PRODUCE – SUMMER 2014
Usually I only discuss produce at length in reference to a specific, or class of specific dishes like salads, or in reference to a season. It’s such a vast field that one could concentrate on it alone and that’s not my niche. I’m interested in showing people how they can save money and still serve nutritious, tasty meals simply by exercising good sense. However, after last week’s post on meat prices this summer, it’s only logical to follow through with a few observations about fruits and vegetables because they’re the other major factor in meal planning.
The problem with discussing produce is that, not only is it such a vast category, but it has so many variables. Being quite blunt, there are only so many meats we consider edible, and the only ways weather or climate affects them is through their food supply. Fruits and vegetables are entirely dependent on weather and climate. The current drought in California is a perfect example. California farms are a major source of produce in the U.S. and without their crops; other sources have to fill the void. As a result, prices have already risen. It’s the old law of supply and demand again.
But this factor has always been there. A frosty season in Florida affects citrus fruits and juices; a wet late spring in the East affects tomatoes, melons, berries and peaches. It’s the same worldwide, weather has a huge effect on crop yield and as a result, on market prices Modern transportation and refrigeration methods have taken up a lot of the slack by importing produce but instead of just filling in a gap, often the price on a particular produce item, which is normally available, will rise simply because of a perceived demand.
Which brings me to the main theme of this discussion; produce prices this summer, or more accurately for the past few years. I love fruits and vegetables! I can never have enough on hand. I grew up in a state famous for its produce producing, though small by national standard, farms. We enjoyed the crop yields through Thanksgiving and by Valentine’s Day were ready for the spring ones to appear. Individual farm stands used to line the roads and even after land developers acquired many farms and several others consolidated their stands, there still remained many, many places to buy fresh produce. I admit to having been so spoiled that I took the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables for granted—until I moved to another state.
However, I recently visited old friends, and old favorite farm stands and found much the same, the ample amounts, quality and variety of produce on sale, but one thing changed –the prices. Though not quite as costly as the farmers ’market prices where I now live, they had one thing in common; they were comparable to or even slightly higher than the supermarkets’. I don’t believe any other generation has faced our current situation.
Who would have ever believed that prices in a farmers’ market for fresh picked local zucchini would be higher than for the zucchini last winter in the supermarket? Or that the cucumbers would be costlier than the “Seedless Marrows” in the same supermarkets? Zucchini and cucumbers are high yield crops which should be plentiful at this time of year, so what’s wrong?
Well I can’t answer all those questions, but I can offer a few conjectures. American farmers, at least, have had a rough time recently. As I’ve written many times over the past years, the failure of congress to come to an agreement and pass a renewed farm bill, leaving the one from 2008 in place, has hurt them. They couldn’t count on subsidies, as operating costs rose, as did their general cost of living along with the rest of us. Many of the special power plants that were supposed to generate affordable energy for their machinery fell into disarray for lack of funding, and they had to rely on municipal sources at municipal rates. Labor rates are up, because the workers have to live in our economy too, and gas has become a major expense for everyone. Imagine the farmer with all his equipment!
Then, of course, there’s the expense of transporting to market and all the middlemen that involves. There are the packagers, the transporters, the brokers who arrange every step to bring produce to the market. Nowadays, most produce we see in stores comes out of a communal, regionally located warehouse. All the large stores in, perhaps several surrounding states, buy their produce from there. If one store has fresher, or more variety, it’s simply that their buyer paid more or got there first. All the people involved in this process need to be paid. These costs really add up and come out the retail end to land on the consumer
The larger farm owner, who wants to sell locally perhaps to keep the farm name in the public eye, or as a community gesture, often holds back a portion of his crop but at his own expense. That raises the price. So does the small farmer who has nowhere else to sell his produce and needs to meet all his expenses in a season, but is paying retail rates to grow and bring his crop to market. On top of everything the farmer, no matter where he is located, probably lives near a big development and is paying elevated property taxes as well. The bottom line is that our cost of living in the U.S. can no longer support the old idea of driving out to the country to get fresh produce at a bargain
One thing that never ceases to give me pause is that a crop can be grown, harvested, packaged, transported from Central America or China and still undersell the U.S. grown. Sure, labor may be cheaper elsewhere, but the packaging materials and the cost of such long transportation should mitigate the final price more. The fact that there is still such a difference would indicate that fewer middlemen are the answer. But that ain’t gonna happen soon!
