In late 2018, I had the opportunity to tour the Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx, NYC. Sprawling over a million square feet, Wikipedia calls the Hunt’s Point Market “the largest food distribution center of its kind in the world,” and it was one of my long-wished for NYC infrastructure tours.
The market is visually captivating. Located in the poorest congressional district in the US, it paints a striking portrait of working class New York City - especially on a cold winter day like the one I visited on. I’m told that it’s most active at night (most of NYC’s green markets receive grocery deliveries in the early morning, and buyers typically want to be at the market after midnight to avoid traffic), but even mid-morning there was a steady stream of activity on the docks.
The tour was somewhat broad, covering both specialty and commodity produce suppliers. But my favorite shop was a Mabijo Packing Corp, a small shop that appeared to be doing only one thing: Moving potatoes from one bag to another.
On the input end, potatoes were unloaded from 50lb sacks from Wada Farms. On the output end, they were loaded into sacks of five 10lb bags (i.e. sacks containing 50lbs of potatoes, but divvied up into 10lb bags) marked with the brand name “Marc and Bill.”
The work this shop was doing was a tiny little part of our industrial food supply chain - and a glimpse into the way that a commodity product is branded and rebranded as it makes its way to consumers. It was mundane, yes, but it’s also true that the work being done would constitute “value added.” This may sound odd - after all, the potatoes arrived at Hunts Point in 50lb bags to begin with - but the reality of our supply chains is that work is often undone and redone. It’s difficult for a grower to estimate what consumers will want, and sometimes it’s just easier to put everything in 50lb bags and let local resellers deal with it.
I hope to return to Hunts Point someday soon. It’s a critical node in the system that feeds me, and a lot can be learned from it - even in mundane operations like this one.