It’s a sunny summer day and, at 2 in the afternoon, a shopper browses through Feast, one of the chicest, most expensive groceries in Charlottesville. She may be wearing clogs, sandals or a pair of those colorful Crocs—gardening shoes that sell for $30 a pair. Her practical, well-crafted shoes squeak slightly on Feast’s polished hard pine floors as she moves through the lush carousels, an Italian leather tote hanging off her shoulder.
Her hair is bobbed appropriately short for her age (between 40 and 65) and it’s pretty and well groomed, with a few subtle golden highlights a good eye could price at around $180 per touch-up. Her clothing, both casual and deliberate, rough-hewn and meticulously high quality, is a study in brand appeal: jeans from True Religion or 7 for all Mankind, pre-weathered and selling for upwards of $150; off-white shirt with the unmistakable drape of 100 percent natural PIMA cotton; nubby textured socks in rich burgundy, temperature-tested to be rugged enough for the Himalayas. A chunky David Yurman ring adorns her hand, nestled below neatly trimmed, unpolished nails.
Thus outfitted, she works her way through Feast. Salamis at the deli counter look ready to burst from their natural twine netting, imported cheeses beckon with names like manchego, pecorino romano and cacciotta dolce di pecora—milky, pungent chunks handmade in small batches by artisans, selected from villages in Italy, Spain, France. There’s a wall of Feast’s own brand of extra virgin oils—olive, grapeseed, sesame. Everywhere you look, different smells and shapes beckon the shopper to sample the wares and, with taste buds thus inflamed, to buy.
As she moves through the small sections of imported crackers and little jars of tangy tapenade, this woman exemplifies a certain kind of Charlottesvillian, and she is doing one of the things she loves best: hunting for food in her native habitat.
In the glorious produce section, she encounters her target. Among the purple-red beets with curly tails, and the honest-looking little brown mushrooms, she spies a tomato—irregularly round, red, shiny, with a few charming brown spots, lusciously soft and, on this particular summer day, finally in season. She eyes it, presses its skin with her thumb. It would be absolutely perfect sliced over some local greens, she thinks—perhaps with a delicate Italian vinaigrette and crumbled Amish blue cheese. The tomato sits fetchingly next to a handwritten sign that reads “4.50/lb.”
With a swoop, the woman plucks it out of the carousel, gently lowers it into her basket and traipses to the checkout counter. A beaming young clerk gently sets this horticultural marvel down and punches a few buttons of the cash register. No one so much as blinks when the shopper’s few items ring up at a cost that would cover some people’s entire weekly food budget. A flick of a checkbook, a beep of the credit machine, and the $5 tomato is on its way home.
Welcome to upscale grocery shopping in Charlottesville. This rarified world of high-end organic and artisanal foods has exploded locally—just as it has in cities and suburbs across the country. But to truly understand the trend, you’ve got to leave the market, get back in the SUV, and head out of town.
Double H is a 32-acre farm in Nelson County. Run by Richard Bean and Jean Rinaldi, the small organic farm is its own idyllic colony. Chickens roam a few grassy acres, pigs lie lazily in a dense, shady grove, dozens of fuzzy chicks run in waves around their spacious pen. Glistening rows of leafy green, riding rich red dirt, stretch several hundred feet toward the edge of Bean’s mini-utopia.
Tomato season runs from late spring to early summer. At Double H, seedlings for some tomatoes are placed into small planters as early as January. Others are started the first or second week of March. Once planted, they germinate in a greenhouse for at least four to five weeks before going into the ground.
The early season tomatoes are transplanted to the fields in March, where they stay under tent-like covers for a spell before harvesting begins in June. The other tomatoes go into the ground, sans tents, by mid-April, where they’ll grow for about 70 days. They’re planted in neat rows among Bean’s other five-and-a-half acres of vegetables, where they’re carefully cultivated, weeded and pruned. As for pest control, Bean utilizes an innovative, nontoxic solution: “We pray.”
As a certified organic farm (Bean pays $1,000 per year for the government certification), Double H promises to use no sprays or artificial pesticides—plants are protected using old-fashioned composting and crop rotation, which helps to create healthy soil. “Plants are happier,” when the soil is balanced, Bean says.
