Episode 1: The 100-Year-Old Nogales Produce Sector

Hosts: Ali Berlow & Hannah Semler

Guests: James Martin of Wilson Produce LLC and Jamie Chamberlain of Chamberlain Distributing Inc.

Six billion pounds of fresh produce enters into the U.S. through Nogales, Arizona each year destined for the U.S. market; this has been steadily growing over the past 100 years. With some digging, we soon find out that this very efficient food system, able to provide such enormous quantities of nutritious food, essential for human health, representing 84% of fresh produce on our shelves in winter, does not always make it to sale.

To understand the produce rescue effort at Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, that redistributed 100 million pounds the past three years, we first take a look at the businesses in Nogales. This is the second largest trade port between US and MX (second only to Pharr/McAllen, Texas) and its rich history, and the personalities running businesses there, will change your thinking around how this country feeds itself forever.

We speak with Jaime Chamberlain, of Chamberlain Distributing, and James Martin, of Wilson Produce, to understand their role in our food system, as they trade in nutritious fresh produce grown in Mexico to feed people all over the U.S and Canada. Perspectives on the importance of their contribution range from proudly stating that the U.S. has the cheapest fresh produce in the world, therefore making it most accessible to people, all the way to wanting to ensure that the produce being grown is done so with regenerative organic quality standards, and with as little waste as possible.

Season 1: The Nogales Arizona Port of Entry: a food rescue perspective.

Feeding the U.S are farmers, distributors and food banks working across the U.S.-MX border, to provide 84% of our country’s fresh produce in the winter months. Produce rescue efforts in Nogales led by Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona have redistributed 45 million pounds of that (at least) to our food insecure populations in the US every year for the past three years. In Season 1 of What is American Food? we follow from the Farm in Mexico, to the Distributor in Nogales, to the Community Food Bank in Nogales and Tucson, and the people impacted by this food.

How Mexico is inextricably linked to our nation’s food security story, is widely unknown or misunderstood. The amount of produce, but also the number of people touched by the millions of pounds of produce being moved, creates a new narrative about the value of the food we eat (and don’t eat) in the US. The Nogales Port of Entry, and the farms in Mexico feeding this country through Nogales, are a part of our US food system.

The podcast storytelling around Nogales will help create a common understanding of why Mexico-grown produce cannot be left out of conversations during current and future emergency responses to public health crises, such as COVID-19. Future chapters of What is American Food? audio and web content will cover other aspects of the North American food system, telling our collective story of “American” food, and how regional and local systems work to feed us as well.

Audio Editing & Engineering: Ian Carlsen

So here we go. I'm gonna kick it off. 'What Is

American Food?' is a podcast about how our food system is

designed. We're exploring the widespread assumptions and gaps

in knowledge that we have in the United States about the food we

eat year round.

'What Is American Food?' explores the stories we

tell and don't tell about our food security and nutritional

health in the US, and what it is that we call American food. I'm

Hannah Semler, you're listening to 'What Is American Food?,'

exploring the gaps and assumptions in our stories about

where our food comes from and why.

And I'm Ali Berlow. Today we're talking about

Nogales, Arizona, and how the produce sector works, by talking

to two produce businesses:

Chamberlain Distributing and

to two produce businesses:

Wilson Produce.

For context, Mexico grown fresh produce is

estimated to be about 84% of our fresh produce in the winter

months. 6 billion pounds enter into our US supermarket and food

service supply chains through Nogales, and about 1% of that 6

billion that comes through Nogales is not sold. So

Community Food Bank is one of several large scale fresh

produce rescue efforts moving close to 45 million pounds of

fresh produce to food banks across the country. All produce

is donated in Nogales by more than 280 business partners whose

only other option would have been to send it back to Mexico

or dump it in the local landfill. Some 6000 tons,

however, still end up in the landfill despite Food Rescue

best efforts.

So in this first chapter of 'What Is American

Food?,' we're focusing on bringing attention to the value

of our Mexican grown fresh produce, as it relates to all of

us in terms of our nutritional security. So Hannah, tell us why

this story is so important.

