LEWISTON – “Locavore” is a new word for people who prefer to eat locally produced food.

In Maine, it’s growing more popular. And that’s translating to growing sales for some Maine producers.

Worries over food safety, an increasing awareness of the environmental impact of transporting food long distances and the simple fact that fresh food tastes better are motivating people to find out how and where their food is raised.

“What impact are we having on the environment when we ship our produce around the world or around the country?” asked Mark Hews, a coordinator for the Gray-based Threshold to Maine, a land and water conservation group.

“Based on quality and availability and seasonal freshness, I think local farmers are already competitive with the product that is being imported into the state,” Hews said.

Maine’s summer food bounty is vast: Vegetable gardens are coming in, locally raised beef, poultry, pork and lamb will soon be featured at county fairs, the soft-shell lobster season is nearing its peak, native berries are ripening and apples are coming on.

But could Maine feed itself solely with local food?

Hews thinks so.

“Go into a typical supermarket and travel the perimeter, travel the outside aisle,” he said. “Fresh fruits and vegetables, seafood and meats, then dairy and breads. We could meet our food needs (in Maine) fairly easily.”

To get there, most Mainers would have to change eating habits and go without common staples such as coffee and bananas, Hews said. It might not be a choice for some. If transportation costs continue to increase, those staples could become too expensive.

“It stands to reason if diesel is $5 a gallon from the Southeast or California that food isn’t going to cost what it was a year ago,” said Ned Porter, Maine’s deputy commissioner of agriculture. “The $5 diesel is leveling the playing field.”

A 2006 report from a food policy working group appointed by the Legislature recommended Maine farms produce 80 percent of the calories consumed in the state by 2020. The state now produces about 20 percent of the calories consumed here.

“It’s one of those goals up there on the hill to strive for,” Porter said.

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows Maine as the top producer in New England for all agricultural commodities, excluding timber, with cash receipts at $593 million for 2006, a 9-percent increase from 2005.

Strong growth in community-supported agriculture, farmers markets and larger food retailers offering more locally produced food have helped improve the state’s agricultural economy.

“The number of farms and acres of farm is actually increasing in Maine,” Hews said. He attributed the increase to a growing demand for local food.

‘One big circle’

Commercial restaurant markets in Boston and New York are also having an impact, said Brook DeLorme, a spokeswoman for Locally Known, which runs a 170-acre farm in Bowdoinham. The farm, one of the largest in New England, specializes in short-rotation baby salad greens.

“We are expanding as fast as possible and it’s partly just the ethics of buying something that wasn’t transported across the country,” DeLorme said. “There’s great potential on the East Coast to stop importing food from the West Coast.”

It’s a new demand that’s being reflected in the aisles of the state’s largest retail food stores such as Hannaford supermarkets. Over the past year, sales of locally grown produce have increased by 20 percent, said Mike Norton, a spokesman for the Portland-based company that operates 51 stores in Maine.

Norton could not disclose how much those sales total he but did say it was a multimillion-dollar figure and one Hannaford took seriously. The company gets produce from between 75 and 80 local farmers, mainly because that’s what customers want, Norton said.

“It’s been a trend for a while,” he said, adding that sales in the local food sector have grown 10 to 20 percent each year for the past five years.

Some customers see it as a way to support family farms, some are concerned about freshness and nutrition and some are concerned about the environmental impacts of transporting food from the West Coast; others see it as a way to support open space in Maine, Norton said.

“For some, the quality of their food and the quality of their community is one big circle,” he said.

More jobs, more money

If Mainers could adjust to eating mostly local, seasonal foods, they would probably fare well, but the state isn’t at a place where it could be totally self-sufficient – yet, Hews said.

Missing is the once-strong infrastructure needed to process and distribute food statewide, but that too is coming along, he said.

“Go to any small town in Maine and go to their historical society and invariably, what you are going to find is there was a local cannery,” Hews said. “We have to emphasize the fact that we need to be working now, today, on rebuilding the infrastructure that supports the processing of food, the value-adding to raw food, a way to store it, warehouse it and distribute it.”

Better financing for farmers and food entrepreneurs to help them get their enterprises off the ground, increased funding for agricultural research and better access to technology would help Maine develop longer growing seasons and more diverse crops, Hews said.

Increasing the strength of the state’s food system also would grow jobs and help the state economy by keeping money that would be spent on imported food circulating in the state, Hews said.

The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association has suggested that if each household in the state spent $10 a week on locally produced food, the state economy would benefit to the tune of $200 million a year.

Fresh, and affordable

The increasing demand for local food extends to seafood, said Neil LaRochelle, the owner of Always Fresh Seafood in Auburn.

The sagging economy has more families eating at home but they still want fresh fish, lobsters and clams, especially in the summer. Most of his seafood comes from within 50 miles of Auburn and he fetches it himself six days a week.

“I can still price it good enough and am able to absorb those transportation costs a little better than the bigger distributor,” LaRochelle said.

He gets native corn from a local farm and offers prepared meals to go. Like other local restaurant owners, he is responding to the popularity of local food by offering produce, meat and fish from nearby sources.

Nuthan Lord, a retired factory worker who lives in Lewiston, said the benefits of getting fresh-from-the-farm food goes beyond basic needs.

An immigrant from Thailand, Lord worked 32 years in shoe shops and factories in Lewiston and Auburn. She has been going to the farmers market in Lewiston since it opened in 2001, she said.

Knowing where her food comes from is important to her, but not because she worries so much about food safety. Her connection is more visceral.

“I like farmers, because I’m from farmers,” Lord said at Tuesday’s farmers market in Kennedy Park.

She and her seven brothers and sisters grew up working rice paddies in Thailand, she said. “Farmers are good, hard-working people. They are honest people.

“And the food … fresh; it’s so fresh.”

She said the cost of food from local farms is comparable if not less expensive than in the supermarket chains, especially for the quality she gets.

“The price is right,” she said, beaming as she paid for a selection of cucumbers.