"The time is now to take charge of our foodways and improve the quality of life for Puerto Ricans across the island."
By Crystal Diaz
Food is undoubtedly culture, politics—and above all, life. What we eat, how we eat it, and why, are some of the greatest human reflections. They are part of a living and constantly evolving culture, much of which is a result of our historical, social, and economic circumstances. Among Puerto Ricans, there is never a lack of reference to food in conversations, and no meeting or outing is ever planned without its presence. But Puerto Rico, with its complex political relationship with the United States, natural disasters caused by climate change, and decades-long lack of proper leadership, has a broken food system that is all too dependent on imported goods.
Despite having a privileged climate that allows harvesting and fishing most of the year, Puerto Rico still barely produces less than 10% of what its population eats, and instead, depends on hundreds of boats arriving with food from afar. Food security is a big challenge to our island, and although Puerto Rico will always have to import some of its food, increasing island food production is possible, returning to the levels seen in the 1980s, where 40% of the food consumed was locally produced. And to do so, it’s important to defend and maintain in all possible capacities its local food suppliers and markets.
From Growing to Importing
Puerto Rico is an island in the Caribbean, which has been an unincorporated territory of the US since 1898 with little control over its own food imports. Its political relationships, first with Spain and then with the United States, for the last 120 years have directly affected the island’s overall economy and food system.
In the 1950s, when the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico was formed, the island moved from an agriculturally based economy to a manufacturing economy under the local government program “Operation Bootstrap” (Manos a la Obra). This program made use of section 936 of the US Internal Revenue Code, which specified the federal tax statutes for US corporations that were established in the "possessions of the United States." These statutes allowed corporate subsidiaries operating in Puerto Rico to remit their profits to the parent corporation whenever they wished, without paying the federal corporate income tax. In addition, the Commonwealth (ELA) government only imposed a 10% repatriation tax on such profits, which was further reduced if companies invested part of these profits in government bonds or deposited them in local banking institutions.
In 1996, the US Congress eliminated Section 936 with the support of the Puerto Rican government and statesmen at the time. Since it was the only economic development strategy in place on the island, it was determined that a “reasonable” transition period of ten years would be put in place so that Puerto Rico could develop another economic development plan. However, this new plan was never developed. Bad administrators increased the debt, bringing the island into an economic recession in 2006, a recession that continues to this day. In 2017, an Oversight Fiscal Board was assigned by the President of the United States to ensure Puerto Rico’s budget is balanced for five years in a row, and that $72 million in debt is paid back.
Thus, Puerto Rico’s food industry is full of challenges: a lack of public policy to prioritize food security for the local population, a lack of government investment in technology and crop diversification, and insufficient agricultural data (since ag statistics take four years to be published). Moreover, since the value of the sector is measured at the farm production level, food is often merely seen as a value-added product. Living in an economic crisis for almost two decades has created despair among many residents, most of whom decided to move to the mainland looking for a better livelihood. Nevertheless, producers are driving a new reality, and change is happening despite no political will or public resources allocated. In whose interest is it that an island of over three million inhabitants should not produce its food and depend almost entirely on others?
A Wave of Hope
Interviews with more than a dozen leaders and experts on the subject revealed that palpable change began to take shape in Puerto Rico around 2010. Farmers began seeing their work as viable businesses. Access to the internet and social networks provided spaces for camaraderie, allowing producers to share their experiences and reduce their marketing costs. Social media gave the consumer visibility into a new transparent food production process that included farmers, fishermen, and processors. Ironically, it is through technology that more people connected with the human side of food production. This connection brewed a movement of solidarity that strengthened despite bureaucratic obstacles.
It is especially through young adults that the effort to change the food system has become more visible. Everyone born in the 80s and 90s who came of age during the economic crisis is not afraid of its existence, having lived with it so long. To them, there is nothing to lose and much to gain. Therefore, after years when the dominant discourse convinced almost two generations of Puerto Ricans that producing our own food would be impossible, it is finally a viable reality for this new generation. Many professionals decided to venture into the agricultural sector, creating a variety of profitable food production projects. A wave of hope has risen to make the food chain sustainable and fair—a food chain that sees local production as a real opportunity for economic development, even when public policy does not support the small producer.
Deeper connections among chefs and local farmers in Puerto Rico have led to the rise of “root cuisine,” or what’s better known as "farm to table." Increasingly, local chefs and cooks are interested in integrating local ingredients into their dishes, including local fishing. For decades, fine dining and, more recently, casual dining in Puerto Rico have been influenced by European and Asian techniques using mostly foreign ingredients, foods alien to our Caribbean ecological reality. This occurs because the traditional Puerto Rican diet has continued to be historically, explicitly or implicitly, discredited by the discourses of modernization and American influences.
Today, the tide is beginning to turn as more chefs and restaurants are creating menus that show enthusiasm and determination to cook explicitly with ingredients grown on the island. Trust, communication, and a lot of education between the producer and the cook have led to these changes. Chefs are willing to make a commitment that may even compromise their profit margin. Despite this progress, there is still much work to be done to turn the trend into the new norm.
Eating local, with all the implications that this brings to the system, is excellent for the island’s social and economic development, but consumer education is key. People are becoming increasingly more inquisitive about what they are eating, the state of agribusiness, and the relationship between processed food and chronic diseases. This, in turn, has fueled a change in consumption giving rise to alternative distribution and purchase of local food, such as farmer's markets, Community Sustained Agriculture (CSA), and delivery services.
However, supermarkets still represent 81% of the food consumption market, whereas pharmacies are 11%, and convenience stores and gas stations, are 8%. Back in the 1950s, when the supermarket concept first arrived on the island, the practice of "convenience" consumption took hold. While consumers loved the convenience of supermarkets, the markets themselves preferred carrying cheaper imported food, completely overlooking locally grown produce.
