Twenty-five percent of  shoppers seek local products on grocery shelves. According to Food Marketing Institute data, this number is up from 13 percent since 2007. In a New York Times article this week, the research firm Packaged Facts predicts local food sales could hit $20 billion by 2019, up from $5 billion in 2008.
In the article, Mark Baum, senior vice president at FMI calls this a “shift of the tectonic plates of food retailing, as well as in food suppliers and manufacturing.”
The trend toward local food demand seems driven by an appetite for authenticity amongst consumers, as well as stricter FSMA rules which may prove to favor shorter, more transparent supply chains.
From January 2015, this USDA Report to Congress on Trends in U.S. Local and Regional Food Systems offers a comprehensive view of the size and scope of the local food market.
Source: The New York Times. ‘Whole Foods Effect’: When Small Food Makers Get the Call to Go Big
