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Just off New York State Route 370 in Baldwinsville, a 20-minute drive from Syracuse University, Emmi Farms sits on 300 acres of land. During harvest season, its staff grows fruits and vegetables such as blueberries, peppers, apples, tomatoes, strawberries and sweet corn.

For decades, Emmi Farms has provided central New York with fresh produce, including all of the Syracuse-area Wegmans locations.

“We try to do all the local stuff we can,” said Tony Emmi, the farm’s general manager whose grandfather, Carmen, founded the farm in North Syracuse in 1946.

After Emmi returned from Army service in the Gulf War in 1992, Emmi Farms moved its operations to Baldwinsville, where it has a packing facility, a farm stand, a maintenance shop, greenhouses and employee housing. Since that time, Emmi Farms has been one of several local growers to provide Syracuse University dining halls with fresh produce.

Emmi estimates that the farm delivers between 5-10% of its harvest to Syracuse Banana, a central New York distributor it has worked with since the 1970s. Syracuse Banana, founded by Frank Inserra in the 1960s as a banana house, operates overnight from 11 p.m. to 1 p.m. seven days a week. The produce company delivers to more than 500 accounts across New York state, from Albany to Buffalo and Watertown to Binghamton. For more than two decades, Syracuse Banana has been the primary deliverer of produce to SU Dining, using its fleet of refrigerated trucks to deliver straight to dining halls and campus stores to ensure freshness.

“All the fresh produce, if (we’re) cutting it, slicing it, dicing it, doing stuff like that, then odds are it’s coming from Syracuse Banana,” said Syracuse University Executive Chef Eamon Lee, who began his position this fall.

Although central New York’s small growing window requires Syracuse Banana to buy from California and Florida, when local growers are in season, the distributor buys everything it can from its local partners, said manager Steve Puccia.

“Not only because it’s better stuff, but it’s … more affordable,” he said.

SU Food Services’ web page on sustainability states that the university “recognizes the positive environmental and economic impact of purchasing food from local suppliers and farms,” using local produce in its menu as much as possible.

Meghan Hendericks | Assistant Photo Editor Maya Goosmann | Digital Design Editor

Even though the university could buy cheaper produce elsewhere, the additional benefits of choosing local produce outweigh a higher financial cost, Lee said. As the head chef, he believes in traveling “the least amount of distance for the best stuff that you can get.” The best food applies not only to food quality but its benefit to students’ nutrition, as well as the food’s environmental sustainability.

“All of the cost inputs that go to moving a head of lettuce through our world are greatly reduced,” he said. “So, naturally, traveling the least amount of distance for something makes a lot of economic sense, but it also has all sorts of great benefits sustainably in other avenues: carbon footprint is reduced, you’re supporting your local economy, you’re keeping your local growers in good financial shape, you’re making sure that your entire local economy is moving around.”

Going forward, Lee hopes to work with Syracuse Banana to incorporate even more seasonally inspired cooking into dining hall menus. Consumers today are often far removed from the growers of their meals’ ingredients, and while it’s common to eat food out of season, he said, it’s really unnatural.

SU Food Services’ web page states the university “recognizes the positive environmental and economic impact” of local produce.
Arthur Maiorella | Staff Photographer

Instead, Lee’s philosophy is to embrace the regional terroir — an area’s environmental factors and their influence on how crops look and taste — and cook “where you are, when you are, who you are.” By doing this, it’s less expensive to produce and transport and supports the local economy, he said.

“There are instances where you would say, ‘Wait a minute, are we really getting asparagus at this particular time? Should we be using asparagus closer to the spring, when you would see asparagus popping up?’” Lee said. “We’re scratching our heads and taking a look at our menus and saying, ‘What could we be doing better?’”

And for local growers like Emmi Farms, keeping their produce within the region is a reassuring feeling.

“It’s nice to know that our crops are being consumed locally,” Emmi said. “I like the whole idea of that, just trying to cut back on the food miles.”

Published on December 8, 2021 at 1:50 am

Contact Austin: [email protected] | @AustinCLamb