Eating local gaining ground in mainstream

San Francisco —- Here’s something you might not know about being a locavore, the new-fangled term for the old-school tradition of eating food grown close to home: Coffee is almost always negotiable.

Here’s another: The people practicing this new-old (and currently quite hot) trend may surprise you. Suburban moms? Check. Artisanal-cheese-sniffing foodies? Double check. And how about shoppers in the decidedly unhippie halls of Wal-Mart?

“It’s really amazing how it’s just exploded,” says Jennifer Maiser, a San Francisco database consultant who was part of a small group credited with coining “locavore,” as part of an “eat local” challenge they mounted three years ago.

Since then, fluctuating transportation costs, food scares and climate concerns have lent a mainstream patina to eating local. Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest grocer, has pledged to source $400 million worth of fruits and vegetables from in-state farmers this year.

Some numbers:

> There were 4,685 farmers markets as of August, according to the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, up nearly 7 percent from two years ago.

> Locally grown produce was listed as the No. 2 item on a “What’s Hot” list by members of the American Culinary Federation in an October 2007 Internet survey by the National Restaurant Association. (No. 1 was bite-size desserts, but that’s another story.)

> The Community Supported Agriculture movement, in which members get food delivered from nearby farms, has grown to include more than 1,300 farms since its inception in 1985, according to the Robyn Van En Center at Pennsylvania’s Wilson College.

Who’s eating all this local food?

All kinds of people, from trowel-wielding back-to-the-landers to the tech titans of Google Inc.’s headquarters, where Cafe 150 serves food from within a 150-mile radius.

Taste and freshness are the driving forces for a lot of people interested in buying local foods, says Laurie Demeritt, who studies American eating patterns for the Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash.

National surveys of consumers showed that “local” has a world of different meanings, but there is a unifying theme of wanting to connect with the product —- how was it grown, were pesticides used, how were animals treated.

“What we’re finding is that the desire to know more about where your products come from is critically important across the United States,” Demeritt said.

With the movement still young, researchers are looking for more data to see whether local foods live up to their promise of being safer, healthier and better for the environment, says Rich Pirog, associate director of Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture.

There is some anecdotal information —- for instance, farmers markets are more likely to be selling unusual varieties such as heirloom tomatoes, which maintains genetic diversity, he says. And common sense indicates eating locally means less processed food and an easier task of tracing where your food comes from.

Living locavore can be tough —- imagine life without bananas.

Some followers are hard-core, drinking tea made of local herbs, for instance; while others are more relaxed.