I've been asking myself this question for some

time, Ali. Why do I care about this story? And why do I want to

tell it, and why now? And I think the truth is that, it

scares me that so much of our fresh produce is being grown by

a neighboring country to the south, and that nobody knows how

or why. And that therefore we don't value it. So not valuing

food is, to me the biggest reason for food waste. And I

believe that if we can get to know the stories behind our

food, whatever they may be, we will come to value it more and

waste less. So another reason to tell the story is that I both

want to support the Mexico produce sector that has been

feeding our country for over a century, and I want to know how

to affect it or drive it to adopt, you know, more

sustainable or regenerative production practices. And

consumer demand is what is going to drive those changes. But it

needs to be an informed consumer demand that knows how to ask for

the stories that they want their food system to be made up of.

Makes so much sense. And it sounds like food waste

and regenerative agriculture are the foundational points. So

let's start with food waste. What can you tell us about food

waste in Nogales?

I became a Fink Family Foundation fellow in

2018. After seven years of working at the intersection of

sustainable food systems and food waste prevention, they were

looking to understand more about how fresh produce in Nogales

could be rescued to feed more people in the US, and further

divert from landfill good quality and healthy produce. So

I left my work measuring and marketing surplus with farmers

in Maine and went to Tucson and Nogales for the winter. When I

arrived in Nogales, one of the first videos I was shown was of

literal mountains of tomatoes, as far as the eye could see,

dumped in fields in Mexico due to a market disruption in the US

in 2018. I was blown away. The landfill in Rio Rico, just north

of Nogales, was recording an average of 6000 tons of produce

a year, which we were there to try to help solve for. But I

soon learned that, of course, back on the farms in Mexico,

there were no solutions being put into place other than the

little that the Mexican food banks could recover. A lot of it

just stayed in the field. So Community Food Bank in Tucson

and Dallas has been sourcing about 45 million pounds of fresh

produce from warehouses in Nogales for over three years.

And they wanted to scale this produce rescue to 60 million

pounds a year based on the demand that they are getting

from other food banks from around the country. But in order

to do that they need a better planning system. They need more

lead time to place produce in food banks. And so sourcing from

those Mexican farms directly is a really important next step for

the Community Food Bank's produce rescue program. And

being from Maine and knowing the level of food insecurity that we

have, and the lack of available fresh produce in the winter

months in terms of what's being produced, we need more variety

in our diet in our hunger relief organizations. And so I became

interested in connecting the dots. How do we get more fresh

produce in Maine? What is being left in the fields in Mexico,

and how we can connect these food systems to make sure that

fresh produce is not being wasted and that people have

access to a variety of produce year round.

So what's the role of the Community Food Bank in

preventing that waste?

So Community Food Bank is one of a few different

nonprofits that are contributing to produce rescue efforts, and

they support the businesses, one, in avoiding landfill

dumping fees, and two, in providing the produce sector

with a positive story about feeding their communities. A lot

of the produce stays in Nogales to support community members,

and then a lot of it goes to other food banks around Arizona

and the Southwest. I think Community Food Bank shared about

45 million pounds with 37 food banks in 33 states last year,

and so working in a collaborative model with these

other Arizona food banks and with other members of the

southwest produce co-op, they have been able to develop a

just-in-time logistics system with the hub in Nogales, to get

as many of these loads of fresh produce that are offered to them

out to food banks that have agreed to take product from

Nogales in certain quantities every year.

So you've worked there for almost two years, you

said, and your focus has been on produce rescue with the

Community Food Bank. But you've also gotten a chance to talk a

lot with the companies that you're working with in Nogales.

Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah, Community Food Bank's produce rescue

partners with about 280 produce businesses and donors that have

different size warehouses in Nogales, and they're different

kinds of businesses-- there are brokers, distributors, growers,

shippers.

Let's hear a clip from James Martin telling us

about the history of Wilson Produce, where he's the

Sustainability Director in Nogales.

