The wholesale produce trade that is present at the New York and London Produce Shows is keenly interested in the economic results coming out of the Eastern Broccoli Project. Prevor writes “[Gómez] has been a superstar in New York, informing, educating and beguiling industry members.”
Miguel will explore the dilemma faced by farmers who are serving their local consumers through farmers markets and CSAs.
The goal is to connect local food systems to the mainstream distribution system. Markets where consumers buy directly from farmers are very limited in terms of volume, availability, and in terms of sustained economic viability for the farmer, who lives only out of these markets.
Margins are very thin, and the markets are easily inundated with excess supply. So the markets are restricted on the amount of farmers that can participate in going direct to consumers.
The concept does not fit the normal narrative for either the farmers market community nor the supermarket community. Therefore, bringing change that benefits consumers, small farmers, and supermarkets will take transdisciplinary assistance of the kind we have been developing in the Eastern Broccoli Project.
We have a new publication, “Localization effects for a fresh vegetable product supply chain: Broccoli in the eastern United States”. This article models how increasing the Eastern broccoli supply will reduce the overall cost of producing broccoli for the US market, and reduces the carbon footprint as well. The predicted flows of product among different Eastern markets is surprisingly complex.
This research was part of the doctoral project of Shadi Attalah, who was a graduate student with Miguel Gómez at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell. Shadi is now an assistant professor at Purdue University.
http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1PZUB15oGokQmh This link will provide you with free access to the article through October 9, 2014. After that the cost to access the article is substantial. If the large-scale economic effects of locally grown produce is of interest to you, please take a look.
The New York Times ran a long Magazine piece about doing an image makeover for broccoli. The goal was to have broccoli be a “cool” food among younger people who don’t care about broccoli at all. Author Michael Moss brought out some important points about the relationship people have with vegetables, as well as the challenges of growing more vegetables in the current economic environment. Our project was mentioned as important, but a drop in the bucket towards that goal.
Prof. Miguel Gómez, team member in the Dyson School of Applied economics is determining what qualities Eastern consumers look for in their broccoli, and what variation from the Western standard they accept. The results will inform the breeding process, and perhaps identify types that will be well accepted in the US East Coast that are not accepted in East Asia.
With graduate student Xiaoli Fan, he is running auctions of broccoli types to asses consumer’s relative willingness to pay for different appearances.
Consumers were presented with three types of broccoli for consideration. A: New type with large beads and lighter green; grown in New York. B: Perfect appearance by current standards, but has been shipped across country; grown in California. C: Conventional broccoli with mixed large and small flower buds, a defect common in the East; grown in New York.Consumers at each station have small parboiled samples of each broccoli. Many find that the local broccoli has a milder and fresher flavor.Xiaoli Fan (right), a doctoral student on the project, leads the experiment. Graduate assistant Adeline Yeh presents head of the three types to consumers for inspection as they prepare to bid.Consumers on the panel are members of the community. Students were excluded, since they were not considered representative broccoli purchasers.
The commercial breeders on the project are inspecting trials this late summer, while the differences in quality are most apparent. Brassica breeder Cees Sintinie of Bejo (right front) stopped in Geneva as part of his North American tour. He was accompanied by his colleague Jan van der Heide (rear) when he visited with Phillip Griffiths (left). Characteristic of this summer, the rain was pouring. But rain does not slow this group.
The regional trials require a lot of seeds of the new varieties. These are made by hand pollinating one flower at a time. This week, Griff’s group is finishing some hybrid seed for use in 2014.
Parental plants in greenhouse. Each parent line only has three or four plants, so all the hybrid seed must come from them.Jeff McNamara prepares a flower for pollination by separating the sepals to expose the stigma. The flowers must be pollinated at this stage so they are not fertilized by their own pollen, which matures once the flower opens on its own.The flower is pollinated by rubbing the pollen-laden anthers of the pollen parent on the stigma of the seed parent.After a flower is pollinated, it is tagged with the names of the parent plants. The fruit are allowed to grow and seed develop inside. With fecund plants, as many as 10 seeds can come from one flower.When the fruit have matured, they are collected and taken to the seed processing room along with their tag. There, the seeds are removed and placed in labelled envelopes. Some crosses result in few seeds. These fruits only have one seed each.
An SCRI funded project to make broccoli a major eastern crop
