Dante Hesse runs a small organic dairy farm, Milk Thistle, in Ghent, NY and drives into NYC a few times a week to sell his organic milk. People line up to buy his milk for $5 a quart, even in this economy. But it’s this economy that’s keeping him from expanding to be able to produce and sell more milk, and perhaps, butter and cheese. National Public Radio (NPR) caught up with him at one of the farmers markets that he sells his milk at and talked to him about his business.

"We feel pretty strongly at this point that there are a lot of people out there who are interested in helping, and the way the economy is now, one argument might be that it's a bad time to be doing something like this," Hesse says. "But I think the inverse is true, that it's actually a good time because people are scared of the stock market, and they know that food is a vital part of survival. And local food is going to become very important in the very near future."

• We’ve got the first lady talking about how important it is and doing what she can to support it.
• According to Local Harvest, “the number of CSAs in the United States was estimated at 50 in 1990, and has since grown to over 2200.”
• In Ohio, the number of farmers markets is increasing at such a rate that they are having trouble getting enough farmers to sell at them all.
• In Central Jersey sales at farmers markets remain strong and are even showing growth and CSA’s are showing “significant jump in memberships.”
• Small farms are surging as larger farms are having trouble because of the growing demand for local foods.