We trace our roots back to the 1930s. James C.

Wilson, he was, came from California and married Esther,

and she was from Sinaloa de Leyva, and the two of them began

farming down in Sinaloa around 1936. So that was the family

farm. But Wilson Produce, the distributor or sort of sales and

marketing arm of the farm, got started in the mid 60s. And it's

developed over the years. Some time in the 90s we began working

with other farms and the sales and marketing distribution of

their products as well, and that's pretty close to where we

are today.

It's such a great story and it gives you an idea

of how this sort of organic evolution of Mexico produce

coming into the U.S., a California businessman, you

know, connected to a local woman from Sinaloa, and I mean just

that, that story to me is the kind of story that I don't think

we hold in our minds when we think about the the produce that

we're picking up at the supermarket. And you know, one

of the things that strikes me most about walking into the

spaces and these businesses and these buildings that have been

around for so long, you can see the train tracks that would have

had trains unloading right at the doors of these facilities

when when the produce was still coming up by train. And when you

walk into these warehouses, it's palpable-- the history and the

dignity and the pride with which these multicultural families

bring all this fresh produce from Mexico up into our food

system here in the U.S. And it takes a while to understand that

this is a hundred year old sector that we're talking about.

It's absolutely embedded into our food system in the U.S., and

the many businesses that have been working have really shaped

how we in the U.S. consumed fruits and vegetables in the

winter months. And they've responded professionally with

technological advances and you know updates to their production

methods to what we're demanding here in the U.S. And so I just

think it's really my biggest realization in coming back to

Maine, and knowing how our food production dwindles in local

product in the winter months, is that not only are we eating this

nutritious food, our local jobs, food hubs, co-ops, distributors,

retails, farm stands, restaurants are all able to be

open because they have access to this fresh produce that they

incorporate into their business model. That becomes the reason

why you walk through their doors. And why you go into the

co-op or why you go to a restaurant. And I question if we

didn't have this source of produce, what would the effect

on our jobs in the U.S., what would the effect on, you know,

year round businesses in Maine be, not only from a nutritional

security standpoint, but from a year round economic activity

standpoint, keeping people employed and keeping our

communities thriving? Feels to me like without the diversity of

products, we would have a hard time operating a year round food

economy.

So we also talked with another Nogales based

company, Chamberlain Distributing. Here's a clip from

an interview with Jaime Chamberlain, so we could hear it

in his own words, the significance of what, Hannah,

you just described.

And I think it's important for anybody

listening to the podcast to remember that through Nogales,

Arizona, we have been importing Mexican fruits and vegetables

for over a century. And we've been feeding North America for

over a century. And it's extremely important that

Americans and Canadians and all North Americans understand that

one of the reasons we have some of the lowest food prices of any

industrialized country in the world are because of our

fantastic trade agreements. The agreements that we have with

Mexico, with Canada, with Europe. I mean, when I was a

kid, that I would go into the store and ask for tangerines,

and my mom would say, hey, they're out of season. Or

strawberries and she say, oh, let's wait two more weeks,

because they're out of season. Everything was always out--

something was always out of season, right? Right now we have

a generation of kids who walk into a store, and any day of the

week of the year, they'll find kiwis if they want. Mangoes, if

they want. Asparagus if they want. Now, whether that

asparagus is domestically grown, or if it's imported from some

other country, like Guatemala or Mexico or anywhere else-- to the

consumer, all they want is, they want that availability at a good

fair price. So I think it's important that we realize when

we talk about food, our food comes from everywhere, from all

over the world. And everyone wants to sell to the United

States. And I think that that we're extremely fortunate as a

country to be in that position.

What that brings up for me is the idea that year

round availability and how we've really lost touch with what is

seasonal and what is year round. I guess before I just kind of

avoided Mexico produce because it seemed unsustainable, or like

it was coming from too far away. And now that I have a story from

you, and I feel like I value it more so when I go into my co-op,

I don't not pick it up. That makes sense. Can you paint a

picture for us of what value you give a truckload of product

leaving Nogales?

