
“Once fruit is picked the enzymes start to die off, causing produce to lose nutrients over time,” said Jasmin Ilkay, a registered dietician and adjunct professor in NYU’s Nutrition Department. “The enzyme lycopene is what turns tomatoes red, but it also helps to prevent cancer.”
In part of the City’s ongoing attempts to increase healthy food access and food awareness, the Department of Health has partnered with GrowNYC’s Greenmarkets to offer free, bilingual classes aimed at teaching community members how to properly prepare the fruits and vegetables they’ve purchased at the market. The Stellar Farmers Market program has held over 11,800 workshops and cooking demonstrations in low-income communities, reaching over 293,000 participants since 2009, according to the 2017 Food Metrics Report.
“There’s a family that comes here every Sunday and they go to three different Greenmarkets to buy produce,” said Pierina Arias, a Greenmarket employee of 11 years, known among market attendees as ‘the mayor of Jackson Heights’. “And then the wife goes home and cooks with the recipes we provide.”
Photo 2 A display of recipes offered by Greenmarket at their stand.
Participants also receive a $2 ‘Health Buck’ coupon after the session which can be used to purchase fruits and vegetables at any Greenmarket location. Greenmarkets also accept Electronic Bank Transfer (EBT) cards, allowing any of the 1.7 million New Yorkers - 20% of the City’s total population - who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to purchase locally-grown, nutrient rich produce. This past year, Greenmarket initiated a policy which grants shoppers Health Bucks for every $5 they spend using SNAP, increasing buying power by 40%, according to the 2017 GrowNYC Annual Report.
And while the price of local produce remains higher than what’s found in a conventional grocery store, with apples running at about $2 per pound and sweet potatoes hitting $4 per pound, shoppers believe the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term cost.
“One customer said, I know I’m spending more money but I’m saving money in the long run because I’m so eating much healthier,” Arias said.
The distinction between ‘healthier’ and ‘healthy’ is an important part of the aspirations of improved food access.
“Imagine if every exhausted parent who picks up their kid from after-school, 6 p.m., puts a banana in their hands instead of chips,” said Dr. Beth Weitzman, an NYU Public Policy professor who specialized in policies relating to the urban poor and emphasizes the impact of small steps. “You’d be making a great deal of progress.”
The act of cooking food at home also has nutritional benefits in and of itself.
“People eat 40 to 60 grams more of fruits and vegetables a week if they cook at home,” Ilkay said, citing multiple studies conducted in recent years surrounding the impact of home cooking.
In Jackson Heights, cooking classes occur every weekend, though on a much smaller scale.
“The idea is to show them that if I can make it out here,” Lee said, gesturing to her simple set-up of a single pot, a bowl for mixing, and a set of double burners laid across the foldable plastic table. “You can do it too.” As she prepared another round of chorizo and potato tacos, topping them off with cilantro, she effortlessly switched from English to Spanish and informed passers-by that the meal was made entirely from ingredients found at the market that day.
Various stalls throughout the Jackson Heights’ Greenmarket offered a similar experience, preparing simple dishes which could be skewered and sampled using toothpicks. At the stall for Lani’s Farm, a vegetable farm based in southern New Jersey, customers could find simple ingredient lists scrawled around the edge of the paper sampling plate in thick black marker. And with the farmers doing the cooking themselves, they were more than happy to answer customer questions about the growing process.
Photo 3 Shoppers sample freshly cooked dishes from Lani's Farm.
“It’s more important now for people to know where their food is coming from,” said Tom Toigo, a local farmer from Ronnybrook Farm who has been working with Greenmarket for close to 11 years. “You get to talk to the people behind your food and ask questions that you wouldn’t be able to at a supermarket.”
By building a better lifestyle for themselves, parents are also helping to build a strong foundation for the future.
In the two-block radius of the Jackson Heights Greenmarket, families of all different backgrounds wander the stalls, discussing recipes for dinner in various languages and accents while they fight to tame wide-eyed children. “This community has a lot of kids,” said Arias, waving to a young-boy happily snacking on an apple bigger than his fist. “They’re learning about all of these new vegetables and flowers and they’re so excited to come to the market and see it all in front of them.”
Photo 4 A list of the farms and bakeries selling at Sunday's Greenmarket.
The connection between farm and table is quickly being lost as globalization has allowed more foods than ever to be available just behind those sliding glass doors, shining under the fluorescent lighting.
“We’re impressing upon these kids that their food doesn’t come from supermarkets,” said Toigo, who teaches classes at Greenmarket’s Union Square location. “It comes from farms.”
However, the reliance on local produce also means a reduction in variety, especially in the off-season.
“Sometimes in this conversation about local sourcing, we forget that this isn’t California, and this isn’t Florida,” said Dr. Weitzman, looking out into a courtyard of towering cement. “Do we really want to be telling people that they should be relying on this very limited diet?”
Of Greenmarket’s 51 locations, the Jackson Heights market is one of the few available in lower-income communities that operates year-round. Other markets in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, however, have felt the impact of a limited variety.
“People stop coming once the corn and tomatoes stop,” Arias said. This restricts the time of interest to ‘high-season’, the two-month period between July and September when those staple crops are most readily being harvested.
Though there are also alternatives which often go ignored.
“Old fruits and vegetables that travel a long distance can get worn out, and canned is terrible,” Dr. Weitzman said. “But frozen broccoli, frozen spinach, they’re actually fine and they’re full of nutrients. And they’re often better than fruits and vegetables that have to travel even a moderate distance.”
Frozen fruits and vegetables are picked and packaged at their peak-ripeness, giving them the same nutritional value as fresh produce, according to a recent study at the University of California, Davis. In some instances, such as with broccoli, frozen produce had an even higher vitamin content than its freshly picked counterpart.
For neighborhoods that are interested in accessing farm fresh food, but which don’t allow for a full-scale farmers markets, GrowNYC works within the community to establish Youthmarkets.
Beyond bringing additional access to fresh produce, Youthmarkets also serve as an extra link between farmers and underserved communities and provide youths the opportunity to earn money and learn small-business skills.
However, while well intentioned, programs like Greenmarkets and Youthmarkets are only beginning to create solutions to a much larger issue.
“People in poverty face a lot of nutritional issues,” Dr. Weitzman said. “[Greenmarkets, etc.] are really intended simply to get people thinking about this and to get the issue a bit more salient, however they tend to reach very few people. They themselves are not going to change anything, they’re just consciousness raising.”
But for the few they are able to reach the impact can be life changing.
“Just having people come up to me and say, ‘I remember you’,” Arias said, sitting back in her plastic chair. “It’s good to hear thanks and know that I’m making even a small difference in their lives.”