In praise of out-of-season fruit

[russ parsons]

So there I was, eating my cherries, thinking about Russ's structural and aesthetic arguments and trying to figure out with which I disagree more, when I noticed on the box that these cherries are distributed by a company called Columbia Marketing International, with an address of 2525 Euclid Ave. Wenatchee, WA 98807. What's going on here? The Washington cherry people couldn't possibly be selling cherries from Chile. Well, yes, they could and are. A look at the Columbia Marketing International website ( http://www.cmiapples.com/ ) indicates that this company, which handles 10% of the cherries grown in Washington, sells Washington produce in season and apples, pears and cherries from Chile and Argentina when Washington produce is not in season. Of course, for all I know CMI is some awful corporation, but the zero sum equation doesn't look so simple when the fruit packers in Washington are selling cherries from Chile. And while I think it's wonderful that people in California want to support their local producers, I'd like to point out that those local producers, as well as the entire state of California, would go bankrupt tomorrow if everybody else in the world only bought local produce. The future is simply not going to arrange itself according to a Von Thunen-like model of concentric development where each city has a core, some suburbs, and a bunch of farms growing produce for that population. It wouldn't even be doable if you mandated it by totalitarian decree, and certainly it's not going to happen ever, so forget it. The train has left the station, the truck has left the loading dock, the ship has set sail, etc., on the reality that for the next few centuries we're likely to be shipping food all over the place.

The idea of living with the seasons seems nice, especially the virtuous program of self-imposed deprivation whereby one eats only specified foods at specified times, but come on, are any of these foods really local? They've been schlepped from Europe, Asia, the cradle of civilization, wherever. They've been hybridized -- even those "heirloom" varietals -- and forced to grow on schedules determined by man in places where nature never intended them to be. You can grow anything in a hothouse if you feel like paying for it to be done. The exercise in line-drawing based on geography ignores some big issues like, well, like geography. I have a fruit schedule too, it's just that mine is based on what's available at Fairway and Costco -- institutions no more artificial than farms, as far as I'm concerned.

And you know, I buy lots and lots and lots of local produce. I love local produce. There are these nice hippie-commie farmers, Debbie and Pete Kavakos, who provide the produce for the Yorkville CSA. During summers when we're not traveling, we sign up for a share of the CSA and every week we go to the Church of the Heavenly Rest and pick up black plastic garbage bags full of fruit covered in fresh, seasonal, local dirt. We read all the CSA propaganda while we frantically try to figure out what to do with 20 heads of lettuce. I shop at the Union Square Greenmarket too, when I'm not engaging in my futile personal boycott on account of retrograde management practices. All told, I'm sure I spend more money on local produce per person in my household than 99% of people in my demographic. My diet is so diverse the vitamin companies should be studying me. But there's a difference between buying local produce and buying only local produce. Because right now it's January for crying out loud. The is no local produce, or at least not much. A couple of hundred years ago at this time of year around here people just didn't eat anything fresh -- they ate stuff from jars, and they ate roots, or they starved to death. It was ugly. Now we have cherries from Chile. Thank you lord for my cherries from Chile. I promise if you give them to me every year I will never, ever question the aesthetics of shipping cherries halfway around the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

←

fat guy, what an amazing collection of straw-man arguments you have set up! truly, the legal profession must be in mourning.

1) arguing that trying to eat seasonally is somehow suspect because major ag firms on the west coast don't support it is truly a fascinating twist. i don't even know where to start ... maybe "that's the problem, exactly"?

2) arguing that because plant species have been imported, that there is no such thing as eating locally ... again, WTF? i'm not talking about some back-to-nature bs, i'm talking about eating the food that tastes best when it tastes best.

3) (as with no. 1) to equate california growers with any idea of seasonality is whole specious. california agriculture grows more than half of the fruits and vegetables consumed in this country. they are the problem (well, as far as seasonality is concerned ... on the other hand, they have been tremendously successful at growing cheap food, which is not something to sneer at).