It's quite amazing when you start driving

south from Tucson, and you start seeing truckloads and truckloads

coming north. And, and now that I have been immersed in the

story of fresh produce, coming up from Mexico to Nogales to all

across the country. What I see is first the visual of knowing

that there are 20 pallets, there 40,000 pounds, you know each

pallet is around 40 cases. And then I start to see the people

that are moving it in the warehouse, the workers that are

you know, making sure that the temperature is right and that

the product is getting sold and, and the responsibility that

those warehouse managers and the sales team have to the producers

in Mexico that have sent their product up on consignment

without a secured sale. They've gone through the entire process

of planting and harvesting and packaging and transporting the

product 10 hours north to Nogales, trusting these

distributors and shippers and brokers that are going to sell

this product to the US market. And I see their workers and the

families that have formed towns around these 100 year old farms,

and developed, you know, entire communities around what has been

a pipeline of fresh produce for the US market for all these

years, and then, you know, I also then sort of turn and see,

of course, the the food banks and the volunteers and, and the

employees at food banks that make it possible for that fresh

produce that doesn't get sold, you know, for which those

farmers don't get a return. But they get the satisfaction and

the business owners get the satisfaction of at least having

provided that produce to the local food bank and to food

banks across the country. And those employees and volunteers

at those food banks that are you know, caring for that fresh

produce and making it available to people. And then of course,

the customers on both ends, whether you're going to a

Walmart or Costco or your local Co Op, or you're going to the

food pantry in the winter months, it is highly likely that

any fresh produce that you are consuming was produced in

Mexico. And so I see all of us linked through this supply chain

in what is a really, you know, beautiful supply chain and and

series of, you know, people and it's very human to me now that

there are faces behind this food that I now can value that

because that story brings a lot of value to, you know, a bag of

many sweet peppers that I might pick up at the co op here and

remain and and that makes me want to eat every last bite of

that product.

Yeah, that's right. That's so true. Well, let's hear

from James Martin, again, the sustainability director at

Wilson produce.

You know, some of the questions you have are about

the US or the American food system. And I mean, I think it's

important to describe some nuance in there, I can speak to

a piece of that system, the piece that involves fresh

produce, it's, it's a piece that, that I think should be

more concerned with human health and nutrition. We're not in the

business of making bread, nor Twinkies, nor ketchup, or canned

tomatoes. Those are different parts of the, of the US or

American food system that I can't really speak to with first

hand experience. So I think it's important to point that out. And

I mean, some of the key differences there are that, you

know, we operate on a relatively smaller footprint than many of

those types of systems like row crops and corn, soy, that you

might consider as part of the US food system. And we operate in a

system that involves fresh, often raw products. So there's

there's greater concern around food safety. It's part of a

system that tends to depend more on manual labor and less

mechanized systems. So think, you know, tractors harvesting

corn or something like that. That's a different part of the

food system. I mean, those are, I think, are some important

distinctions that should be made between the the system that I

can speak to and the broader food system within the US.

I love how he invokes Twinkies. So that was

James Martin, like I said, and so in Nogales, it's not only

home to an incredible source of fresh produce for this country,

it's also some great nonprofits doing produce rescue. And there

are some unique sustainability efforts in that business sector

like Wilson Produce. Here's James again.

And we embarked on a path to move away from

conventional practices that weren't working for us and began

moving toward organic, although I don't know if we were really

thinking of it in those exact terms yet, I don't think we

realized that our soils weren't quite ready. And there was a lot

of change that needed to happen. But that kind of began-- that

was kind of the trajectory at the time. And about, it's taken

us about eight years or so. I mean, it's a minimum three years

requirement, which we've done, organic to the USDA standard,

but it's it's taken, that transition was incredibly

difficult. It took a toll on our production and developing

markets and really, just transforming the business model

was a major challenge. But we've come a long way. And I'm very

proud to say that, that this year, this season, which we're

just wrapping up now, has been the most productive season that

I've ever seen.

