A Growing Trend: Small, Local and Organic

Houses are creeping closer and closer to his farm -- and just about every farm in the United States. The country loses two acres of farmland every minute, according to American Farmland Trust. Count to 60, and there go two more acres. From 1992 to 1997, more than 6 million acres of agricultural land -- about the size of Maryland -- was converted for development. Farm and ranch land disappeared 51 percent faster in the 1990s than in the 1980s.

Still, growers like Pappas and Grohsgal press on, determined to live off the land and perpetuate a way of life. And to do so they are getting help from the palates of mainstream grocery and restaurant customers. A few years ago, researchers for the Leopold Center at Iowa State University conducted an Internet study in which respondents chose between two kinds of strawberries -- one with a tag that said locally grown and another with a tag that said USA grown. More than 90 percent preferred the strawberry that was locally grown.

And talk about paradoxes: In many instances, a big chunk of the increasing demand for local produce comes from many of the same people who buy the big houses on converted farmland or near what remains of it. This is the circle of life in the new millennium.

Ann Yonkers, whose organization Freshfarm Markets runs a weekly farmers market in Dupont Circle, thinks local farmers are benefiting from the phenomenal growth of farmers markets across the country. From 1994 to 2004, they grew 111 percent, to more than 3,700, according to federal statistics. The Dupont Circle market went from 15 farmers selling $265,000 worth of goods in 1997 to 35 producers on track to sell more than $2 million worth of goods for 2006. Typically shoppers find fresher, more and varied products at such markets, and they get to meet the people who grow them.

"Small farmers need to have multiple ways of selling," Yonkers said. "So at farmers markets, they meet restaurateurs, they meet people from various local institutions, people saying, 'Why can't we have this food, too?' "

Most businesses find local farmers this way -- from the Clyde's restaurant group, which has featured locally grown produce for more than a decade; to My Organic Market, a local grocery chain that relies heavily on produce from Pappas and other local farmers; to a San Francisco caterer called Bon Appétit Management Co., which spends $30 million a year on local produce for cafeterias at big businesses and universities, including several in the Washington area.

Kimberly Triplett, Bon Appétit's general manager for Georgetown University law school, said the company discovered Grohsgal through the Chevy Chase farmers market. She called, asking to buy from him. "He turned me down at first," Triplett said. "He doesn't like big corporations. That's why he went into business for himself."

She explained her company's commitment to relying on local farmers. "After a while, I think he felt bad for me, and he invited us to his farm. We walked the fields. I think we bonded over that experience and we formed a partnership."

"They have been very good to us," Grohsgal said. Bon Appétit has become his biggest wholesale customer. Students at American and Gallaudet can find Grohsgal's arugula salad or peppers, or whatever he has that looks good that week at various stations in the school cafeterias, with a little card nearby that explains who he is and where he grows his food.

Pappas says his biggest customers are D.C. restaurants. "D.C. is a real hot restaurant town," he said. "And more chefs are realizing that it's important to buy locally and to make their menus around seasonal produce, and that to do so they need to develop relationships with local farmers."

Omri Aflalo, the sous chef at Citronelle, said the argument to buy locally is powerful. "It's a much better product," he said. "It is about using indigenous ingredients. You're taught to use what's around you."

Aflalo and Pappas communicate a couple of times a week, by phone, e-mail or fax, about what is growing well. Pappas tries to stay on top of the restaurant and food world by reading magazines and newspaper food sections. He said Washingtonian magazine's annual list of the 100 best restaurants is his "marketing bible."

"Instead of chasing the market," he said, "I want to drive the market."

My Organic Market, which has four stores in the Washington area and is known as MOM's, has been selling his salad mix next to packaged salad from Earthbound Farm, one of the country's biggest industrial organic farm operations, which was implicated in the recent E. coli spinach scare. Earthbound Farm's salads come in fluffy plastic bags, which have found their way to millions of busy people. Pappas's salad comes in flimsy clam-shell plastic boxes, like those take-out salad bars. It is the big corporation salad vs. the little guy salad. And the little guy is gaining ground.

Jon Croft, the store's produce director, said: "Mike's salads are really selling well over the last few weeks. I was surprised. They are essentially the same price. It was a gamble to bring in a clam-shell box without a label, without a big farm name. It's just a little plastic container. That's been very interesting to me."

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