Jay Dockendorf Photo
According to the label, this tomato traveled all the way from Canada to a New Haven “sustainable” farmers market.
It was for sale inside a box that read, “Native Hot House Tomatoes / 3 for $2.00 / Each for $0.75.”
Same goes for the cherries on sale at Beinecke Plaza on the Yale campus last Friday. Labeled “Connecticut Grown! $2.00 per lb,” they sat in a box marked “Cherries: product of the State of Washington.”
Over the past three weeks, strawberries from California and potatoes from Massachusetts were also for sale, along with honeydew melon, blueberries, broccoli, and yellow zucchini either labeled as grown within Connecticut or not bearing any label at all.
The sales took place at New Haven’s newest outdoor produce market, a weekly “Uncommon Market” organized by Yale Sustainable Dining, which advertises the events to the university community through weekly mass emails. It promotes itself as selling “sustainable” fare.
“Not exactly native,” grumbled one shopper checking out the labels at last week’s market.
As the market demonstrates, the definition of “sustainable” is amorphous. Does it mean organic, to protect the earth and consumers from pesticides? Does it mean local, to avoid burning fossil fuels in travel and to support nearby farmers?
Whatever it means, the question didn’t seem to concern most shoppers interviewed at the Uncommon Market. Most said they would ultimately rather buy cheap than local, organic produce. They weren’t up on the specifics of the market’s claims.
“It’s all from the Yale farm, right? Some of it?” asked Loren Olson, an undergraduate at Yale.
None of the produce for sale at Uncommon in fact comes from the Yale farm, a separate entity and department that sells its produce at CitySeed’s Saturday Wooster Square farmers market. CitySeed is a not-for-profit organization separate from Yale that runs weekly markets in neighborhoods throughout town.
Only some of the Uncommon Market produce bears any outward indication of its origins. Unlike at CitySeed markets, there are no representatives from the farms on hand to answer questions about the produce for sale.
Olson’s friend, Courtney Defeo, said she was sure that all the produce was sustainable, however, “I don’t really worry about sustainable; I’m just happy it’s cheap and tastes good,” she said.
Margaret Gorlin, a first-year graduate student in the behavioral marketing department of the Yale School of Management, said she generally buys produce from farmers markets because it tastes better than produce from supermarkets. Last Friday she bought tomatoes, peaches, blueberries and bread at Yale’s market. It was “slightly more expensive at the Wooster Square market,” she said.
“Yeah, I guess it is sustainable, and I really like that it comes from local farms,” she said.
“I definitely check [that produce is local] when I go to the supermarket, but not at the farmer’s market and not here,” she added.
The Dole strawberries came from California, where the fruit is still in season.
“But I don’t think it’s that big of a deal – I’d rather have strawberries than not have strawberries,” Gorlin said.
Tim Shea, who works for Yale University Press, normally buys produce from Stop & Shop. He said he found out about Uncommon through Yale Sustainable Dining’s Friday emails, which it has been sending for three weeks now. “It’s a good pitch,” Shea said. He was not aware that the produce was nationally distributed, but had assumed that Yale was somehow subsidizing the cost. “I prefer to buy local but practically speaking I go for price,” he said.
The market, which takes place on Fridays at noon in Beinecke (downtown inside Wall, College, Grove, and High streets), is the product of a collaboration between Uncommon, the “alternative” food set-up in Yale’s Commons building, and Yale Sustainable Dining, the department responsible for managing all of Yale’s dining halls. This is the market’s first year of operation.
FreshPoint, the distributor that handles all of Yale’s food purchases, was responsible for bringing together the goods for sale at Uncommon Market, according to Yale Sustainable Dining Purchasing Manager Gerry Remer.
In an interview with the Yale Daily News in 2009, FreshPoint Connecticut Executive Vice-President David Yandow said of his relationship with Yale, “Our goal here is to support local farmers. Big time.”
CitySeed permits only food grown in Connecticut to be sold in its markets. “All of our markets are producer-only, so everything that is brought to market is grown or produced by the vendor selling it,” Executive Director Erin Wirpsa Eisenberg reported via email. “We allow some exceptions to that — for example, sometimes we have markets at which no farmers are growing concord grapes, so we will allow the farmers who are attending that market to bring concord grapes in from other sources outside their farm.”
Yale cannot make that kind of commitment to local farmers, according to Sustainable Dining Manager Remer. “We serve 14,000 meals a day, so it’s impossible for us to have individual farmers coming to our back door,” she said.
The market is “offering [New Haven residents] an opportunity to get some produce into the area that they might not have otherwise had anymore,” Remer said, referring to the closing of Shaw’s Supermarket on Whalley.
Remer also mentioned cherries. “As much as they can get from local farmers, we have gotten. But we do supplement that with other products that there’s been a big interest in; we’ve brought in cherries that are not local,” she said.
Local cherries are grown in the area. They were sold by Chaplin Farms three weeks ago at CitySeed’s Fair Haven market. “We didn’t have access to them,” she said.
Chaplin Farms (of Chaplin, Conn.) has since run out of those cherries. A spokesperson for the farm said over the phone that mild weather and rain are believed to have caused an early harvest for many fruits. “Peaches are out, and plums are out,” she added.
As for the upcoming produce offerings at Uncommon market, Remer said, “As we go into the summer, it becomes more and more local.”
Here is a link to a calendar showing the seasonality of Connecticut-grown produce.
It's a shame that the produce isn't all local, like what CitySeed offers, but at least Yale Sustainable Dining is bringing fruits & vegetables into town to sell. The loss of Shaw's is a tough blow.
It's interesting that the prices are supposed to be higher than CitySeed's prices. I would think that the large California farms like Dole would bring prices down. Makes me feel even better about buying from CitySeed's farmers.
Does the Goatville market commit to locally grown produce as CitySeed does?