On a sweltering summer Saturday at the Grandin Village Community Market in Roanoke, farmer Tenley Weaver weighed tomatoes and fingerling potatoes while her assistant misted water on a bouquet of fresh cilantro.
At the other end of the market, a customer asked for a dozen eggs.
"That's been a popular question this morning," the vendor said. "I'm sold out."
Farm-fresh eggs weren't the only sellout at this first-year farmers market. Manager Brent Cochran said he doesn't have enough booths for all the vendors who want to peddle their wares each weekend.
"I have got a very long waiting list right now of people who would like to participate, but I certainly don't have the space," Cochran said.
Many Southwest Virginia markets are bustling, and the number of markets statewide has almost doubled within the past five years, from 88 to 174, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Forty new markets sprang up between last summer and this summer alone.
Farmers, market managers and agriculture officials attribute the boom to a growing public concern over the safety and reliability of the American food system. They say consumers are clamoring for fresh produce, dairy, meats and other goods produced locally with environmental safety and human health in mind. The recently released documentary "Food, Inc." -- about the ills of America's corporate-controlled food industry -- has only fueled the momentum.
Buying local also pumps money into the community's economy, and the farmers market is one of the easiest places to find those goods.
But busy markets don't necessarily translate into fatter pocketbooks for every farmer. Many variables -- including the economy, weather, government regulations and marketing -- continue to challenge them.
"I would say it is kind of more like slow and steady," said Sarah Shannon, who operates Weathertop Farm in Check with her husband, Cedric.
To combat flagging sales in some categories, inventive local food producers are striving to diversify, whether that means starting a "virtual" farmers market, opening their own restaurants or even lobbying for a new slaughterhouse to save time and fuel costs.
Said Walter Reick, an Axton-based pork producer: "We have all had to kind of develop our niche market to survive."
Selling face to face
Good Food-Good People, based in Floyd, saw a 30 percent increase in overall sales this spring and summer over last year's growing season. That happened despite weather-related crop failures and a drop in business from wholesale buyers such as restaurants, caterers, institutions and stores.
Weaver, who also owns Full Circle Organic Farm in Floyd with her husband, Dennis Dove, said if it had not been for direct sales to customers, "we'd be in a bad way."
Their experience is consistent with what state data have shown. Matt Benson, community viability specialist for the Virginia Cooperative Extension, said direct farm-to-consumer sales increased about 72 percent in Virginia between 2002 and 2007, from $16.8 million to $28.9 million. He said that he expects more recent figures, which are not yet available, to show the same trajectory.
"Farmers have traditionally not been focused on marketing or food distribution. They have been focused on production," Benson said. "But now with this growth in interest from the consumers, from families to individuals, farmers are becoming much more engaged."
Good Food-Good People, for example, added two farmers markets to its schedule this summer, setting up in Grandin Village and at the Blacksburg YMCA in addition to the Blacksburg Farmers Market. They also added a vegetable share program to their existing fruit share, which allows customers to pay a flat rate upfront and receive weekly baskets of bounty all summer. And a new venture, the "virtual" farmers market, lets customers order food from an e-mail list and pick it up at a designated drop spot.
For individual farmers in particular, farmers markets remain the easiest way to get face to face with customers. That direct contact is important for two reasons, officials say: Consumers get to make a personal connection with the person raising their food and growers get to sell on a small scale, which is all many have the time and resources to do.
"We are full on Saturdays," said Tina Workman, who manages the Roanoke City Market. "We are even to the point where we are shutting down Kirk Avenue between Jefferson and Market [streets] so we can put overflow vendors in there. We have to sometimes get really creative, but we don't turn anyone away if they have been approved to sell on the market."
The Salem Farmers Market was bursting on busy days this summer, too, with 18 new vendors on the list, said manager Beth Carson.
Randy Cohen of Indian Valley Farms in Floyd County sells on the Blacksburg Farmers Market and represents vendors on the market's board. He said this year has brought higher overall sales and increased foot traffic.
"I see a lot of people I've never seen before," he said.
But Cohen said his own sales were actually down this year, and he blames the weather.
"Me and the other vegetable growers are having a very difficult growing year because of the rain," he said. "It has [also] rained on some market days, and our market is outside so if it's raining, people are not going to come."
Walter Reick of Sandy River Pork in Axton sells on the Roanoke market. His sales were down, too, and he wonders if -- when it comes to farmers markets -- there is such a thing as too many. He said he thinks a few of his regular customers now shop for pork at the Grandin Village market.
"Every little community is trying to get a farmers market established, which the principle of it is fine, but how many of these things can exist and survive?"
The restaurant factor
Although restaurant sales totals dropped this year for Good Food-Good People, the number of restaurants on their customer list actually increased. Weaver attributes the drop to smaller purchases per invoice, which suggests that restaurateurs may have been battling the recession by trimming waste.
Brian Murtagh, executive chef at Roanoke Country Club, said that makes sense.
"We are all very conscious of our profit margins, and if we were buying a lot last year and we noticed that we were wasting some, instead of throwing away the beet greens, I may use that as the vegetable tonight and then use the beets as the vegetable tomorrow night," he said.
Just because they aren't ordering as much doesn't mean chefs do not still covet fresh, local products, Murtagh said.