When pests do arrive, there are a few organically approved remedies. Soap is a good solution for aphid infestation, Bean says, and “if they come back, you do it again.” Another common threat to a healthy tomato is the tomato fruit worm (known as “can ear worms” when found creepy-crawling over ears of fresh corn). Double H uses soil-dwelling bacteria called Bacillus Thuringiensis, or Bt, which kills the worms without harming plants or people.
Plants bear fruit for up to two months. Double H has about 2,000 tomato plants that produce 10 to 15 pounds of tomatoes each. Bean and a family of Armenian workers (to whom Bean pays, as he puts it, “a substantial salary”) harvest the tomatoes. Most of it is by hand—other equipment includes two pickup trucks, a John Deere Gator and a small tractor. On an average day, four of them rise at 6am and put in 10 hours.
Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays are the heaviest days, when they harvest for deliveries to stores and restaurants in town, or go to the markets in Nelson and Charlottesville. On Saturday—market day —Bean and Rinaldi rise at 3:30am to load tomatoes (along with other produce and eggs) into a large, cream-colored “Sunshine Van” with “Double H Farm—Home of Healthy Food” painted on its side.
Washed, boxed tomatoes are also dropped off at high-end Charlottesville restaurants like Mas, D’Ambola’s and Ham-iltons’. And, of course, they show up on shelves at natural food meccas like Integral Yoga, Foods of all Nations and Feast.
The $5 tomato’s journey from Bean’s farm to Feast doesn’t seem all that extraordinary—farmers have al-ways grown, harvested and sold their goods to people nearby—until you compare it to what’s happening with most produce around the country.
The average “hothouse” tomato (that is, a tomato grown indoors under artificial conditions), which sells for about $1.50 to $2 per pound at chain supermarkets, can be grown virtually any time of year. California, the nation’s largest tomato producer, had 264,000 acres of tomato crop, valued at $572.2 million, in 2005. California is also the world’s largest producer of processed tomatoes—more than 10.7 million tons of ketchup, tomato sauce and other products come out of the state annually.
Commercially grown tomatoes are engineered to be “tougher” than heirloom tomatoes—they’ve got thicker skins, and don’t bruise and rot as easily. They’re harvested with mechanical harvesters that run 24/7 during tomato season, which lasts six months in California.
Tomato growers can use a pharmacy of pesticides to save tomatoes from insects and fungus, but their effect on humans is sketchy at best. The North Carolina Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services, which rates chemicals on their toxicity (a rating of “3” indicates that less than a teaspoon of the substance can kill an adult) advises farmers, for instance, that when applying chemicals like Gramoxone Max, Monitor or Kocide, they should “wear clothing that covers the skin… Avoid scratching or wiping your face with your hand or shirt sleeve… When washing your work clothes, separate them from your family’s laundry so that you do not contaminate it.”
The term “organic” first cropped up around 1940, when nitrogen-based fertilizers were turning farming into large-scale agribusiness, and a segment of the farming community began advocating for the older, time-tested methods. By the 1970s, the concept of locally grown food had become important to the organic movement, expressed through pro-local-produce slogans like “Know your farmer, know your food.” 
But the growing popularity of the “organic” label has resulted in some strange bedfellows indeed. These days, even Wal-Mart carries a wide array of “organic” food. Coca-Cola owns Odwalla, which produces natural fruit juices and nutrition bars. Stonyfield Farm, the organic dairy company, is 80 percent owned by French yogurt giant Groupe Danone.
The organic food market, worth a projected $15 billion this year, still only makes up 2 percent of the total American agricultural business. But it’s growing fast—as much as 20 percent per year over the past decade. This is partly due to big firms’ investment in organic, and partly due to large-scale distribution methods, which help ferry the food to more people.
The largest of the organic farms is Earthbound Organic, with 26,000 organic acres. Earthbound ships 13.5 million servings of romaine, radicchio and baby greens across America from its processing plant in San Juan Bautista, California.
