s there a real market for place-based foods, one that would make this model economically viable? Absolutely. It's already taking shape. Four years ago, the amount of food grown in northern Arizona and marketed in the Flagstaff area generated less than $20,000 in retail sales annually. In 2004, farmers and ranchers living within 150 miles of the city sold nearly $500,000 worth of food to our community. Since 1994, the number of farmers' markets in the United States has doubled, to more than 3,700. The natural foods industry -- a vague term that includes local and organic products -- is growing at a healthy rate of about 24 percent a year. Although the "buy local" movement is not ready to eclipse Wal-Mart -- the world's largest food retailer raked in about $66 billion in food sales in 2004 -- its growth is nonetheless significant.
In northern Arizona, the economic benefits of these initiatives ripple through the community, generating more local wealth (the opposite of the Wal-Mart effect). Several years ago, I invited Francisco Perez, a renowned Spanish chef who had "retired" to the area, to lead a cooking demonstration at the Flagstaff Community Farmers' Market. Consumers raved about his pestos made from wild, locally cultivated heirloom greens and asked him to offer them at the market regularly. He now sells his pestos and sauces in area stores as well. Perez often caters "wild foods" dinners with as many as 200 attendees, exposing the uninitiated to a variety of greens, berries, and grains harvested within a 50-mile range. Perez can't do this alone: He hires at least a dozen local residents to collect his wild-food ingredients.
Not everyone can achieve Perez's success; there is no standard recipe that's guaranteed to work. Ranchers in the Southwest, lobstermen in Maine, and growers of Cracker cattle (a relative of the Texas longhorn) in the Florida swamplands all face different challenges. Gilfeather turnip farmers in Vermont face climatic constraints unlike those that affect producers of pasture-raised heritage turkeys in New Mexico. Each region has to develop a strategy suited to its geography and culinary traditions. The Vermont Fresh Network, for instance, helps restaurants create seasonal menus that feature more root crops and aged cheeses in the winter, and more fresh greens and fruits in the summer. And the Pacific Northwest's Salmon-Safe organization works to connect grocery store managers with salmon suppliers who harvest their fish in ways that reduce stream pollution and foster the resurgence of wild salmon in the Columbia River watershed.
hat might this forward-looking food network look like in 10 years? First, many more local foods will be grown, sold, and eaten. Markets in each part of the country will be stocked with cheeses, wines, fruits, and vegetables naturally infused with distinctive flavors unique to that place. Each local food network will celebrate its own version of what the French call terroir: the special geographic, geological, climatic, and environmental attributes that affect the very growth, flavor, and fragrance of heritage products. And stronger, more prosperous regional food cooperatives across the United States will trade with one another for those specialty items -- maple syrup, mesquite flour, smoked salmon, or spices, for example -- that simply can't be produced in other climates.
Most important, we will see a larger portion of every consumer dollar returning to farmers or ranchers rather than to middlemen, allowing producers to reinvest in rural land conservation and restoration. The mayor of Burlington, Vermont, has pledged that 10 percent of city food purchases will come from local sources within the next five years.
Of course, the very best part of such a green future is that it will taste much better and be far more memorable than one in which every meal -- from New York to Los Angeles -- tastes like every other meal. It is unfortunate that it has taken us so long to realize that truly pleasurable eating is so intimately linked with a stronger sense of food democracy. Americans can once again take control of their food future, rather than remain victims of a globalized food system that offers fewer choices and imposes a costly environmental and social burden.
