From Farm to Canal Street: Chinatown's Alternative Food Network in the Global Marketplace

by Valerie Imbruce

On the sidewalks of Manhattan's Chinatown, you can find street vendors and greengrocers selling bright red litchis in the summer and mustard greens and bok choy no matter the season. The neighborhood supplies more than two hundred distinct varieties of fruits and vegetables that find their way onto the tables of immigrants and other New Yorkers from many walks of life. Chinatown may seem to be a unique ethnic enclave, but it is by no means isolated. It has been shaped by free trade and by American immigration policies that characterize global economic integration. In From Farm to Canal Street, Valerie Imbruce tells the story of how Chinatown's food network operates amid—and against the grain of—the global trend to consolidate food production and distribution. Manhattan’s Chinatown demonstrates how a local market can influence agricultural practices, food distribution, and consumer decisions on a very broad scale.Imbruce recounts the development of Chinatown’s food network to include farmers from multimillion-dollar farms near the Everglades Agricultural Area and tropical "homegardens" south of Miami in Florida and small farms in Honduras. Although hunger and nutrition are key drivers of food politics, so are jobs, culture, neighborhood quality, and the environment. Imbruce focuses on these four dimensions and proposes policy prescriptions for the decentralization of food distribution, the support of ethnic food clusters, the encouragement of crop diversity in agriculture, and the cultivation of equity and diversity among agents in food supply chains. Imbruce features farmers and brokers whose life histories illuminate the desires and practices of people working in a niche of the global marketplace.

Genres: Food

232 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 6, 2015

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book that explains something many New Yorkers notice regularly but may not understand: why food and produce in Chinatown can be sold for so much less, and at higher quality, than in supermarkets. Long-time New Yorkers will know the quality of produce in standard supermarkets is often lacking. Much of this stems from the inefficiencies of the Hunts Point facility in the Bronx, which is a topic that merits a book-length exploration of its own (you will not find it here).

Imbruce explores the mechanics of the Chinatown supply chain, which she compellingly juxtaposes with the centralized and industrial supply chains of standard supermarkets and the localized, producer-centric networks of farmers' markets. In describing Chinatown sellers and their supply chains, it combines elements of both in a unique and counterintuitive way.

While some might assume this cheap and abundant Asian produce, like other cheap and abundant goods, is sourced from China, it is not. Instead, Chinatown distribution networks have developed direct relationships with localized intermediaries and distributors in places like Florida and even as far as Nicaragua.

While at times a little dry, the fundamental insights are clear, and she is assiduous in explaining the mechanics of why Chinatown produce works the way it does in a compelling way. It becomes an interesting explication of something that is not quite an alternative to "neoliberal" globalized capitalism, but rather a unique and culturally contingent manifestation of it.

[Shannon]

This was a fascinating and thorough read that complicates traditional conceptions of local food and food from overseas. It’s about more than just food; it’s about how “globalization from below” and “globalization at the margins” come together to produce an alternative, affordable food system that nourishes this historic neighborhood. If the rest of the city learned from this model, NYC could have more affordable, culturally-relevant produce that supports crop diversity and small to medium-sized farms. The author also has some good chapters describing the importance of food to Chinese-American culture/community. This is a good read if you’re frustrated by corporate agriculture and the traditional expensive ways to opt out of it (like farmer’s markets).

[Frank · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dry as hell. Meandered a bit. Some interesting anecdotes.