Wilson Produce is just doing such incredibly

advanced work and sustainability moving away from monocropping.

And really looking at how to sustain their ability to grow,

produce and feed people for the foreseeable future in the most

healthy way for you know, planet and for their business. And also

for the end consumer. And these are the stories that I think we

need to tell about how food is produced in Mexico, in these

great examples of a business feeling that it's time to

transition to a more sustainable production method, to keep not

only their business afloat, but to respond to the needs of the

time, which are to make sure that we're doing everything we

can to mitigate climate change. And it's really interesting to

think about all of the struggles and the effort that goes into

all of the produce that is being produced for our country here in

the US. So I love this next clip of Jaime's. Jaime tells the

story of how they got through, or how they were affected by the

COVID-19 disruptions, which just feels like a really timely story

to document.

So we started off our season with some

abnormally horrible weather, and weather patterns in our growing

area of Sinaloa that we had never seen before, with

astronomical amounts of rain in November. And then again at the

beginning of December, at the end of December. And then again

in January, I'm talking about anywhere between eight and 12,

13 inches of rain in each event. So that in itself was a

challenge. We always have weather challenges down in

Sinaloa and Sonora, where we get the majority of our product

from, but this was extraordinary, and not normal

and not typical for the time of year that it happened. So that

was already going to be a challenge. And then we go into

their issues with COVID-19. And how it affected the food service

industry, and how it even affected the retail industry.

And that I have to say, really, really threw a lot of people for

for a loop in the industry, and old timers even like myself,

that have been in the business for a long, long time. We've

never ever gone through anything like this. The first time we

really started noticing an issue was about the first week of

March, where we said, this is more serious than what we've

been listening to on the news. So when we started to see

restaurants, clothes, and suggestions of social

distancing, and suggestions of closing down restaurants, and--

but I think what was most impactful for us was when we

started seeing the cruise lines, and the people on the cruise

lines getting sick, and cities not wanting to disembark those

passengers. That's when we thought, alright, this is

really, really serious. And it could affect us in a big way.

Because food serve-- because cruise lines are actually a big

part of our food service industry. And that's when we

started to see this is going to be much more serious than what

we thought. Right after that it was a snowball effect. You

started seeing restaurants close and bars close. And then casinos

close. And then and then I think for me was something that was

really impactful was the first NBA player that was found with

COVID-19 and having the NBA stop practices-- that was a big

deal-- and stop the season. That was a really, really big deal

because that's also a large part of the food service businesses,

sporting events, concerts. And when you started to see people

right after that cancel big events, like the Coachella Music

Festival, like South by Southwest in San Antonio. That

was all a big deal. And it all came one right after another.

And there were successive significant announcements on

multiple days right after that. So when we said, when they said

you know what we now need to close down restaurants. That's

when a lot of our food service companies came back to us and

said, You know what? I'm a very large purveyor of food service

90% of my businesses that have food service, I have no outlet

for the inventory that I have, I'm going to have to cancel our

contracts, contracts that we had been fulfilling since the end of

September, and fulfilling them at a great cost because of what

had already happened weather-wise during the season.

The majority of retailers around the country

ended up helping food service companies, it sounds, for two or

three weeks. And as things were shutting down, distributors in

Nogales, like Chamberlain Distributing were left out of

that, and they had nowhere to sell their products. So that

meant a lot of produce was backed up in Nogales, and also

all the way back on the farms, products were just lying in the

fields. And were actually either unharvested or harvested and

then discarded. We hear from Jaime here about what it meant

for farms and food banks alike to experience this COVID-19

disruption.

We ended up telling our growers to pick and

throw away in Mexico, hundreds and hundreds of 1000s and

millions of tons of produce was kept in Mexico. And hundreds of

1000s of boxes of produce were given away to food to food

banks. They didn't realize what was going to continue to happen,

which was unemployment right after that. And the unemployment

brought the long lines at the food banks.