4) actually, i suspect in the 21st century the ag distribution pattern is going to look offer at lot more options than the 1970 model you described. if you look at the way high-end groceries are changing their buying, i suspect we're going to be a lot closer to the farmers market model. already places like whole foods and fairway markets are contracting with local farmers to supply some of their produce.

will this ever be the dominant pattern? of course not. it's a little more expensive and most people don't really give a shit. but i think that people who love food should support it as much as they can.

[russ parsons]

i do want to try to make one thing clear: making the food choices i make is not some kind of noble act of self-flagellation. i'm sure if i saw something that looked really good and i wanted it, i would buy it. i guess if you want to put it in theological terms, my philosophy is not one of refusal, but of wider acceptance. there are so many good things to eat, it's much more interesting for me to take the seasons as they come and eat what they offer.

[cakewalk]

i do want to try to make one thing clear: making the food choices i make is not some kind of noble act of self-flagellation. i'm sure if i saw something that looked really good and i wanted it, i would buy it. i guess if you want to put it in theological terms, my philosophy is not one of refusal, but of wider acceptance. there are so many good things to eat, it's much more interesting for me to take the seasons as they come and eat what they offer.

←

Now why didn't you just say this in the first place, instead of making all those nasty remarks about New Yorkers that made me want to kick you in the teeth?

So Fat Guy, is this the new hip relationship with food we should all aspire to: "If I want it, anything is legitimate"?

Jinmyo, please stand clear of that thing when the thaw begins!! (Go out and buy some cherries!)

[ruthcooks]

Living your life in the Midwest (and many other parts of the US) and eating only the local and seasonal produce means you would never taste oranges or any other citrus fruit, artichokes, avocadoes, almonds, bananas...the list is endless. I never saw a raw fig until I was almost 40. Pass the cherries.

[Busboy]

Which brings me to a third reason for eating seasonally, one that I really hesitate to bring up, since it verges on the theological. Maybe it’s just me turning 50, with the years seeming to whiz by, but I really find it comforting the way eating each of my favorite foods in their own time slows down the clock. Cherries will be here in due time (about the middle of February, in fact). I can wait. And then will come good strawberries. Before you know it, we’ll start getting Blenheim apricots. Why in the world would you want to rush things?

←

Pretty fucking easy to do when you get cherries in February. February! Those of us who actually have four seasons may get a craving or two for fresh fruit between now and June.

BTW -- I still don't actually believe that FG got decent cherries from Chile. I think he's just bomb-throwing because Alice Waters said soemthing ditzy again or he read one to many restaurant opening press releases on recycled organic hand-knitted paper touting their commitment to "artisanal growers, and the local bounty."

[russ parsons]

I still don't actually believe that FG got decent cherries from Chile.  I think he's just bomb-throwing because Alice Waters said soemthing ditzy again or he read one to many restaurant opening press releases on recycled organic hand-knitted paper touting their commitment to "artisanal growers, and the local bounty."

←

fat guy toss bombs? ya think?

(edited for complete disclosure): alice irritates me sometimes, too.

Edited January 13, 2005 by russ parsons (log)

[petite tête de chou]

The icicle is now about twenty feet long.

←

my sides hurt

[viva]

You could just take a similar approach to the drinkers who justify a morning drink by saying "It's 5:00 somewhere"...so... cherries from Chile? That fruit's in season somewhere...

[The Hersch]

Yeah but. I have a place in Shenandoah County, Virginia, which, as you might imagine, is in the Shenandoah Valley. Now, the Shenandoah Valley is one of the world's great apple-growing regions. Not just a place where some apples are grown, but one of the Great Apple-Growing Regions of the World. I was up there in October, which could reasonably be called the height of apple season, and I went to the one major food emporium in the town of Mount Jackson, which is a Food Lion. In the Shenandoah Valley, at the height of apple season. Within two miles of at least one major commercial apple orchard. They had maybe eight varieties of apples, from two places: Washington State and New Zealand. (And since October in New Zealand is springtime, the New Zealand apples were at least a half-year old.) I don't understand the economics of that, let alone the aesthetics. Why can't I get Virginia apples in a Virginia apple-country store at the height of the Virginia apple season? Why does the US import apples? Where do all the Virginia apples go? You can get them at farmers' markets and such, but you never see them in ordinary supermarkets in FREAKING VIRGINIA. There's something seriously wrong with this system.

