What do jalapeño and serrano peppers grown in Mexico, spinach packaged in California and peanut butter processed in Georgia have in common? They’re all thought to have caused recent outbreaks of foodborne illness. As anxieties increase about the safety of our food supply and the environmental impact of growing and shipping food, more people are buying foods grown close to home.

Eating locally means choosing products that are grown or raised in the region in which you live. In our grandparents’ time it was the norm. Now, with cheap, processed foods readily available everywhere, it’s become easier to do one-stop shopping than travel to the local farmers’ market. But that’s changing. The biggest payoff when you choose foods from local growers is tasting fresh food in season, say the experts at www.FoodRoutes.org, a web site devoted to eating locally. Blueberries shipped from Chile in February may be in the grocery store, but most people would agree they’re nothing like the ones you’ve plucked from the bushes in Maine on a hot July day.

“The food is fresher because it hasn’t had to travel as far or as long,” says Marion Nestle, a food and nutrition expert who wrote the guidebook What to Eat in 2006 to help consumers navigate the maze of food politics. “The food tastes better because it’s fresher. But most of all, I like having farms within driving distance, and I want to support small farmers in my community. I can’t think of a better way to do that than to buy what they produce.”

For some, going local is a health issue. Lois Reichert, a former occupational therapist at a veteran’s hospital, says she started raising dairy goats 9 years ago in Knoxville, IA, because her son was intolerant of cow’s milk and disliked commercially available substitutes. Now Reichert’s Dairy Air is a licensed dairy farm selling specialty goat cheese at three nearby farmers’ markets from May to October.

Melissa Tirone, a 27-year old law student from Westfield, NJ, developed an interest in farmers’ markets a few years ago, when going to the market became part of a social ritual of family weekends spent at the beach. When she got home, she missed the flavor of the fresh fruits and vegetables, so she researched local markets in the area. “Once I started to look for them, I found they were more accessible than I thought,” she says.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) lists 4,300 farmers’ markets operating nationwide, a number that has more than doubled since the agency started tracking markets in 1994 but which experts say is likely low. “It’s more like 5,000,” says Mark Winne, who helped launch the Connecticut Farmers Market Nutrition Program, a federal-state partnership that provides fresh fruit and vegetables to low-income people. Winne, who now resides in New Mexico and works on food policy there, says having enough money is the greatest barrier to eating healthy: Local foods like fruits and vegetables tend to be more expensive than high-calorie, low-nutrient, highly processed foods.

However, Jacquie Berger, executive director of Just Food, a nonprofit that connects New York area farmers with New York City residents, says more farmers’ markets are now operating in lower income neighborhoods because recent improvements to USDA nutrition programs ensure that growers receive government reimbursements. While farmers’ markets initially clustered in major coastal cities like New York and San Francisco, they are becoming more popular in rural areas long dominated by large farms dedicated to growing single money-making crops like corn and soybeans.

The recent floods in the Midwest and the resulting crop loss have demonstrated the difficulties for farms relying solely on monoculture, says Wendy Wasserman, the publisher of Edible Iowa River Valley, a magazine devoted to eating locally. Small producers who know they can sell at one of Iowa’s 150 farmers’ markets are beginning to see the benefits of crop diversity, Wasserman says. Alabama is another good case study for how the local food movement has grown: In 1999, the state had 17 farmers’ markets. Now there are more than 100, says Don Wambles, director of the Farmers’ Market Authority in Montgomery and a self-described old farmer.

Another way to buy fresh from the farm is through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). These alternatives to farmers’ markets sell “shares” of local produce and make weekly deliveries of fresh foods. CSAs are “nice for busy professionals who are trying to figure out how to get their nine servings [of fruits and vegetables] a day,” says Cindy Gentry, executive director of the Downtown Phoenix Public Market. “Contrary to the perception that this is a huge desert wasteland, there is a huge amount of crops here,” she says, including tomatoes, chilies and dates that are harvested well into fall because of the hot, dry days and cool nights.

The fact is, people are interested in what they eat, Wasserman says. Indeed, exchanging recipes and asking questions about growing methods and weather conditions are conversations difficult to imagine having with the manager of your local grocery store. “[Shopping at farmers’ markets] gives consumers a little more faith, and if there is a problem they know who to go back to,” Wasserman says.

And farmers want to fix problems fast. “That’s their livelihood,” she says. It took the government 3 months this summer to determine that the source of the largest outbreak of foodborne illness in a decade was contaminated water on a pepper farm in Mexico. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people nationwide became ill. By contrast, it took a one farmer right outside New York City just a few hours this summer to track down the cause of one container of spoiled eggs, fix the problem and replace the eggs. No one got sick, according to the farmer and the organization that runs the CSA program in which the farm participates. The idea of buying fresh from the farm may seem nostalgic and appealing, but how do you know what to ask in terms of health? SustainableTable.org offer tips about what kinds of questions to ask, like whether a cow has been given growth hormones or whether it has been raised on grass or corn or feed that includes other animals. Another site, www.localharvest.org helps you find farmer’s markets near you. Developing relationships with the growers is the best way to understand your food’s origin, Wambles says. “If you know the producer, you build trust. You can look at that farmer, his wife and his children and know those individuals are eating this food,” he says.

About two years ago, Ramona Padovano, 44, a physical therapist from Northern Virginia who writes a food blog at www.thehoundstoothgourmet.com, began regularly shopping at farmers’ markets because she wanted to eat a healthier diet that included more seasonal food and to support local agriculture. Now she’s a pro. “I can tell you when the first crop of corn is expected to hit the farm stands, or that a particular orchard lost most of their sour cherry crop due to a summer hailstorm. I know my favorite dairy farmer well enough to tell you that when she has a bumper crop of free-range eggs, she will have made mini cheesecakes to bring to her stall,” Padovano says. She’s also learned to love buffalo meat, the lower fat, lower cholesterol alternative to her former favorite, the hamburger. Local farmers often offer organic foods: those grown without artificial pesticides or fertilizers or antibiotics. Many of them are officially certified to do so by the USDA, which developed organic standards after Congress passed a law in 1990.

But what if you’re faced with choosing between a local or organic product? Winne, at least, would go local. “First of all, we need to eat more fruits and vegetables,” he says. “Secondly, if we can eat more from local sources, all the better. Thirdly, if they can be organically produced or at least sustainably produced, that’s even better.”

About the Author: April Fulton is a food and policy writer based in Washington, D.C. She also runs her own food blog, The Food Scribe, www.aprilfulton.com/blog.