Mike and I just got back from the Produce Marketing Association’s 2013 Fresh Summit Convention & Expo in New Orleans. We were invited as part of a small group of food bloggers through Kitchen Play, and were provided a small stipend to help offset our travel costs. We were permitted full access to all workshops and activities, and had free reign to wander the expo and speak to whoever we wished. While we thank the PMA and Kitchen Play for their hospitality, nothing was promised in return, and all opinions are our own. For the moment abandoning his Flamingo persona, Mike whets your appetite with the first taste!
The Flamingo
We recently attended the ginormous Produce Marketing Association’s 2013 Fresh Summit Convention and Expo in New Orleans. Let me say up front that I went by invitation (they welcomed service animals and Flamingos!) and that I did receive a modest stipend from the PMA toward my travel costs. With that said, none of the following should be confused with advertorial. It’s not my habit to gush— the Flamingo, well that’s another story— but I was genuinely impressed by the proceedings. The logistics alone are a story unto themselves; over a thousand exhibitors filling a 250,000 square-foot, mile-long hall. To put that into perspective, that’s about six acres of displays and 18,000 of your closest friends in the same space. To do that without lots of things going terribly, terribly wrong is a real achievement, and my hat’s off to the PMA for being able to do that.
Stunt Tater. No, I did not make this up.
So, aside from the prodigious scope, why should I (or for that matter, you) be interested in what is basically a trade show? In my case, I raise a little produce but not nearly enough to be labeled a “Farmer.” I’m involved with my local farmer’s market— to which I transport my wife’s jams— but that doesn’t make me either a shipper or a grocery store. As a consumer of fruits and vegetables (which is my agricultural role the majority of the time) I have three reasons.
The fruits and vegetables that we urbanites buy in stores and even farmer’s markets don’t spring from those shelves and cooler cases ready-made. Somebody has to grow them, somebody has to get them ready to go, and somebody has to transport them from point A to point B before you can pick them up and turn them over in your hand for a good look. So part of the attraction, for me, at least, is the “golly, gee, wow” factor of seeing all the moving parts involved in that process in one place. Better still, it puts a human face on what we consumers lump together as anonymous “Agriculture.” There are real people behind all those trees, bushes, conveyor belts and trucks, people like Florida blueberry farmer Dan Ebbecke and Oregon blueberry farmer Doug Krahmer: different people, thousands of miles apart, but united in an obvious passion (and yes, “passion” is the correct word here) for their product. More about them in a future post.
Not all that long ago, it was enough that food showed up where we consumers could conveniently get at it. As consumers, we’ve evolved, and now where that food comes from is important to us, as well as what happens to it along the way. This is similar to, but a little different, than, number one, above. If words like source and traceability are important to you, then this gathering is of interest because all the links in that chain from ground to shelf are represented there.
New stuff. Hey, we’re FOOD bloggers. We like seeing new food to play with. We like to taste new foods. We like to see new ways to use the old, familiar foods. Since the PMA show is a little like Boston before Broadway, a lot of new things are being trotted out for big buyers before they end up in stores (and, therefore, trotted out for us — and you, via our blog; more on that in future). Last, but not least (definitely not least), the produce brought to see and try is literally top-notch, so even the old standards (from apples to tomatoes) are the best in their class. It’s almost like having an encyclopedic set of benchmarks to illustrate how these things should look and what they should taste like when they’re at their best. So, (and don’t tell the PMA I said this) it was just plain fun to be there. (And a lot more about the fun in future posts).
Oh! And there was shrimp!