[fifi]

Oddly enough, I was just reading some Pre-Columbian history and find that the elite of the Aztecs and many other groups before them, had runners bringing fresh seafood into the high valley long ago. Some of the facades of the pyramids at Teotihuacan have seashells as a prominent part of the decoration. That was long before the Aztecs.

Pass the cherries.

[ahr]

[image deleted in the interest of saving bandwidth]

The icicle is now about twenty feet long.

←

The very icicle of Damocles.

[EdS]

I think part of the problem with getting consumers to buy in-season produce is that many consumers don't even know what is in season. What's available at the local supermarket, even a hippy organic-only healthfood chain, isn't much of a guide.

[Mottmott]

I eat shipped in citrus, avacados, bananas, pineapples, etc. I confess it. All despite my avowed gastronomic and ecological preference for local and seasonal. Otherwise, I'd never eat them. But when it comes to luscious, juice-dripping, sweet white peaches, corn, and other fruits that ARE grown locally in their too brief season, I simply cannot deal with the disappointment trucked in with their distant simulacra. So I can't make a peach pie in January, well, what's wrong with an apricot/prune tart of dried fruit transforming their summer sweetness into a January treat that would be unacceptably heavy in the August heat?

[fifi]

To continue on the historical theme . . . Cacao beans were traded extensively in middle America for eons. Indeed, they were a form of currency. The spice trade between middle Asia and Europe was extensive for many hundreds of years. Even ancient Rome imported food in tremendous quantities from northern Africa. Oranges from southern Spain were a particular treat in Christmas stockings in England from way back. And there is some question as to how much trade went on during the stone age basis analysis of garbage heaps. Bottom line . . . "local and seasonal" may have never been entirely the fate of man in our history.

Pass the cherries.

[Jinmyo]

I went down to the Byward Market this morning to do some groceries.

I had to hold on to the side of the car, grab ahold of the top of a parking meter, and then inch my way down the frozen sidewalk.

[ruthcooks]

I went down to the Byward Market this morning to do some groceries.

I had to hold on to the side of the car, grab ahold of the top of a parking meter, and then inch my way down the frozen sidewalk.

←

And, after all that, they didn't have any cherries?

You need some of these!

[tanabutler]

Fat Guy is probably right. I can think of no clearly convincing rational reason for eating seasonally and locally--particularly if you think your only choice is between crappy trucked-in Safeway produce and crappy shipped-in Chilean. The standard arguments are full of holes. Eating seasonally and locally is not better for you, at least not in any medically measurable way. It’s not always necessarily cheaper, though I think in the long run buying things at the peak of the harvest usually is. And it doesn’t always taste better—there are plenty of mediocre farmers at even the best farmers market. In addition to eating seasonally and locally, you have to spend the time to find the good ones.

Furthermore, I have found that even trying to argue the point only gets up people’s noses. (This seems to be particularly true for New Yorkers, who believe themselves to be a unique race singularly blessed by a just and discerning god to receive the very best of everything. When something happens that hints otherwise, they begin hurling imprecations and shrieking heresies. It all gets so tiring.)

That said, and admitting in advance the futility of my effort, there are a couple of reasons that I find compelling for doing buying locally and seasonally. The first is structural, the other aesthetic.

The reason there is so much crappy produce in the stores today—honestly, wherever you live, not just in Manhattan—is complicated, stemming from historic, artistic and economic factors. But the single overriding factor it is there is that people continue to buy it. It’s like watching Fox or, god forbid, The WB. You watch because there’s nothing else on, the ratings go up, and good lord, here comes “Who’s Your Daddy.” Every time you choose an out-of-season cherry from Chile, you are encouraging someone to ship more of them in. At the same time, you are discouraging someone else from growing something better (it is always easier and more cost-effective to do shoddy work than good and agriculture is a zero-sum game).