These are staggering numbers, considering organic’s modest beginnings, and some argue that such large-scale farming violates the spirit of organic (popular foodie author Michael Pollan terms such farms “industrial organic”). Like commercially farmed produce, large-scale organic food eschews the local ethic, and is shipped over long distances before it gets to consumers. When the average North American sits down to eat, each ingredient has typically traveled at least 1,500 miles from farm to plate, according to research by 100milediet.org, an organization dedicated to promoting local, in-season food.
The $5 tomato, by contrast, has only traveled about 50 miles from the farm in Nelson to the farmer’s market or Feast. Charlottesville consumers are beginning to know the difference, and they’re willing to pay for it.
To many people, $4.50 a pound seems a ludicrous price to pay for tomatoes. But there are apparently more than enough shoppers happy to pay this premium to make the $5 tomato the mouth-watering symbol of an economic formula that’s working.
A surprising fact: Acre for acre, small-scale organic farming is more profitable than big agro. Compared to commercial agriculture, Bean says, “we’re probably whipping ’em now. We don’t have to buy pesticides…we don’t use expensive equipment, so that’s a good thing.”
Bean’s farm is one of the most successful in this area. Double H, which grows over 100 varieties of vegetables and also sells free-range eggs and pork, grosses about $10,000 per acre, Bean estimates. (A commercial corn farmer, by contrast, might only gross $250 an acre, according to Bean. This is because corn, a U.S. staple crop, is far from its final form when it’s harvested. Corn is processed into all kinds of products—commonly corn syrup—and used as feed for cattle and other animals.)
Bean makes an average of $1.75 per pound on tomatoes. Those tomatoes might show up on a $9 salad at a chi-chi restaurant, they might go for $3 per pound at the farmer’s market, or they could appear on the shelves at Feast. To Bean, it’s all relative.
Some markets buy low and sell low, he says, which accounts for cheaper prices on local produce at places like C’ville Market. He sells at a better price to restaurants, which are buying large quantities, and stores, which have to mark up to make a profit.
Feast buys high.
“We’re trying to give the farmer as much as we think we possibly can,” Kate Collier, who co-owns the store with her husband, Eric Gertner, says.
Collier’s philosophy goes beyond carrying organic food. Though most of their produce is no-spray, she says, “We focus on artisanal,” meaning food that’s been handcrafted, often by small family businesses. “In my mind organic has kind of gone the way of Earthbound and Tyson as well. Organic doesn’t mean anybody touched it, and it doesn’t mean that it’s in season,” she says.
But, Collier acknowledges, “I’m definitely a middle man.” Consumers could get produce more cheaply at the farmer’s markets, she says. “Our store—you go there to cherry-pick the beautiful stuff.”
Bean prefers selling to markets like Feast. He used to sell to Whole Foods, he says, until the national chain started requiring a $1 million liability policy from its suppliers—a crushing amount for small operations like Bean’s. “When I do business with them, I feel like a second-class citizen,” he says. “Everyone else is begging to try my product.”
Charlottesville is a better place than most for small farmers because it has a fair share of wealthy, progressive shoppers. Though Albemarle’s farms are on the decline—the average acreage of local farms decreased by 7 percent between 1992 and 1997, and farmland overall decreased 9 percent, to only 188,567 acres in 1997, the last year for which figures are available—high prices for goods keep farmers like Bean in business. And Charlottesville, as any resident can attest, is the home of high prices.
Feast’s produce manager, Lisa Reeder, says, “Stores like ours seem to be crucial [for local farmers].”
Bean is even more blunt in his assessment: “If I went to Lynchburg, I’d be starving to death.”
Back to that sunny day at Feast, where the parking lot often resembles a luxury car dealership—three Lexus SUVs, one BMW sedan, two Mercedes wagons, an Audi convertible, a smattering of new VWs and one Jaguar (looking, actually, a little ostentatious). No matter who buys it, the $5 tomato usually gets a pretty posh ride home. And one can easily imagine the kitchen where it ends up: dark granite counter tops, Italian slate floors, elaborate iron pot racks filled with All-Clad cookware, stainless steel appliances, hand-woven Moroccan potholders. When the $5 tomato finally meets its fate, it’s under the razor-sharp edge of a $120 Wüsthof knife, pressed against a $40 bamboo cutting board. These high-end kitchen accessories could come from The Seasonal Cook, a gourmet cooking store and neighbor to Feast in the Main Street Market.
