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Farmers markets have grown in popularity as the consumer demand for locally grown and produced foods has grown, said Lori Panda, who runs the Ohio Proud program of the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The program oversees the state's more than 1,000 farmers markets. In comparison, 600 were listed with the department in 2006, Panda said. As their numbers increase, farmers markets are popping up in not-so traditional locations. "The markets are opening in places like Easton because it has a ready-built clientele," Panda said. "It's not surprising, considering the growing interest of consumers who want more options for local foods, want to support the local economy, and, because of food-safety concerns, want to know who is growing their foods. It just makes sense that farmers want to go where the people are."

The market for local food - food that is produced, processed, distributed and sold within a specific region, say a radius of several hundred miles - is growing. Large, small and midsized farms are all tapping into it. Even better, new data suggest that these producers are employing more workers than they would be if they weren't selling into local and regional markets.

An Indiana University study that looked at consumers who buy locally grown and produced foods through farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture programs found the venues largely attract a "privileged" class of shoppers.

Vegetables from local food sources insufficient to meet the caloric and nutritional demands of a growing population

Two years ago, Forbes predicted that by the year 2018, 20 percent of the food consumed in U.S. cities will be grown in places like this. It's safe to say that's almost certainly not going to happen. Right now, urban-grown produce represents a minuscule slice of the food system. But there are several plausible scenarios that could make such food more commonplace in the city kitchen of the future. Several of these scenarios are growing more likely by the day. If energy prices spike, your average grapefruit's 1,500-mile journey to your fridge could make local food seem cheaper by comparison. Droughts are becoming more common, and soil-free hydroponic agriculture uses a fraction of the water of conventional farming and can easily be set up in urban environments. And there's always the unforeseen Black Swan event: World War II "victory gardens" made urban farming a temporary reality for millions in the early 1940s.

Texas Hobbit House: A Small, Handmade Treasure posted by Robyn Lawrence Jul 23, 2011 10:03 am filed under: green home decor, healthy home, inspiration, materials & architecture, earthen home, green home, hand-built home, handmade home, healthy home, inspiration, small home Add to FavoritesTell a FriendSharePrint DiggRedditCare2StumbleUponmore 90 comments Of all the houses I visited during my tenure as Natural Home editor-in-chief, the first one holds a special place in my heart. I visited Gary Zuker's hand-built cob cottage-built for $40,000-in 1999. Natural Home named it our "house of the decade" in 2009, and the house continues to capture the imagination of everyone who sees it. Gary, a University of Texas computer engineer, had no carpentry experience when he set out to build a small, inexpensive weekend getaway and eventual retirement home on 2 acres of wooded land, just up the hill from Lake Travis outside of Austin, Texas. Austin's resident sustainable-building guru Pliny Fisk, co-director of the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, helped him build a home out of modified cob known as Leichtlehmbau, a lightweight mixture of straw and clay. "Anybody can do this," Gary realized. "It's simple." After poring over drawings of medieval straw-clay cottages in ancient texts at the university's historical library, Gary pulled together a straw-clay recipe based on historical documents and modern-day innovations. "Real cob is mostly earth with straw as a binder," he explains. "Leichtlehmbau, a German term for light straw-clay, is a legitimate extension of it. You add more straw and use only clay to cut down on the amount of earth and increase insulation." Gary bought 250 bales of straw at $1.50 a bale from nearby farmers. He had 6 cubic yards of blue clay, which a gravel company was hauling out of a local pit, delivered for $25. He found more than 100 recipes for exterior plaster used to seal the clay and straw, including ev