The aesthetic argument is harder to pin down because it deals with notions of connoisseurship (which sounds so much nicer than the equally descriptive “geekiness”). Connoisseurship is not about consumption, but discernment. It’s not about satisfying your appetite, but educating it. And doing that means eating widely as well as deeply. A connoisseur is not someone who drinks only great Bordeaux; he also loves good Beaujolais. It’s not about loving truffles, but also appreciating a perfectly cooked Brussels sprout. Eating without regard for the season, your food choices naturally fall in a fairly narrow range of things you already know you like. You never discover anything outside those boundaries. You never stretch to understand. You may love something, but it’s only because you don’t know any better.

I have no ill feelings toward someone who chooses to eat Chilean cherries in January, but frankly it would never occur to me to do that. Why would I want cherries when I can have Meyer lemons, Oro Blanco grapefruits and those great little mandarins that are just coming in, or the last of the gala apples or Comice pears.

Which brings me to a third reason for eating seasonally, one that I really hesitate to bring up, since it verges on the theological. Maybe it’s just me turning 50, with the years seeming to whiz by, but I really find it comforting the way eating each of my favorite foods in their own time slows down the clock. Cherries will be here in due time (about the middle of February, in fact). I can wait. And then will come good strawberries. Before you know it, we’ll start getting Blenheim apricots. Why in the world would you want to rush things?

←

If eGullet were like Readerville.com, and had a Posting Hall of Fame, I would put this entire post in there so fast your browser would spin. (Not that I don't understand how godawful it must be to live in Manhattan in January and be bored with food and fruit. )

Russ, you always make such good sense. I am not judging this like a debate or, god forbid, a legal case, granting points to either side. It's not a competition for me. I just find myself resonating. "The heart has its reasons..." (though Russ's post is not without sound reason).

Side note (really more to the person who mentioned Brix upthread): I do believe that the nutrients in fruits and vegetables (not to mention the complexity of flavor—including Brix, which I did not name in conjunction with apple farmer Bill Denevan's report to me) deterioriate as soon as the produce is picked. I defer to you in the realm of science, but if you do disagree, I will have to take your refutation to my friends at CAFF, so they can take a look.

But really, Russ: a beautiful and poetic post.

[rooftop1000]

Can I first say by the time an Oregon spring cherry gets to NJ it tastes the same as one from Chile....I keep trying but cherries do nothing for me. But if I see one more oregon apple or even better "produce of USA" apple 25 miles from a NYS orchard I will scream in the store...no one will notice I am sure.

Now our local supermarket has some damn good produce, stuff I cant figure out why they have even.... This is a seriously Anglo-American mountain folk town and they so much asian and south american produce....

All that said except for apples I buy on price if green grapes or asparagus are .99 cents a pound in January they can come home with me...the grapes dont actually make it home I eat them in the car.

If we were to eat locally in winter what would that mean....old apples, storage onions, ummm pumpkin, potatoes, ok butternut squash that "keeps" right....

winter in most states/provinces is the PITS cherry pits not withstanding

T

[Timh]

I don't care where my produce comes from as long as the quality is great and the price is right. Let the farmers compete on quality and price.

←

Wow, so its all about cheap food. Canned is a great buy, so is fast food. Farmers in the U.S. vs farmers in Chile, a fair fight? What do you think they make as a wage down there? Family farms? More like sharecroppers for the big agro companies covering their shipping cost by having indentured farmers in their fold. Seasonal food is so quaint isn't it?

Edited January 16, 2005 by Timh (log)

[Timh]

I think part of the problem with getting consumers to buy in-season produce is that many consumers don't even know what is in season. What's available at the local supermarket, even a hippy organic-only healthfood chain, isn't much of a guide.

←

Exactly, which is why some responses on this site are so puzzling. I would think people here would care about the integrity of the products they cook and eat, aparently its just talk for some.

Edited January 16, 2005 by Timh (log)

[Timh]

We're not in a Steinbeck novel, folks...transportation, packaging and delivery has greastly improved since 1920...its ok to eat a pear in May or asparagus in January.

