This week I went to the Council for the Environment of the City New York (CENYC) to talk to the folks at the Wholesale Greenmarket program. CENYC is awesome and has many great programs, ranging from the Environmental Education Program to the Community Garden Program (click the links to check out what these programs are all about). Wholesale Greenmarket provides a way for businesses to buy fresh local produce in bulk at competitive prices. To the environment, every table that switches to local food makes a huge difference, and programs like Wholesale Greenmarket are essential to making this transition feasible on a larger scale. The farmers that are now a part of the Wholesale Greenmarket have been at Hunts Point Food Terminal since 2007, with little management and support. That's where CENYC comes in - they just got a two-year grant sponsored by the State Agriculture and Markets Department to take over management of Wholesale Greenmarket in September. They are currently involved in assessing what types of produce 1500 retailers are buying in the Bronx, the source of their produce, how it is being transported, and if we they would try buying from Wholesale Greenmarket. And I get to help them!

As part of my work I will be calling groceries, bodegas, and restaurants in the Bronx to carry out this assessment, give them information about what Wholesale Greenmarket does, and hopefully recruit them! I also will hopefully go up to some of these vendors with other Wholesale Greenmarket volunteers and interns to make personal visits and promote the program. We are also hoping to go to the Wholesale Greenmarket during its hours of operations.  This might sound easy, wait until you see the hours: 2 am-8 am on weekdays and on 2 am-12:00 pm Saturdays. However, visiting the market itself will be a great experience for my research and to connect with the farmers who bring their amazing products to the table - literally. Already some of the people they have reached out to have tried out the Wholesale Greenmarket, which is located in the Fulton Fish Market at Hunt's Point Food Distribution Center in the Bronx. If we can get even twenty more businesses buying from us, we will increase business for the farmers involved in the market by 50%! So more about that work in the weeks to follow.

While was downtown talking to CENYC, it just so happened that the City Hall Park Greenmarket was in full swing. After all my enthusiasm about my local farmers market in last week's post, I decided to see how the downtown version compared. Greenmarket, which I have mentioned before, is also under the umbrella of CENYC, and holds 45 different farmers markets around the city. The difference between Wholesale Greenmarket and Greenmarket is one of scale - Greenmarket is targeted at individual consumers, whereas Wholesale Greenmarket is designed for bulk buying.  I chatted with the very friendly Greenmarket manager for a while, who also manages three other Greenmarkets around the city. All of their items come from within 200 miles of the city, and they looked delicious! Even though it was rainy out, there were still dedicated costumers getting their fill of fresh bread and crisp produce. Look at some of the pictures I took while I was down there. . .yum!