Dear CSA Members,
It was a warm and balmy day in San Francisco…could have been Acapulco, 800 and humid. There were lots of regulars raving about the fruit, but also bemoaning the end of Cal Reds. But no matter, they were still happy to have the Summersets and the Autumn Flames.
So I was really enjoying the day until this one customer came. He was young, tall, lean and very blonde, and was holding his small child. What he did was a perfect example of how wasteful and wrong our food system is here in the good ol’ US of A.
He proceeded to pick over at least 15 of the most beautiful Summerset peaches I’ve ever grown. He picked up one peach at a time, squeezed it, smelled it, examined it, then put it back into the display and grabbed another one and repeated the process. As I stood there in front of my scale I witnessed him repeat this ritual a dozen more times before he abandoned that display and went on to yet another of a different variety, the Autumn Flames. He did it there again, finally selecting three or four of them plus a couple of Emerald Beauts, and then he brought them up to the scale to weigh and pay. When I told him how much it was, he said, “Oh, that’s too much.” And walked off. I was angered and amazed by his behavior.
But actually, I see this fussy selecting of fruit all the time at the farmers’ markets so I’m kind of used to it. It is one of the many reasons our food system in the US is all wrong: since consumers are allowed to handle fruits and vegetables in this manner, retailers will buy only products that are durable enough to withstand the rough handling. Even so, at the end of the day this type of behavior results in a very high percentage of product that cannot be sold, and so it is thrown away. Meanwhile, back on the farm, we farmers are trained to pick everything “before it’s time” knowing that otherwise retail buyers will not buy it. So in the end we all lose, because we pay higher cost for food that is less satisfying and less nutritious that creates more waste to send to land-fills.
You have allowed us to choose fruit for you, sticking with us even when it is not always to your liking. We appreciate that you, as CSA members, understand the real value of food and reject that system.