TORONTO - Under a hot summer sun, not far from the rush of traffic along Ontario's Highway 400, a small group of farmers kneel in the soil and pluck bright red radishes from a lush field.
A short walk away, Jane Carnwath wheels a shopping cart around a small farmers market where the produce is as fresh and local as it gets, travelling mere metres from the field before it's sold.
"(There's) pride in the locale," says Carnwath, who lives in downtown Toronto but frequents the market in the Holland Marsh area, about 60 kilometres north of the city.
"I like the food. It's better. It sometimes costs a little bit more, but I think it's worth it."
Fuelled by concerns about the massive carbon footprint of shipping food thousands of kilometres to Canadian supermarkets, more consumers are seeking out nearby producers like those at the Holland Marsh market.
And often they don't even have to leave the city to find them.
Less than an hour away in downtown Toronto, hidden beneath a towering maze of glass-covered office buildings, the crowd of people hovering around a small weekly farmers market are bearing this out.
For Bob Proracki, a sweet potato farmer from the northern shores of Lake Erie, the suit-wearing office workers browsing fresh produce over their lunch breaks represent a new, green-conscious cornerstone of his business.
"People are becoming more aware of the need to buy local and to stay away from shipments of food brought from overseas," says Proracki while selling his fresh sweet potatoes and pre-cut fries at one of the 10 markets in the Toronto area he attends each week.
"With more people aware of that, then we obviously benefit financially when we take the time and effort to come to markets and people know the food they're eating."
Picking through cartons of cherries and strawberries at a neighbouring table, Clare Baliva of Toronto says she visits local markets because she wants to know exactly where her food comes from.
"It's not just a preference in terms of the produce; it's a preference in terms of saving the environment as well," says Baliva.
"I'm just starting to learn more about what is environmentally friendly and how to reduce my carbon footprint, and I've just learned that one of the ways is to buy local."
Part of the recent popularity of local food comes from the trendy book "100-Mile Diet," written by a Vancouver couple who tried to live for a year only eating food produced within a radius of about 160 kilometres.
The 100-mile figure is largely symbolic, says Toronto-area environmentalist Franz Hartmann, but it's a reminder that vast farmland still sits just beyond the sprawl of cities like Toronto, Vancouver or Halifax - and certainly closer than where most of the food we eat typically originates.
Environmental groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation and New Brunswick's Falls Brook Centre, estimate the average Canadian meal travels about 2,400 kilometres before it reaches the kitchen table.
"Every time you buy local instead of buying imported food, there's a lot less energy required in transporting it from faraway to here," says Hartmann, executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance.
Hartmann acknowledges there are many foods that just aren't produced in Canada, such as bananas and coffee, and this country's long winters make it difficult to find local food year-round.