"I think it is peace of mind for me," he said. "I would rather pay a little bit more and know that someone in our local economy is benefiting from it."
Restaurants such as Local Roots Cafe in Roanoke, the Red Hen in Lexington and Over the Moon Cafe in Floyd continue to source as many local ingredients as possible because that's the tenet on which their businesses were based. Also in Roanoke, The Isaacs Mediterranean restaurant has ramped up its efforts to buy local.
General manager Ben Ward said they always wanted to sell customers on the healthy aspects of Mediterranean cuisine, but one day he wondered, "How healthy is the beef if it has been pumped full of hormones?"
"We were aware that our food costs were going to go up" when they sourced more local products, Ward said. "It was offset by the fact that our sales have gone up."
Ward has even organized several staff excursions to educate employees about the importance of supporting local farmers. He took all 42 of his employees to see "Food, Inc." at The Grandin Theatre and has taken several on field trips to visit suppliers at Border Springs Farm in Patrick Springs and BPG/The Greenery on Bent Mountain.
The owners of a new restaurant in Newport don't have to travel as far to see where their food comes from. Phil and Mikie Mosser not only own the local food restaurant Mikie's 7th, which opened in May, they own Shadowchase Farm, where they raise pigs, cattle and laying hens.
"My wife has always had the desire to have a restaurant, and we finally said, 'We think there are enough people who would want to have our kind of beef and pork and eggs and have it prepared for them,' " Phil Mosser said. "It really was an extension of our farm, a way to market more of our farm products."
The Mossers find it convenient to supply their own restaurant, which earned its name by being Mikie Mosser's seventh "child." Although other restaurateurs want to buy their nicest cuts of meat, leaving them to find a way to sell burger and less-prized cuts, they can now use whatever they want on their menu.
Phil Mosser said they use a lot of their own hamburger. They use pork and beef roasts to make barbecue for the restaurant, and the sirloin for the steak sandwich.
"At Mikie's, if we have a bunch of ribs, we have a rib special," Phil Mosser said. "That makes the logistics a whole lot easier than trying to deal with restaurants."
But dealing with restaurants won't be a losing proposition for long, Weaver said. In the past couple of weeks, Good Food-Good People's restaurant business began to rebound. Public schools, as well as colleges and universities such as Virginia Tech, Roanoke College and Washington and Lee University, are all jumping on the local food bandwagon, as well.
"I think there is hugely more potential out there," Weaver said.
Making it mainstream
Support for the local food movement is swelling, but farmers such as Weaver still fear the future.
"I have this nightmare that in two years we'll be eating moon foods out of toothpaste tubes," she said with a laugh.
But with each month that passes, it is clearer that eating local is more than just a passing fad.
The Virginia Department of Agriculture recently created a Farm-to-School program to encourage public schools to spend some of their $6 million annual produce budget with local growers. The department also recently unveiled an interactive Web site to help Virginians find local products.
Meanwhile, the Wholesome Wave Foundation, a Connecticut-based nonprofit, recently started a pilot program in 10 states that allows buyers on food stamps to receive double the value when they shop at a farmers market. So far, only the Abingdon, Charlottesville and Spotsylvania markets are part of the program in Virginia, but founder Michel Nischan said he hopes to expand into other markets as quickly as possible.
Agriculture officials say there are some large hurdles that must be addressed to make local food production a viable way of life for small farmers.
"Farmers are concerned about food safety requirements and insurance and liability costs," said Benson, of the Virginia Cooperative Extension. For example, a farmer must have a sizeable insurance policy to play in the big leagues with customers such as produce distributors and grocery stores.
"If I was a farmer growing stuff and taking it to a restaurant or a wholesale distributor, I would have at least a million-dollar insurance policy to cover my butt," said Fred Najjum, who buys local produce for his family's business, Roanoke Fruit & Produce Co.
Eddy Bova, part-owner of Produce Source Partners, agreed: "Face it, food safety is a prominent thing. That is the big elephant in the room that people don't want to talk about."
Even most of the growers for Good Food-Good People, a relatively small business compared to Najjum's and Bova's companies, have a $1 million to $3 million insurance policy.
"Unfortunately, if any of us were to, God forbid, cause an outbreak of food-related illness, that does not go very far," Weaver said. "Nobody can be against food safety, but conversely, a lot of these regulations are not small-farm friendly."
Farmers say it would be a step in the right direction if Southwest Virginia had more slaughterhouses inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Currently, many drive animals to North Carolina or the Harrisonburg area to have them processed according to USDA standards.
That's why the Potter family of Buffalo Creek Beef is working with brothers Tim and Steve Donald to reopen their great-great-uncle's processing facility in Lexington. The Donald slaughterhouse probably won't be up and running until November, but the brothers already have a waiting list of farmers, and their zoning request was approved unanimously.
"We believe that if we had pursued this five years earlier, we don't think it would have been as popular as it is now," Tim Donald said.
Strides like these encourage producers to believe that eating local food could become an American way of life, just as it was in the past.
"Local food is no longer a movement for the elite," Benson said. "It is a movement for everyone." To see more of The Roanoke Times, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.roanoke.com/. Copyright (c) 2009, The Roanoke Times, Va. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, The Roanoke Times, Va.