'Locavores' rising

Lifestyle/Technology: The Slow Food movement gains adherents | Susan Olasky

Associated Press/Photo by Eric Risberg

Late last month farmers markets in New York City—a big one at Union Square, and dozens of neighborhood ones lining sidewalks and plazas—were bursting with a corn-ucopia of locally grown produce: melons, lettuce, beets, sweet corn, apples, peaches, plums, onions, beans, broccoli, squash.

All of that was good news for "locavores," to use the New Oxford American Dictionary's 2007 Word of the Year: A locavore eats only locally grown foods. Prompted by the success of books such as Barbara Kinsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, the "eat local" trend is growing.

Some locavores wage war on "industrial foods." Others, given ammunition by this year's rise in gas prices, emphasize transportation cost. The Treehugger website, a "one-stop shop for green news," says "local food reduces or eliminates the costs, both monetary and planetary, of transportation, processing, packaging, and advertising." The New York Times summarizes the locavore view this way: "Long-distance food, with its attendant petroleum consumption and cheap wages, is harming the planet and does nothing to help build communities."