Shoppers savor locally grown food from Modesto area farms

Sonia Desikan has found a bounty in Modesto unlike anything she knew in New York City.

Persimmons and pistachios and pomegranates beckoned as she browsed the Modesto Certified Farmers Market on Thursday morning.

"Here we pick up whatever we want," said Desikan, a pediatrician on temporary assignment in Patterson. "Every week, we make different meals."

She is not alone in enjoying locally grown food. A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that sales were $4.8 billion in 2008 and could reach $7 billion this year.

The category includes direct sales to consumers, via farmers markets and other means, as well as sales to retailers and restaurants.

The sales are still a tiny slice of U.S. farm production, most of which goes to processors who market it around the nation and world. But the report does underscore a growing trend among consumers to seek out local food and learn about how it is grown.

"I think it's important to support the local businesses, and obviously it's fresh and good for our bodies," said Demi Cunningham of Ceres, another farmers market patron, who looks for organic items in particular.

Local food has a loose definition. Some Californians might think that anything grown in this vast state qualifies. Some adherents use a 100-mile radius.

The latter would be tough on someone living in, say, South Dakota, where mostly grain and meat is produced. For Modesto-area residents, the 100-mile radius pulls in citrus from the Fresno area, rice from the Sacramento Valley, salad greens from the Salinas Valley, wine from several premium regions and even seafood just off the coast.

There's been a boomlet recently in Modesto in specialty grocers that stress freshness — Greens Market on Tenth Street, Sunflower Farmers Market on McHenry Avenue, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market on Oakdale Road.

Valley veggies

Longer-tenured supermarkets offer plenty of fresh and local food, too, such as vegetables from the Ratto Bros. produce operation, just a few miles west of Modesto. Save Mart features growers in its advertising, most recently a berry producer in the Salinas Valley.

Even the area's canneries get in on the freshness angle. Their managers note that the tomatoes, peaches and other crops are picked at the height of ripeness and that canning seals in the flavor and nutrients.

Agriculture leaders tend to support efforts to sell food locally, but they also note that exports are vital to the area's economy. Almonds, walnuts, dairy products, wine and canned tomatoes have major overseas markets.

The USDA report said direct sales by farmers to consumers have just about doubled in two decades, from about $650 million, adjusted for inflation, in the early 1990s to about $1.2 billion these days. The much bigger $4.8 billion figure came when sales to local restaurants and retailers and regional food distributors were added in.

"What this report does is say, 'Look, this market is bigger than you thought,' " said Stephen Vogel, who helped do the study for the department's Economic Research Service.

Truly farm fresh

The number of farms selling directly to consumers has grown from an estimated 86,000 in the early 1990s to about 136,000, according to the USDA. The number of farmers markets has about doubled, from 2,756 in 1998 to 5,274 in 2009.

Consumers tend to assume that the produce they are buying at these markets is fresher, made with fewer chemicals and grown by smaller, less corporate farms. That may be true in some cases and not in others.

"Local" also doesn't necessarily mean "organic," a label that carries strict requirements for growers. But the word still carries plenty of cache with consumers such as Carolyn Anderson, a farmer's granddaughter who sees shopping at the farmers market in Kansas City, Mo., as a ripe opportunity to get to know the growers and what went into the food they're selling.

"Especially on a beautiful day, you're chatting with them about their livelihood," she said. "I enjoy that experience as well as the food that comes out of it."

Bee staff writer John Holland can be reached at jholland@modbee.com or (209) 578-2385.