(Click here to view a companion photo essay)

A silver-haired poet fingers red and yellow heirloom tomatoes. A young woman asks a farmer if she can substitute Asian pears in her applesauce recipe. A plump toddler in a double stroller reaches for a bundle of grapes dangling just out of reach. A typical scene at a California farmers market. What’s atypical is that this organic market blooms on a dull apron of concrete in front of Kaiser Permanente’s medical campus in Oakland.

 

Amid the bustle on a recent weekday, a stocky security guard returns to his post with a pair of fat onions. A surgeon in scrubs comes to check out the honey stand. “But have you tried a pluot?” asks a man with a canvas bag tucked under his arm. He follows up with an explanation of the difference between a pluot—more plum than apricot—and an a prium—more apricot than plum. Turns out, the pluot expert is none other than Dr. Preston Maring, a Kaiser Ob-gyn and administrator and founder of the Kaiser farmers market project.

 

There were 4,385 farmers markets in America in 2006, an increase of 18 percent since 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Today, only a few dozen are located at medical facilities. But if Maring, a 36-year Kaiser Permanente veteran and the Johnny Appleseed of hospital farmers markets, has his way, there may be many more. An enthusiastic home cook, Maring, 62, was used to shopping for ingredients at weekend stands set up by local growers. He was also used to seeing jewelry and trinket vendors in the halls of his hospital. He reckoned, why not add a few organic greens and nectarines to the mix?

 

“I was kind of curious,” Maring says. “You’ve got 3,000 people that come together in this building every day. What would happen if you put a farmers market in front? Would people stop and shop? Would the farmers do well? What would the impact be?”

 

Since the first weekly market opened in Oakland in May 2003, farmers markets have sprouted like chanterelles at 32 Kaiser sites in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Georgia, and Hawaii. Maring was directly involved in setting up the first 15 or so. Then the idea took off. “That was a great day because it meant word got around within our program,” he says. “Other people at other facilities of all job descriptions put in a lot of energy and opened those markets.”

 

Kaiser isn’t the only health organization that sponsors onsite sale of local produce. Seasonal markets have sprung up at the two branches of St. Charles Medical Center in Oregon and at three of New York City Health and Hospital Corp.’s sites, to name a few. But Kaiser, a leader in the trend of promoting wellness, is a trendsetter here as well. And the administrators of the nation’s largest not-for-profit HMO think that providing high-quality produce—whether to take home or serve on hospital patient meal trays—is a way to help. Heart disease, diabetes, osteoarthritis, stroke, and some cancers are among the serious health consequences that have been linked to a poor diet.

 

“A lot of Kaiser Permanente’s history is about prevention in terms of all of our cancer-screening programs and diabetics screening and cholesterol screening and all that,” Maring says. “It’s clear that there’s nothing better for our patients and for the program than preventive medicine. And good food obviously is the foundation for good health.”