A Fresh Start

One of the greatest pleasures of living on the East End is access to the abundance of fresh produce and locally sourced food available to the masses in the summer months and harvest season.

But the season always feels short, and as the days get shorter and cooler, it’s back to nationally packaged and distributed food from the grocery stores, lacking in the same nutritional value and other benefits of locally sourced fare.

For some people, however, who are unable to afford what can understandably be higher-cost local foods, the simple pleasure of celebrating the local growing season may never come, as they are forced by their budgets to stick to mass-produced groceries.

The East End Food Institute aims to change all that with its proposed “Food Hub” in Riverhead, a $15 million to $20 million project that, according to Executive Director Kate Fullam, will “help to diversify revenue streams for farmers while ensuring there is healthy, farm-fresh food for all people in need.”

The Food Institute has for several years been running a community kitchen at the Stony Brook Southampton campus, allowing farmers to create products, like tomato sauce, from their produce. The organization has also been working with local school districts to provide locally sourced produce to be served in school cafeterias.

The goal of those projects is to help locally sourced food reach shoppers on the East End who may not have the means or opportunity to have it otherwise, and to allow farmers to expand their reach by freezing their produce or processing it into sauces, salsas and other tasty products.

The proposed food hub, at the intersection of Routes 58 and 105 in Riverhead, would be a magnification of those goals. The institute currently runs a farmers market at the site, which would be renovated in an effort to ramp up processing (including frozen foods) and distribution efforts. The organization would create its own food products, using produce and ingredients from local farms, and get it out to schools, nursing homes and other institutions.

The hope is that the food hub will help create new markets for Long Island food growers and producers, and their products might sit alongside national brands at local shops and supermarkets.

That would be a win-win-win for the area and deserves the community’s support.

Farmers win by having more opportunity to sell and process their produce. Schools and other institutions win by offering fresh local food to students, and giving them the opportunity to see the benefits of eating locally sourced food, which they may not have otherwise. And the consumer wins, as well, by being given more of a choice when it comes to healthy eating — and also be being assured that food will be available in catastrophic events, like another pandemic, that could lead to food shortages.

As Fullam pointed out a recent press event to tout the project, access to local food is a basic right, one that the East End Food Institute hopes to help everyone achieve.