Bay Cities Produce has developed a local produce program that helps our customers with their quest to purchase local products whenever available. Our program is an extension of the FDA Country of Origin (COOL) requirements that we currently provide on every customer invoice.
In addition to the standard country codes we use to identify country of origin we have developed a simple designation standard for local produce grown in California. Our local zone map is divided into three zones that encompass the entire state using the Bay Area as the center point.
These zone designators (L1, L2 and L3) appear on our invoices so customers can readily see which local zone the product is from. We also have reporting capabilities to provide usage reports on how much produce you are buying locally. (map pdf)

Buying Local - What’s the holdup?

By Steve Delmasso Vice President
I was watching a show with the wife, something Vegas, or Vegas something… part of the show was about going green and organics. Out of nowhere comes words of wisdom… buying organic might not be green if we truck it 2000 miles, better to buy local.

Our industry has been wrestling with how to fit buy local, buy organic and go green for some time now. How do we serve 365 million servings of produce daily, and safely? There has to be a goal. A chemical free world is not a bad idea. Buying local does save energy, a great idea, so what’s the hold up?

As yet we can't produce the volume needed to feed 5 billion people organically nor locally. The other catch is the food safety concerns. A small farm, say 5 acres, can they afford a rigorous food safety, and H.A.C.C.P. Plan?

We are working on bridging the gap here at Bay Cities in a joint effort with American food safety institute to formulate a three-stage plan the smaller farmers can move into. We will continue to work with the grower collaborative to see where the pieces all fit in. There is no one size fits all solution, at least not now.

If we don't work with the smaller farms to bring them up to speed on food safety and affordably we will lose them.  We can't put too many restrictions on conventional farmers… we will starve.

Tell Uncle Sam to put a little bailout money towards a means by which conventional farmers could use less chemicals. Better there than A.I.G. There aren't any farmers getting million dollars bonuses.

Steve Delmasso