Until Nothing is Left
As imports of foreign produce increase, California farmers are losing their place at the table

~ By WILLIAM J. KELLY ~


Illustration by Arthur Giron


t’s 9 a.m. and workers are rolling up the giant doors at Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. Grocers are ready for business, their stalls colorfully stocked with vegetables and fruit – green beans, squash, tomatoes, lettuces, asparagus, oranges, apples, avocados, nectarines.


This open air market, and scores of groceries and supermarkets throughout Los Angeles, once offered nothing but the bounty of California, the largest agricultural state in the nation. Long the salad bowl for the nation, we became the envy of easterners who face limited selections of vegetables and fruits during winter months. It’s still true that every year California farmers produce more than $20 billion worth of crops, most of them high-value vegetables, fruits, nuts, wines, dairy, and meat products.

Increasingly, however, the produce that adorns Grand Central Market and other grocery stores no longer is grown here. Instead, it arrives from Mexico, Chile, Peru, China, and other far-flung nations. California agriculture is under economic assault from cheap imports, produced in many cases under cut-rate conditions that do not meet U.S. sanitary standards. Pesticides often are overused in some nations, according to Beyond Pesticides. Contamination problems have come to light, as illustrated by the recent case of Chinese wheat gluten. The product was widely used in pet food and other unknown foods sold in the U.S. even though it had been contaminated with chemicals used in plastic, including melamine and cyanuric acid.

As the tide of imported crops rises, U.S. food safety officials have not kept up with inspections and monitoring of the food sold in Los Angeles and U.S. markets. A July 17 House Committee on Energy and Commerce investigation, prompted by the Chinese gluten scare which killed or sickened thousands of pets, revealed the lack of safeguards. It found that the Food and Drug Administration inspects less than 1 percent of imported foods. It then chemically tests only a small percentage of the food it inspects.

“The shoddy state of U.S. inspection procedures has not gone unnoticed,â€