I just can't help but wonder whether these

families could have instead been invited in as new customers at

the doors of retailers across the country, you know, customers

that wouldn't usually purchase produce, if all of a sudden they

had had lower prices, which retailers know at what price

different customers buy different produce. And there

could have been a much bigger effort to pass through more

produce during a health pandemic, to customers who

wouldn't normally be able to shop those produce aisles. So

you know, instead research shows that prices at grocery stores

went up in April by 2.6%. And have actually stayed quite high

since then, which I can only imagine continues to hurt the

many struggling families and and families that find themselves

unemployed now, and further exacerbates the pressures on

food banks, which I believe we have a responsibility to hold

our business sector accountable not only in donations to food

banks, but in creating alternative methods for people

to access fresh produce, using their infrastructure in times of

crisis.

Could you give us some more context as to what

occurred for food banks?

Yeah, so the pressures on food banks, from

what I understand, was that the level of disruption was such

that it went from having, you know, a normal season of, you

know, donations, like four or five, six, maybe 10 loads a

week. And all of the food banks around the country, we're seeing

an average of about 300% increase in people showing up at

their doors. And so at the same time, their volunteers and their

employees were no longer able to go into work. And so the

capacity for food banks was severely affected, because the

distribution logistics shifted from what is generally a kind of

a shopping experience that customers go through and choose

their own products. And sometimes they have pre, you

know, filled shopping carts that that customers come and pick up.

But they weren't able to come inside the buildings and so all

of the distribution shifted to a drive thru. And the drive thru

method was meant to keep everybody as safe as possible

while people needed food. And then because product was being

disked and tilled and basically discarded at the farm, the

availability of product just sort of went down.

So going forward, farmers and distributors in

Nogales are now planning for next year. I mean, we're right

there. So here's Jaime Chamberlin, speaking to us back

in June of 2020. About that planning.

Right now, you know, we don't just, we're

not just entrenched in this one year. I mean, right now I'm

doing planning for next season. We're buying seed right now with

our growers. We are talking about whether we're going to

grow XYZ more acreage in this commodity or that commodity, or

if we're just going to leave this commodity, and never do

anything. Again, we're talking about contracts. What other ways

can we secure contracts, in our wording and in our, with our

attorneys? How can we work with our customers better if this

happens again, you know, they say we're supposed, we may have

another second wave of COVID in the fall. If that happens,

again, that'll be very, very difficult for us. And I think

that we're, we're looking at, we're staring into a business

that can change on a dime. It's all based on consumer demand.

So Hannah, tell us what happens to consumer demand

when 30 million people are unemployed?

Absolutely, Ali, we need to start thinking about

what we're going to do differently this coming season.

And farmers have already planted and the fresh produce is being

grown. And so we need to proactively engage Nogales in a

cross border plan for national food security in the US, as well

as a collaborative approach of getting fresh produce from farms

out to food banks in Mexico and supporting the logistics of that

as well as getting fresh produce from those farms into our US

food banking system. And we need to do that with a planned system

that makes the the two countries work together towards ensuring

food security, and making sure that this important fresh

produce isn't going to waste. And Jaime says it really well in

this next clip where he talks about how we need to focus on

long term planning.

The focus here is not what happens in one

season. The focus is what happens out over the life of the

farmer and the life of the farmer's relationship

Thanks, Hannah. This is all been so enlightening. Do

you have any last comments for us?

Well, I just l ve what Jaime just said. And I

hink we should absolutely be lanning for the long term food

ecurity for both count ies and connecting these food

ystems. And I really want to th nk Fink Family Foundation for su

porting this important w rk with Community Food Bank

in Nogales. And also want to th nk Jaime Chamberlain and Jam

s Martin for taking the time o speak to u

This is Ali Berlow. Thanks for listening. 'What I

American Food?' is a podcast ab ut how our food system is design

d, exploring the widespre d assumptions and gaps i

knowledge that we have in th United States about the food w

eat year round

And I'm Hannah Semler, and 'What Is America

Food?' is a podcast exploring he stories we tell and don't t

ll about our food security nd nutritional health in the