The Seasonality of Pomegranates

Apparently, pomegranates are not available for purchase in March.

I abruptly realized this after unsuccessfully searching QFC for them at the end of Winter Quarter. I was about to embark on a very long plane ride from Seattle to Washington D.C. and had learned earlier during a similar situation in December how glorious a pomegranate can be to pass the time and keep my mind (and stomach) occupied on a long journey. During my search at QFC, I came across a binder that listed all the fruits and vegetables that QFC had ever had in their produce section. Sure enough, this book listed the season of pomegranates as September through December.

Before I came to college, variability in my fruit choices had been minimal. The fruits I generally purchased and devoured were ones available during all months- like apples, bananas, and oranges. I’m a huge fan of blueberries as well, and although they may be ridiculously priced in the months outside of July, August, and September, I was always able to find them stocked at the supermarket. Being raised in Arizona, I don’t really have a strong sense of the seasonality of growing and harvesting. The only two crops I was exposed to were cotton and citrus.

In class on Thursday, our discussion of Bill McKibben's “The Cuba Diet” lead us to wonder if it was possible for a person in Seattle to eat seasonally and locally. I am a consumer who lacks knowledge of the globalized food chain and where my food comes from. I generally glance at the stickers on my bananas that state their origin as Ecuador or read over the label on the plastic crate of strawberries that lists they were grown in California. But my thought process doesn’t go much beyond that; I don’t consider the amount of resources that were used to transport them to my shopping basket.

I do frequent the University Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, but usually end up walking across the street to Safeway to do my produce shopping. At this point in my life, cost is the major decision factor in what I eat. But as I learn more about the environmental impact and the health concerns of produce that is “imported” into Seattle, I will certainly be more likely to shell out the extra 30 cents for a pear in a farmers market that was locally grown.

Maybe I’ll just have to settle for pomegranate juice during their off season. But I still wish someone could genetically modify pomegranates so that they could be available all year around…