In talking to people about why they buy or would consider buying locally-grown product, I consistently hear four main reasons:

1. I cook. Locally grown food simply tastes better.
2. I support my community, including farmers.
3. I want to eat healthier and locally grown food has more nutrients.
4. I’m scared about the overuse of pesticides on conventionally grown produce. I feel more comfortable buying from a farmer I know.

The interesting thing is that I used to think of the buyers profiled above as distinct groups: health conscious buyers distinct from foodies distinct from people advocating food justice.

Give Me a Reason to Buy Locally

But the reality is that you can start at any one point above, and within a short period of time—sometimes days, sometimes months—slide right into another. Care about taste most? Great! But then it’s harder to spray pesticides on the berries you grow in your garden or spray that toxic cleanser you use on your kitchen counter.

Like to support local farmers? Hurray! And you know what? It turns out their food tastes amazing. Funny how food tastes so much better when it was dug out of the ground that morning. With something like a tomato it’s not even a fair fight when you try local vs. a tomato that is picked “dead green” and shipped 1,500 miles.

“Rich people need organic food to survive.” Wait—is that a joke, or a reality in America today? Or both? The fact is that for all of us to survive in this new century we’re going to have to change the way we source food. And not just as individuals: We also need to re-formulate national policy in line with that same objective because, at the moment, long-standing government subsidies are crushing both our health and our environment.

Let’s Have a Fair Food Fight

You can almost hear Dick Cheney saying “organic food is a nice personal virtue for the radical fringe, but it’s not going to feed the world.” Actually, when you level the playing field, organic (and more importantly, sustainable) food comes out on top.

The fact is organic farmers don’t receive federal subsidies the same way conventional farmers do. Organic and small-time farmers receive “specialty crop grants” that are measured in thousands rather than in millions of dollars.  Sad truth: If you’re not growing corn, wheat or soybeans, you get the merest of crumbs from the federal table.

Myth: Organic Food is More Expensive

Today, organic food does cost more than conventional food. Watch an organic farmer hand-weed a row of carrots and you’ll immediately know why. Smaller organic farms require more time, attention and labor to get produce to market.

You want to do the right thing. Eat locally and sustainably 12 months of the year. Easy enough in California, but you live in Vermont or Minnesota or even New York—where winter settles in early and leaves late.

As currently deployed, New York State’s 36,000 farms can supply perhaps 40% of local food needs, so unless all New York residents become victory gardeners overnight, we will continue to depend on food imported from thousands of miles away.

But what if you started putting farms in new and unexpected areas closer to home? Areas with plenty of sunlight. Look up. Think green roofs.

Building owners motivated to lower HVAC costs, speed building approvals, and lower construction costs are turning to green roofs. But the roofs—while they provide significant business, health, environmental, and aesthetic benefits—are not always farms. They could be. They should be.

Welcome to Farms in the Sky

At investor conference Agriculture 2.0, I met Bob Fireman, a long-time real estate executive, who is now the president of Sky Vegetables. Bob dreams big. His vision is to have rooftop greenhouses raising vegetables 12 months of the year in communities from the Bronx to Boston, from the Bay Area to Detroit.

Twenty years ago Peter Hoffman opened Savoy on a quiet corner in New York’s Soho district with a radical concept: great meals are created with ingredients sourced from local farmers.

Hoffman didn’t use local foods for political reasons.  “Building recipes from what was available, seasonal and local was what was most exciting to me in the creative process as a chef.”

“When Alain Ducasse was running the restaurant here in New York, he knew that great products come from close to home. Traditionally, the great three-star restaurants in France, especially in the 60s, were located in agricultural regions and were based on direct relationships with local farmers. That’s what we showcase at Savoy.”

The Best Chefs Are Inspired By Their Ingredients

“Whether you’re going to write a book or paint a picture, you start with a blank canvas or pad of paper.  I start with an empty pot and ask so what am I going to cook?  I am interested in what’s in season. What do I feel like eating today?  What are the traditional methods of preparation and combinations that are time honored that I can use? Some chefs like creating food and combinations that have never been created before. I like cuisines that have been cooked in certain ways for many generations.”

Turns out more and more chefs plan to follow Peter Hoffman’s lead. Local sourcing for restaurants was even identified as a “hot trend for 2010” in a national survey by The National Restaurant Association.

But what Hoffman really wants people to do is to value and take pleasure in the food they eat.  So brag about your new Tag Heuer watch or iPhone. But let’s be sure to equally savor the ephemeral joys of the table.

When I tell people that I like to talk to farmers about what they do, the first response is often “oh, gee, that’s such hard work.” But that’s not what farmers will tell you. They talk about their powerful connection to the land and its inhabitants. How they raised a huge pumpkin from a tiny seed or a calf into an award-winning milk-cow. There is incredible pride in what they can grow with their own hands and knowhow.

Robin Cockerline of Whippoorwill Farm in Lakeville, CT said “there is an amazing rhythm to farming, and scenes of indescribable beauty.”  For author and grower Michael Ableman, farming was just like falling in love. “Nature seduced me,” he wrote in his book, On Good Land. “When that intoxicating, blinding draw faded, a deeper relationship formed.”

Farmers enjoy what they do more than most of us.  A Gallup-Healthways poll of professions found that farmers came in fourth in terms of overall well-being.

Source: Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index

Judy Flint, who works as a personal consultant for NY Farm Net, said that farmers are “incredibly hard working.  Just really good people who love what they do, and being their own bosses even when they are working at the whim of the weather.”

Most farmers just squeak by financially, and yet they continue to love what they do.

The Pressure Can Be Overwhelming

So many things can go wrong.  The weather, a tomato blight, a tractor engine seizes up, an employee walks away at the absolute worst time, the freezer fails—and takes $10K in beef with it. The fact is that farming can be “a heartbreaking way to earn a living,” says family farmer Paul Wigsten. “It’s a horrible addiction. Probably worse than heroin.”