In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating
fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the
climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the
obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This
is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and
farmers’ markets.

With the fast-growing local foods movement, diets are becoming more
locally shaped and more seasonal. In a typical supermarket in an
industrial country today it is often difficult to tell what season it
is because the store tries to make everything available on a year-round
basis. As oil prices rise, this will become less common. In essence, a
reduction in the use of oil to transport food over long
distances—whether by plane, truck, or ship—will also localize the food
economy.

This trend toward localization is reflected in the
recent rise in the number of farms in the United States, which may be
the reversal of a century-long trend of farm consolidation. Between the
agricultural census of 2002 and that of 2007, the number of farms in
the United States increased by 4 percent to roughly 2.2 million. The
new farms were mostly small, many of them operated by women, whose
numbers in farming jumped from 238,000 in 2002 to 306,000 in 2007, a
rise of nearly 30 percent.

Many of the new farms cater to local
markets. Some produce fresh fruits and vegetables exclusively for
farmers’ markets or for their own roadside stands. Others produce
specialized products, such as the goat farms that produce milk, cheese,
and meat or the farms that grow flowers or wood for fireplaces. Others
specialize in organic food. The number of organic farms in the United
States jumped from 12,000 in 2002 to 18,200 in 2007, increasing by half
in five years.

Gardening was given a big boost in the spring of
2009 when U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama worked with children from a
local school to dig up a piece of lawn by the White House to start a
vegetable garden. There was a precedent. Eleanor Roosevelt planted a
White House victory garden during World War II. Her initiative
encouraged millions of victory gardens that eventually grew 40 percent
of the nation’s fresh produce.

Although it was much easier to
expand home gardening during World War II, when the United States was
largely a rural society, there is still a huge gardening
potential—given that the grass lawns surrounding U.S. residences
collectively cover some 18 million acres. Converting even a small share
of this to fresh vegetables and fruit trees could make an important
contribution to improving nutrition.