CONSUMERS and food businesses in the US are following the example of their UK cousins and turning to locally grown food.

Farmers' markets are also catching on as green shoppers try to reduce food miles, according to research by Dr Gleen Croston.

He says that industrial-style food distribution systems isolate farmers from consumers but selling locally produced food brings them closer together again.

The steady rise in popularity of farmers' markets and community-supported agriculture are signs of the growing local food trend in the US, similar to the rising popularity of local foods in the UK.

The United States Department of Agriculture says the number of US farmer's markets has grown from 1,755 in 1994 to 4,385 in 2006.

"Local food is one of the opportunities for green entrepreneurs. Grown closer to where it is sold, usually within a few hours drive or a 100-mile radius, local food is riper, tastes better, and may be richer in some nutrients. It may also be less prone to causing salmonella or E.coli outbreaks," Dr Croston claims.

Another twist which has yet to hit Britain, but which could have a serious application in the West Country, is the community-sponsored farm, a growing trend in the US.

In an environmentally conscious variation on the typical way of getting food to the table, growing numbers of people in the United States are skipping out on grocery stores, and even farmers' markets, and instead going right to the source by buying shares in farms.

One of the shareholders, a retired computer consultant, said: "We decided it's in our interest that small farms succeed, and be sustainable and produce good food," he said.

Part of a loose but growing network organised mostly on the internet, he is part of a network of what is known as community-supported agriculture. About 150 people have bought shares in the small farm – in essence, hiring personal farmers.

The concept was imported from Europe and Asia in the 1980s as an alternative to help combat the often prohibitive costs of small-scale farming. But in the UK it never caught on and, until recently, was slow to take root in the US.

FEWER than 100 shareholder farms which existed in the early 1990s have grown to nearly 1,500 in recent years, according to academic experts.

"I think people are becoming more local-minded, and this fits right into that," said Nichole Nazelrod, programme co-ordinator at the Fulton Centre for Sustainable Living at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Here, they run a national clearinghouse for community-supported farms.