←

I'm sorry, but this is so not what "buy fresh, buy local" is about. There are myriad reasons not to eat out-of-season produce that traveled thousands of miles to get to your table. Chief among them are environmental reasons (the cost of shipping in terms of wasted resources), which, believe it or not, is a huge factor that deserves consideration. Environmentally, the chances that those berries you're eating from Central and South America are also coated with a lovely dusting of some toxic chemicals that you won't necessarily taste—and are you aware that berries especially retain residues of pesticides, and are therefore recommended to eat when only grown organically? (I'm not such a purist, believe me, but I will no longer eat any berries grown with pesticides, period.)

There are the costs you pay out of pocket, but there are the hidden costs you are paying by depleting natural resources and, hey, your local and national economy when you give your money to a megalith supermarket, even though very little of your money will benefit the farmer who grew that food.

From the Community Alliance for Family Farmers web site (QUOTED IN ITS ENTIRETY WITH PERMISSION FROM CAFF TO ME): Five reasons to buy local:

Five reasons to Buy Local

1. Local produce tastes better and it’s better for you.

A recent study showed that fresh produce loses nutrients quickly. In a weeklong (or more) delay from harvest to dinner table, sugars turn to starches, plant cells shrink, and produce loses its vitality. Even in California, produce may have traveled surprisingly far to get to your grocery store. Food grown in your own community was probably picked within the past day or two. It is crisp, sweet and loaded with flavor.

2. Local food supports local farm families.

Fewer than one million Americans now claim farming as their primary occupation (less than 1%). Farming is a vanishing lifestyle. And no wonder: the farmer today gets less than 10 cents of the retail food dollar. Local farmers who sell directly to consumers cut out the many middlemen and get full retail price for their food - which means farm families can afford to stay on the farm, doing the work they love.

3. Local food protects genetic diversity.

In the modern industrial agriculture system, produce varieties are chosen for their ability to ripen simultaneously and withstand harvesting equipment. Shippers demand produce with a tough skin that can survive packing, transport, and a long shelf life in the store. Only a handful of hybrid varieties of each fruit and vegetable meet those rigorous demands, so there is little genetic diversity in the plants grown. In contrast, local farmers that sell direct to you or direct to your local restaurants and grocery stores grow a huge number of varieties selected because they have the best flavors, provide a long harvest season, and come in an array of eyecatching colors. Many varieties are heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation because they taste good. These old varieties contain genetic material from hundreds or even thousands of years of human selection. They may someday provide the genes needed to adapt to a changing climate.

4. Local food preserves open space, and supports a clean environment.

As the value of direct-marketed fruits and vegetables increases, selling farmland for development becomes less likely. A well-managed family farm is a place where the resources of fertile soil and clean water are valued. Good stewards of the land grow cover crops that prevent erosion and replace nutrients used by their crops. Cover crops also capture emissions and help combat global warming. In addition, the patchwork of fields, hedgerows, ponds and buildings is the perfect environment for many beloved species of wildlife. That landscape will survive only as long as farms are financially viable. When you buy locally grown food, you are doing something proactive about preserving the agricultural landscape.

5. Local food is about the future.

By supporting local farmers today, you can help ensure that there will be farms in your community tomorrow, and that future generations will have access to nourishing, flavorful and abundant food.

Primarily, in terms of flavor, there is another component for local/seasonal. Russ Parsons dialogued with Mimi Sheraton in this Q&A, after she complained about the terrible Driscoll strawberries she ate in New York this year:

And could there be so churlish a visitor as to not love strawberry shortcake, when the berries are local and succulent and not the hollow, white Driscoll travesties from California, the state that in more ways than one, I consider a wasted miracle.

Hello? What?! You ate a strawberry that was designed to travel 3000 miles: why didn't you just salt a pingpong ball instead?

Russ Parsons countered:

it's important to recognize what travels and what doesn't (and what the costs of that travel are) [emphasis mine]. wasabi, a dried root, ground into a paste, will ship easily. even fish, as long as it is handled right, will ship fairly easily. a great strawberry, which is the very definition of fragility, will not. if you insist on buying strawberries when they are going to have to be shipped, there will be a farmer willing to grow them. and they will be something like the current favorite Camarosa--a strawberry-like fruit that will bend forks.

if you want, you could probably have them air-freighted, but even that probably wouldn't be enough to protect a great strawberry (i once had a farmer next-day me some fraises des boises ... they came in an elaborately protected series of boxes ... and they still had been smashed to jam).

