Unless it's an appetite for public funds, of which the wholesalers of the South Philadelphia Produce Terminal will soon consume aplenty.

To promote Pennsylvania food, state Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff recently invited the media along on his visit with several Terminal merchants, who supply many restaurants and stores in Philadelphia.

Under those colorful banners, on camera, Wolff thanked each merchant for selling Pennsylvania produce. But once the media moved on, the wholesalers returned to hawking stuff from almost anywhere else.

I asked one merchant to point out what he had from Pennsylvania. He paused, laughed and pointed at the "PA Produce" banner he had draped over fruit from Chile.

I saw potatoes from Idaho, melons from California, garlic from China. But the big winner was Jersey — with corn, tomatoes, carrots, eggplants and peppers. All in season in Pennsylvania. But at this market, almost everything came from Jersey.

Last year, Jersey tried to grab this market from Pennsylvania, offering $90 million to move it to Camden. But state Sen. Vince Fumo upped the ante with a $100 million bid to build a new market at the former Navy base. The deal will be financed with various public funds.

Pennsylvanians should be investing heavily in this behemoth — after all, it does about $1.5 billion of business a year. But the big problem, says The Food Trust, is that only about 1 percent of the produce sold at Philly's market comes from Pennsylvania. That matters a lot.

Agriculture is Pennsyl-vania's biggest industry; our farmers make about $4.5 billion a year. But when Pennsylvanians buy from in-state farmers, it creates a far larger economic wave. When food money stays local, Secretary Wolff told me, that $4.5 billion grows tenfold, to about $45 billion.

Two years ago, in an effort to keep our food dollars here, Wolff came up with "PA Preferred" — our answer to "Jersey Fresh." But PA Preferred is failing miserably in Philadelphia, the state's biggest consumer market.

Few local restaurants and stores participate in PA Preferred, even though the requirements are ridiculously easy. A restaurateur must merely promise to try to buy food locally. Only one in Philly, Rx, is listed on the PA Preferred Web site. Apparently, they are it.

Yet according to The Food Trust, some 78 percent of consumers say they'd buy Pennsylvania-grown foods, if it was labeled as such. If customers do care about where their food comes from, why won't more restaurants inform us? In several countries, labeling the origin of food is mandatory. While a similar law languishes in the U.S. Congress, says Wolff, individual states could create their own labeling requirements. The ag secretary said he'd support a state bill to mandate labeling, but knew of nothing pending. That's shameful.

If Fumo can drum up $100 million in public financing to save the Produce Terminal, he might also sponsor a food-labeling bill to make our market more profitable to Pennsylvania.

And if you want to reach Philly consumers, how about sponsoring a grand public meal at the Reading Terminal Market? All Pennsylvania-grown food. Invite Wolff (he said he'd come). Invite Rendell, who's known to have a healthy appetite. And let's also ask Vince Fumo to partake in one power lunch that would nourish us all a little better.

Time is running out to get in on a neat audio-for-museum project at the Delaware Art Museum. A Philly creative agency is looking for artists to create iPod audio tracks to accompany various works of art. Tell a story, sing, play music, tap-dance or yodel to artworks by Hopper, Parrish, Wyeth and others. The goal is to encourage kids visiting the museum to conjure their own responses to the artworks — which they can record on the spot. Aug. 3 is the cutoff. Visit www.storytelling.whatscookin.com.

(bruce@schimmel.com)