What’s a consumer to do? Well One advantage of frozen produce is that it has all the nutrients of fresh. My private solutions are:
1) Watch the flyers for sales on frozen produce – but beware the package weight-aim for 16 oz. packages in bags.
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2) I have begun to frequent The Dollar Store—not any dollar store but the one operating under that specific name—for 16oz packages of frozen vegetables and also recently, for blueberries. They rival the supermarket brands in quality and are always available. Unfortunately, they too are being overrun by the steam-in–bag options
3) There are a few items that are easy to home freeze, and better for it. String beans are much better bought fresh and frozen than any packaged brand on the market; edamme, lima beans, peas and corn are others. The firmer vegetables with smooth skin do best.
Blanch them briefly, dry them well on paper towels, freeze them, initially spread out on waxed-paper lined cookie sheets, and then bag them. The more fragile ones like broccoli, asparagus and spinach are best left to the pros, where they can be flash-frozen.
A) I have tried zucchini, yellow squash and eggplant, but they too are better processed commercially. Tomatoes freeze but only for use in sauce or in a casserole. Even the top chefs advise using the canned diced when fresh isn’t an option, during the off-season months or simply for cooking. Moral = save money, keep fresh for salads.
4) Fruits follow the same rule, but without the blanching. Blueberries and cranberries do well, and so do grapes and bananas-unpeeled. Fairly ripe peaches, blanched to remove the skin, and sliced can also be frozen this way for a winter pie. For other fruits, again, it’s better to rely on commercial methods, unless you want to make a puree. That always freezes well be it raspberries or pumpkin.
One thing the produce prices this summer have told us, if we hadn’t anticipated it, is that the days of looking forward to eating our fill of summer’s bounty are past, both in regard to affordability and availability. This is a nationwide problem. I related my experience here on the East Coast. A friend with a small restaurant in Seattle tells me that after several unsuccessful trips into the country to find farm produce last year, he decided it wasn’t worth the time or gas expense and is dealing with the produce manager in his favorite supermarket now.
Weather, that old foe of farmers, in the form of droughts over the past few years, has of course affected this situation, but the larger contributing factors are the sale of farms to land developers, the increasing government regulations coupled with the hesitancy to act on or enforce legislation that helps the farmer, the increased cost of living and operating expenses and difficulty in finding workers. Of course the lure of opting to contract a crop to one buyer is an attractive solution to the problem of meeting expenses for a farmer but that means less product gets to the small markets as well.
I can’t help but wonder if this decline in the amount of fresh produce isn’t more than just another sign of the times. Not only did we enjoy it all summer, but reveled in the excess toward the season’s end. My Mother, whom I’ve mentioned had a knack for freezing blueberries and sliced peaches, also froze bags of kernels of the local sweet, white corn. My Sister-in-law made huge weekend lunches of fried tomato slices and bacon, another costly item today. I always had a large bowl of ratatouille in the fridge. It was an easy side, the kids loved to heap it on bread, with or without cheese or meat and once a week I made a casserole adding rice and ham, beef or hot dogs.
Mainly I remember my Grandmother. She loved peaches, and the family made sure she got two bushels each week She kept a bowl in every room, and my cousins, who summered with her, and I habitually grabbed one as we ran out to play, or plopped down in front of T.V. and we always had a couple in our beach bags.. We never even thought of junk food, much less crave it. As I’ve grown older it has occurred to me that my smart Grandmother loved more than peaches. It’s a pity in our increasingly health conscious but less healthy world that similar options are becoming harder to find or to afford each year.