David Brooks catalogued this new elite lifestyle in 2000 in Bobos in Paradise, his New York Times bestseller about the emerging upper class. The old Protestant establishment, he claimed, has been replaced by hybrid elites: bourgeois bohemians, or “Bobos.”
“These people have different aspirations than the old country club and martini suburban crowd, and naturally enough want their ideals reflected in the sort of things they buy,” Brooks writes.
They’re the type to pay $15,000 for a natural slate shower stall, $180 for a rugged fleece vest and, yes, even $5 for a tomato.
On the grocery shopping habits of Bobos, Brooks writes, “When the shoppers push a cart through the entrance, they are standing in an epicenter of the Upscale Suburban Hippiedom…The visitor to Fresh Fields [Whole Foods by another name] is confronted with a big sign that says ‘Organic Items Today: 130.’ This is like a barometer of virtue.”
The tomato, selected for its quality and taste, is also chosen for its purity, as well as the status it suggests for its consumer (according to Roper, 71 percent of Amer-icans believe small-scale family farms are more likely to care about the safety of the foods they produce).
Among those who derive their identity from their food choices, Ann Haskell is a standout example. Leader of the Virginia Old Dominion Slow Food convivium, an organization dedicated to cooking from scratch with in-season, local produce, she comes from a long line of Virginia gardeners. Haskell, who lives in Charlottesville, is increasingly concerned about food’s political implications, she explained via e-mail: “Because of its treatment of employees, we do not buy anything at Sam’s Club (or any Wal-Mart stores) or from other markets that have been identified…as unfair to labor. And we try not to buy products whose shipping entails great fuel expenditure.”
Clearly, it’s not just about eating vegetarian anymore. The foodie identity is wrapped up in many things—politics, the environment, health, purity, taste and status.
The $5 tomato—toted in a crisply logo-ed grocery sack, sliced on a $10,000 countertop, kept in a $4,000 fridge, feeding the mouths of the privileged—is, ultimately, a hard icon to love. And therein lies the paradox.
Sure, trendy consumers are driving market prices up. But, at the same time, these affluent foodies are giving small farmers a shot at survival. And, as more customers attach their ideals to “local eating,” more dollars remain in the local economy. But whether the local-food movement can spread beyond the affluent, freshness-fetishizing few remains to be seen.
On the one hand, the second annual meeting of the Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, a group that promotes direct farmer-to-consumer trade, attracted over 300 people last June—twice as many as last year.
On the other hand, a recent study of the region’s “food shed” by the department of urban and environmental planning at UVA’s School of Architecture must have been quite dispiriting for proponents of an organic revolution. It showed that small farms are on the decline, that grocery stores are more accessible to affluent areas, and that Charlottesville, like many areas nationally, is hugely dependent upon food that travels long distances to reach consumers. (Interestingly, the study found the richest shoppers shop at Food Lion, with a median income of $58,096. Whole Foods’ crowd had a median income of $44,181. Feast was not included in the survey.)
Meanwhile, back at Feast, produce manager Lisa Reeder picks a tomato from the produce carousel, then swipes a chef’s knife from Feast’s café. She steadies the yellow tomato with her thumb and index finger and slices through its delicate skin. Juice pools on the cutting board, seeds splay slightly from the tomato’s flesh.
Tomatoes can be elusive, Reeder says; many customers want them before they’re ready. But this heirloom specimen is near the point of perfection—delicate, tender, mellow and sweet. Is it worth $4.50 a pound? That’s hard to say. But on this bright summer day, one thing is certain: It tastes like a million bucks.
After a few years of low-level marijuana busts, Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) officers recently confiscated what they price as roughly $4.8 million worth of the drug—one of the biggest hauls in JADE history. Officers found 4,400 pot plants surrounded by bamboo on property near Scottsville, charging Gary Peck with manufacturing marijuana with the intent to distribute.
