Farmers' markets have become a feature of many hospitals in America to help in the overall mission of healthcare, writes MARY MACVEAN.
AN X-RAY and a bag of oranges, anyone? It makes perfect sense to Dr Preston Maring. In the lobby of Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center, Dr Maring says, he’d regularly pass vendors selling crafts. One day, he had an aha moment: “This has nothing to do with our mission as a healthcare facility,” he thought.
And today, six years later, Kaiser Permanente has 30 farmers’ markets at medical facilities in four states where patients, staff and community members shop.
Locally grown fruit and vegetables also are used in 23 Kaiser hospital kitchens.
Innovative programmes like the one sponsored by Kaiser Permanente are extending the reach of the farmers’ market ideal, bringing high-quality fresh produce grown by small farmers to a wider audience.
Doctors are so focused on disease that they may not always see the value of a bunch of fresh kale or an ear of just-picked corn, Maring says, but Kaiser Permanente’s emphasis on preventive medicine seemed a good fit for farm-fresh food.
Patients who once brought their doctors ceramic vases or soaps as presents, now bring them baskets of blueberries, he says.
“Markets change the community. They provide good food, fun, a meeting place,” says the obstetrician-gynaecologist who has been at Kaiser for almost four decades.
Hospitals are just one of the new kinds of places where farmers’ markets are opening, and farmers are also finding other outlets for their products, including market basket subscriptions and Community Supported Agriculture programmes.
Maring helped establish a seasonal market at GM-Toyota’s New United Motor Manufacturing Inc plant in Fremont, California, where 5,000 people work.
In Los Angeles, Kaiser worked with Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles, the organisation that runs the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, to open the Watts Healthy Farmers’ Market. That market also provides health screenings, nutrition education and other programmes.
In fact, SEE-LA has opened five markets in low-income neighbourhoods, using grant funding to help them on their way to becoming self-supporting, says Pompea Smith, SEE-LA’s chief executive.
At one of those markets, SEE-LA packs dozens of bags for delivery to subscribers at the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, and other places. Not only do the recipients get fresh food delivered, the project keeps the small market in Hollywood going.
“That’s the determining factor. The fact that they buy from me [for the market bags] makes the difference between coming and not coming,” says Jim Van Foeken, who farms 30 acres in California, and was selling cherries and citrus fruit last week. “Direct marketing makes little guys like me viable.”
Markets are showing up on college campuses too, and some schools and other institutions are buying right from farmers.
Finding innovative ways to sell produce, especially to people without handy access to such food, can keep small and midsize farms profitable, says Vanessa Zajfen, a programme co-ordinator at the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College.
To get by, many farmers sell their produce at several markets. And at markets that don’t get enough business, farmers can be stuck composting what doesn’t sell.
SEE-LA is opening the Farmer’s Kitchen which, among other projects, will help by giving farmers a place to make jams or salsas and other products with their leftovers.
Another idea, which Zajfen says is in the early stages of conversation with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office, is to create a permanent hub market for farmers to sell to retail and wholesale customers. Such a site could also include storage and kitchens, she says.
“I don’t think there’s [only] one model for this at all,” she says.
Having more outlets helps farmers, of course, but also helps customers.
Maring is convinced that the markets are making a difference at Kaiser, the largest nonprofit health plan in the United States.
“People come up to me and tell me what they cooked,” Maring says. “The hospital engineer lost 50 pounds since the market started.” Kaiser Permanente in Baldwin Park, California, joined California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, for a twice-monthly Friday farmers’ market.
Students sell produce and, once a month, a hospital staff member demonstrates cooking techniques.
On one recent market day, Dr Robert Riewerts, chief of pediatrics, made black bean and corn salsa.
“It’s a big, huge challenge to get people to live a healthy life,” he says. “Patients have to walk through here to get to the doctor. It puts in their mind that we take healthy eating seriously.”
Business has doubled since last summer, says Dawn Taccone, the manager of the farm store at California Poly who runs the market operation. “We’re bringing more products, doing sampling.”
According to Dorothy Harper, who came to Kaiser just for the market, “It’s so nice to get good strawberries, so fresh. You can’t stand the strawberries in the store after you eat these. I exercise around this building when I come to get this food. I want to be healthy so I can live longer for my grandchildren.”
Mary Fong, a nurse, likes the convenience. “We don’t miss it,” she says, “because you walk by it on the way to work.”
But even if the market is just outside your office, it’s not always possible to get there, Maring says. So he started a Best of the Market programme, with $10 and $20 bags of groceries that a designated shopper can collect for colleagues.
“You have to move one step at a time to help people shift to food that is healthier and cheaper,” he says. “I am seeing some movement.”
Take the day that a group of 33 high school students came to the market at his hospital to “stand around listening to an “ageing, white male gynaecologist” and watch him make a grilled chicken salad.
It was a “fabulous day” that gave him hope, Maring says. “There’s room to make a difference.”
– ( Los Angeles Times/Washington Post)