Creating New Tech: PRoduce
This lack of access to locally produced food prompted Martín Louzao, Francisco Tirado, Patricio Schames, and me to create PRoduce: a mobile app featuring produce grown by Puerto Ricans for Puerto Ricans.
Chef Martín Louzao had been tinkering with the idea of creating a mobile application that would allow restaurants to purchase locally-grown produce. Programmer Francisco Tirado was in the process of launching a home delivery app for prepared food called Uva! (UberEats didn’t exist in Puerto Rico until last year). Meanwhile, I was developing my final project for my graduate program, which involved rigorous research on Puerto Rico's food landscape. With a shared history, interests, and goals, we decided to join forces and create PRoduce, a digital supermarket that connects local food producers with consumers through an app, website, and grocery delivery service. The platform also educates and creates awareness about the importance of eating local and eating well with recipes and information about the products.
Shortly after Hurricane Maria in 2017, PRoduce participated in the Parallel18 technology business accelerator program for start-ups, and the first PRoduce application aimed at facilitating the purchases of chefs and restaurants was born. Unfortunately, though, It was a disaster. However, Francisco thought we could use the existing network of producers to develop a CSA platform with home delivery to any part of the Island. Each CSA box would include a variety of products, including eggs and dairy, and the consumer could cancel whenever they wanted. Thus, PRoduce Homebox was born in September 2018.
Homebox allowed PRoduce to expand our relationship with even more producers. With both the producers and the consumers in mind, we developed purchasing programs that delivered fresh and local products, weekly or bi-weekly, to homes across the island. PRoduce soon had packing and dispatch hubs with refrigerated spaces, working tables, and a group of drivers making deliveries in the afternoons and evenings. For 18 months, it managed to serve more than 800 customers consistently. By the beginning of 2020, we recognized that the business model needed to diversify. We were ready to expand the app’s function to make it convenient for chefs and restaurants to access all the local products we were getting.
And then, the pandemic hit.
Puerto Rico’s governor announced the total shutdown in March 2020, and the unimaginable happened. PRoduce Homebox orders increased by 1500% in two weeks. It was a logistical nightmare, but Homebox turned into the lifeline for hundreds of producers who would have lost their entire harvest due to the closure of restaurants and school cafeterias. We even recruited dozens of waiters who were left unemployed because of the pandemic.
We wondered, if we were ready to expand the app to fulfill chef orders for restaurants, what was stopping us from going beyond CSAs and allowing consumers to purchase what they wanted? Since we already had routes across the whole island, we went for it. We started with a trail run with our friends and family. Shortly after, El Nuevo Día, the largest media outlet on the island, wrote about the app, and the rest is history. Today, PRoduce has a warehouse that is four times larger than the one we had in the beginning. It brings together more than 400 local producers who promote their products through the platform, and over 70,000 people have bought food through the app. Additionally, the digital blog hosts over 600 recipes that feature local products. PRoduce has the vision of achieving greater food security in Puerto Rico by supporting small and medium producers, and promoting diversity, variety, and convenience.
It was as if the island had awakened from a long lethargy, and suddenly, everyone wanted to consume local produce. But as the pandemic waned and the economy reopened, little by little, a sense of "normalcy" returned, as did people's pre-covid food-buying practices. The challenge for PRoduce now is to maintain, strengthen, and expand the potential of locally grown produce. This can only be achieved through consumer education and strategic marketing.
What’s Ahead
Despite the progress, Puerto Rico’s food system has a long way to go. The island has been experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis for almost 20 years, affecting an entire generation that had to invent ways to survive without aid from the government. Within these self-managed projects, communities, and cooperative efforts, lies the strength to forcefully disrupt the status quo. Just as bees function as a kind of bridge between humankind's relationship to Earth, these efforts serve as a network of connections between various components within the food value chain.
Once and for all, Puerto Ricans must urgently aspire to agricultural reform with an inclusive public policy for the entire ecosystem. This public policy must have as its “true north” the food security of all people living on the island, respect for the environment, and the preservation of natural resources. It must also include the diversity of food production in all its forms, facilitate fishing, and include the protection of some of its indigenous products. Another essential change in public policy must be to improve the quality and access to statistical data within the agricultural sector. Only then can we fully analyze Puerto Rico's farming, fishing, and agribusiness sectors and develop a cohesive plan toward self-sufficiency.
Finally, ideas have emerged for creating a Puerto Rican food culture that serves as an engine for the sustainable economic development of our island. And economist Caraballo Cueto has publicly suggested that government incentives, particularly tourism, should be tied to buying local products. "Behind an incentive, there has to be a public end beyond direct employment." Surely, the government cannot immediately solve the existing issues, but it should provide access to tools and resources to local businesses to facilitate growth.
It is within Third Sector communities that we will find the solutions to many of our food production and food access problems. Strengthening the network of farmers, producers, fishermen, and cooks is imperative, as is the need to connect them with each other as well as the consumer. These relationships are part of a socio-economic movement creating hope for our island.
The time is now to take charge of our foodways and improve the quality of life for Puerto Ricans across the island.
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Crystal Diaz is a "foodpreneur" obsessed with food, the rural countryside, and the origin of what we eat. She is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of PRoduce, a digital grocery marketplace that aims to promote local food consumption by connecting Puerto Rican producers with consumers and chefs who want to eat foods grown and processed locally. She was a participant in the James Beard Foundation's Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership program and the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative Education. She is currently completing the Food Studies graduate program at NYU's Steinhardt.