But Mimi missed the whole point, clinging to the idea that Driscolls are the best California can do to bring a decent strawberry to the world. Which makes me think she needs to visit here some spring or summer, and go to a U-Pick or a farmers market and find out what she's missing.

Meanwhile, like Melkor (though I haven't recently enjoyed an expensive tropical vacation), I'm enjoying root crops, too, but we still have basil and other local stuff to make me happy. Citrus, oh yeah. Even canned tomatoes—if they're good enough for the Italians, they're good enough for me.

Finally, Food Routes: more on why buying local is so important.

EDITED to fix formatting.

←

A voice of reason. I think this thread is in the same spirit as the organic one.

Edited January 16, 2005 by Timh (log)

[jamiemaw]

Yes, yes, I know "fresh, seasonal and local" is all the rage. Apparently even Canadians think it's a good idea, and they have eleven months of winter.

So, I will be enjoying my cherries from Chile via Costco all week, and I hope the rest of you enjoy an eight-course tasting of winter root vegetables every night.

←

Taking a page from the production of ice wine in these chilly northern precincts, as well as the surging popularity of Siberian peach pie over the past few years, Canadians have taken matters into their own hands. Leaving our stone fruit up in the orchards until freeze-up (in late August, as Steven helpfully points out), has led to a boon in winter ice fruit production: apricots and peaches predominate the market.

The methodology parallels that of our acclaimed ice wines and is strictly controlled by the Ministry of Agriculture. The fruit must freeze naturally to minus 8 degrees Celsius for 48 continuous hours. The fruit is then picked and its concentrated essence separated from the frozen water. The resultant fruit (pulp and chunklets) is then made into pies, fruit leathers or refreshing winter bellinis.

Although production is still low, this initiative has resolved how always gracious Canadians can still eat 'local and seasonal' (if not exactly fresh), support our local farmers and avoid feeling vaguely like a military junta whenever we eat winter cherries. The concentrated flavour is its own reward; the fruit is said to have the lighthearted intensity of your own Kelly Ripa.

Sorry to hear about the anesthesia.

Edited January 16, 2005 by jamiemaw (log)

[EdS]

I don't care where my produce comes from as long as the quality is great and the price is right. Let the farmers compete on quality and price.

←

Wow, so its all about cheap food. Canned is a great buy, so is fast food. Farmers in the U.S. vs farmers in Chile, a fair fight? What do you think they make as a wage down there? Family farms? More like sharecroppers for the big agro companies covering their shipping cost by having indentured farmers in their fold. Seasonal food is so quaint isn't it?

←

You need to read more carefully. I said "quality and price" not just price.

[EdS]

I don't care where my produce comes from as long as the quality is great and the price is right. Let the farmers compete on quality and price.

←

Wow, so its all about cheap food. Canned is a great buy, so is fast food. Farmers in the U.S. vs farmers in Chile, a fair fight? What do you think they make as a wage down there? Family farms? More like sharecroppers for the big agro companies covering their shipping cost by having indentured farmers in their fold. Seasonal food is so quaint isn't it?

←

It is a fair fight as far as I'm concerned. I see local farmers, American agribusiness, and foreign producers as all in competition for my dollars. I set requirements for the produce I purchase. Whichever vendor can meet those requirements at the best price wins the competition for my dollars and I pull out my pocketbook. I'm a believer in economies of scale. If those "big agro companies" can deliver top-quality (repeat, top-quality) product in my hands for less than some family farm, I think that's just fine, and even a good thing in the grand scheme of things. I don't care whether the supplier is across the street, in Chile, or on Mars. I have plenty of other things to spend my hard-earned money on than giving preferential treatment to someone. If you want to pay higher prices than necessary to support a cause, feel free to vote with your dollars just as I do.

[Jinmyo]

Cool! Asparagus at $2.99!