BY DOUG HARLOW

Staff Writer

In December 2007, the editors at the New Oxford American Dictionary announced that their "Word of the Year" was "locavore," an expression meaning someone who eats locally grown food.

For those of us omnivores who eat just about everything, the idea of consuming fresh, locally produced vegetables, meats, breads and fruits appeals to our sense of place, taste and nutrition, area marketers say.

So what better place to achieve all that than at a local farmers' market?

"Locavore, that means people who want to eat as much local food as they can," Tom Roberts at Snakeroot Organic Farm in Pittsfield said. "It reduces the carbon footprint of their dinner, that means that there's less carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere because the food isn't traveling across the nation to get to them.

"It also means that their money gets circulated locally, so the more local they spend their money, the sooner they'll see it again."

Snakeroot sets up at five farmers' markets throughout out the summer, in Newport, Waterville, Pittsfield, Orono and Unity.

Roberts and other farmers who sell their produce locally say the farmers' markets also offer a glimpse back to simpler times.

"It's kind of an exciting event; it's the old-style shopping, the way marketing first started centuries ago," he said. "You get to meet a lot of your neighbors at the farmers' market and meet the people who actually produced the food."

The number of farmers' markets in the United States continues to grow, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Marketing Service, reaching a total of 4,685 in August 2008.

That represents a 6.8 percent increase since mid-August 2006, when the service reported 4,385 farmers' markets nationwide.

"More and more consumers are discovering the wide array of fresh, locally grown produce available at farmers' markets," Agricultural Marketing Service Administrator Lloyd Day said on the agency's Web site. "Another reason for their popularity is food buyers like the opportunity to interact with the producers."

Day said that since 1994, when the service began to track farmers markets, the number of farmers' markets nationwide has grown by nearly 3,000.

Terry Johnston of Broken Acres Farm in Jefferson, who helps run the Augusta Farmers' Market at Turnpike Mall, one of two markets in the capital city, said she has been selling produce at farmers' markets for 24 years.

"We have all kinds of vegetable like spinach, fiddleheads, beet greens, scallion onions," Johnston said. "We have seedling plants -- tomato plants, pepper plants and we have a meat vendor selling meats, raised in Farmingdale, and we have two bakers."

She said the market also is part of the state's Community Supported Agriculture program, in which the customer can pre-pay the farmer and come and pick out their food throughout the growing season.

"They come here for the fresh produce, stuff that is grown locally and if they have any questions they can just ask the farmer, you know, 'Hey, what do you spray with?' If they're concerned, that's where they should buy it," Johnston said.

"The fresher it is, the more nutrients you're going to get out of the food."

Shannon Haines, executive director of Waterville Main Street, which helps sponsor the farmers' market in The Concourse with area growers, said people would rather buy their food from the guy down the street than the guy in California.

"I think that people are more and more interested in local foods these days," Haines said. "I think that it's just an issue that more people talk about, both from a health stand point and also from a sustainability stand point and people like to meet the people who grow their food."

She said people are starting to think about how far the food they buy at the supermarket actually is shipped and the gas and oil it takes to get to the vittles to their table.

The food we buy at the local supermarket now travels an average of 1,500 miles before ending up on our plates, according to the folks at California-based locavore.com. This globalization of the food supply has serious consequences for the environment, our health, our communities and our taste buds, they say.

Julia Staples at the Chick-a-dee's Nest Herb Farm in Farmington and a member of the Sandy River Farmers' Market could not agree more.

"I think that farmers' markets are so popular because food that fresh can have up to seven times the nutritional value than food trucked halfway across the country," she said. "Also, people realize that buying local has a direct impact on them and their community's ability to be self reliant."

At the Skowhegan Farmers' Market in the parking lot in front of the old Grange building on Madison Avenue, manager Sarah Smith of Grassland Farm said the growing trend of eating locally benefits everyone.

"It's access to the most high quality food at a very reasonable price," Smith said. "The vendors at the farmers' market all feel like good food is a right, not a privilege and we offer everything from vegetables to naturally raised meats, organic meats, cheeses, maple syrup, honey and all of those things are raised with a lot of integrity and the quality and freshness is far beyond what you are able to find at the grocery store."

New to the farmers' market in Skowhegan this year will be summer visits from a Great Diamond Island lobstering family, bringing Maine's seafood upcountry.

There also will be bimonthly pizza cooked on-site in a wood-fired oven.

There is music every week and events for the whole family, Smith said.

"We feel it's very important to know who grows your food, especially with the food scares and all of that happening," She said. "It's a way of reestablishing a time-honored relationship of the food grower and the food consumer. That's an experience you don't get to have when you're shopping at the grocery store."

Doug Harlow -- 474-9534, ext. 342

dharlow@centralmaine.com