Signs atop the produce case in Baltimore-area Safeway stores promoted "local" apples from Virginia and New Jersey. But the Granny Smiths and galas in the case hailed from Chile and New Zealand.
Under a cute farm-truck mural and the words "Home Grown," Wegmans in Hunt Valley offered eggplants grown so far away - the Netherlands - that their stickers were in French: "Aubergine." Also in that produce case: white asparagus from Peru, bell peppers from Canada - and, yes, some zucchini and yellow squash grown in the United States.
No wonder shoppers are confused. Large grocery chains, eager to get a bite of the locavore movement, are promoting produce from nearby farms - even when they have little in stock. It doesn't help that the federal government allows produce to be labeled "local" if it comes from within a 400-mile radius, which for Baltimore is roughly an arc that runs from Boston to Charleston, W.Va., to Cape Hatteras, N.C.
"It's an arms race in marketing," said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch, a Washington-based consumer group that fought for country-of-origin labeling on produce. "Every time consumers really respond to something, whether it's organic or sustainable or local, the marketers try to capture that and apply it to more and more products, even if it's not necessarily deserved."
Influenced by food-contamination scares and books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma that rail against industrial farming, many consumers are convinced that locally grown food is safer, fresher and better for the environment. So they've been flocking to farmers' markets or ordering produce directly from local farms.
Now, conventional supermarkets are trying to lure them back.
Retailers say their local push is sincere, if somewhat hampered by distribution systems that favor the efficiencies of big farms and the corporate habits of big grocery chains.
They also must balance the demands of thousands of shoppers - those pushing for seasonal eating and those who want out-of-season produce.
"There are challenges," said Wegmans spokeswoman Jeanne Colleluori. "If one particular grower isn't going to be able to provide all the corn we need, we have to go to multiple growers. If we still can't get enough locally, we'll go outside the circle."
Consumer groups fear that just as agribusiness appropriated the term "organic," applying it in some cases to food raised on factory farms, the supermarket chains are trying to adopt the "local" label in name only. Source globally, market locally.
