I’ve launched my own little investigation into NJ produce today to try to determine why, at the height of strawberry season, I was unable to buy anything but California strawberries at all of the major local grocery stores (Shop Rite, Foodtown, etc.). I can not comprehend how I could have literally driven past a field of strawberries one mile from the Middletown Shop Rite and yet that Shop Rite chose to get its berries from three thousand miles away. Unbelievable, right? So, but anyway, before unleashing the fury of a CitizenSpeak campaign on the NJDA, (update: see comments below. It’s the grocery store produce buyers who are better targets of an email campaign) I sent an email this AM looking for an explanation:
Hello.
I’m wondering if there is some explanation for why, at the height of strawberry season, I was only able to purchase california strawberries at all the major grocery stores I shop at (Foodtown, Shop Rite, etc.)? With summer upon us now, will I need to shop exclusively at road stands and farmer’s markets to buy NJ produce or will there be some concerted effort to have the Garden State represented in the produce departments of our grocery stores?
Thanks so much for your time!
I feel a bit curmudgeon-like writing emails like that but I mean I really, really like food. So if I don’t care about where my berries come from, who will? Anyway, I’ll post any responses here.
I think I remember it was in What To Eat by Marion Nestle that I read her same complaints about local produce in NY-area groceries. I think one problem is over the supply chain. Groceries get locked into their suppliers who give them produce from wherever they can get it the cheapest and at the right volume. Local producers may be closer, but they may not be cheaper or able to deliver the number of strawberries needed by the all the stores in the chains. So, yes, you probably will have to shop at stands to get local stuff.
Superstores are a nail in the coffin of the American Dream… Small groceries, if they could survive, would undoubtedly use local produce, since dealing with local growers would for them be cheapest (I imagine). Our world becomes more and more cookie-cut with the overpowering superstore. My great-grandparents were able to raise my grandmother in old Baltimore by running a mom and pop grocery (above which my grandmother was born). That was a realization of the American Dream… Now, the American Dream is either rising up the corporate ladder, or finding a great technologically savvy business (which I have all the hopes and expectations that our own Diamond Jim will do VERY successfully), or buying a cash cow franchise, or parlaying real estate into a billion dollar bank account… But even the small coffee shop can barely survive nestled in between the monstrous Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts… Localities should remain famous for what they produce… Come to Jersey for the best damn tomatoes in the country!!! Not, Get ‘em before we ship ‘em all to Texas!!
So, I sent that email to the NJDA as well as the NJ Farm Bureau. The NJDA was very responsive and indicated that the strawberry crop in NJ is too small for local grocers to stock. She indicated that blueberries should be another matter, but since I haven’t seen them anywhere the NJDA person suggestion talking to the produce buyer at my local grocery store. She also indicated that the Super Foodtown on 35 in Ocean is a regular buyer of NJ produce. That’s a hike for us but maybe useful for some WBB readers.
I think what’s really needed is a massive consumer-driven initiative where produce managers get to hear that shoppers want local produce instead of berries that have traveled a few thousand miles. I think the farm stand and farmer’s markets are a bit of a hoax since buyers are not informed that the tomatoes that they’re buying in June are not (nay, could not possibly be) from the farm stand they’re stopping at.
Anyway, if anyone can get their hands on a directory listing of all of the NJ grocery produce buyers, I’ll setup a citzenspeak campaign ASAP. Also, the NJFB has not yet responded to the email, FWIW.
wait till you see the garden in my back yard. its the one i told you about at the wilders a month ago. i threw every seed i could muster up into a 6×8 area and watered and miracle grew the heck out of it. now i have corn and many other things racing out of the ground thick and i have no idea what most of it is. if you can help id some, please come by and let me know.
For the record, I bought two pints of New Jersey Blueberries (from Hammondton) in the Shop-Rite today for $1.49 per. All the chains seem to have them, according to last weekend’s advertising flyers. Chris, I could probably i.d. your plants, but then what?