The idea that shook the world

ON a lazy Saturday morning behind a mini-mall between Compton and Hawthorne, the Gardena farmers market unfolds to the tinkling beat of a Caribbean steel drum. On the surface, there is nothing remarkable about it -- about a dozen farmers selling greens and root vegetables, \o7nopalitos\f7 and radishes. It hardly looks like one of the birthplaces of a revolution that has changed American agriculture and even, to an extent, our relationship with food.

But that's exactly what it is. In 1979, the Gardena farmers market was the first to open in Southern California and one of the first half a dozen in the state.

And if today we tend to think of farmers markets mainly in terms of celebrity chefs seeking out the most exquisite produce, or as a place we can meet to socialize with other food-obsessed friends, the Gardena market is a reminder that when the movement started, the goals were much more modest.

Back then, farmers markets were intended simply to bring fresh fruits and vegetables to shoppers who might otherwise have a hard time finding them, and to help small farmers stay alive in what even then was an increasingly hostile world of commercial agriculture.

Not only did the markets succeed at those twin goals, but they also ended up changing the way farming and the produce industry work. Along the way they became not only gourmet bazaars but also social centers and engines for urban redevelopment.

Today, farmers markets seem to be everywhere -- there were almost 500 in the state last year, more than 80 of them in Los Angeles County. And although the farmers market movement is closely identified with California, it has exploded into a national phenomenon. There were more than 3,700 farmers markets in the United States in 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than double only a decade before.

Who would have dreamed such a thing could come from what started out as four farmers in a church parking lot?

"This whole thing started with a small idea, but it put into motion something that turned out to be much bigger when others heard about it," says Ida Edwards. She and her husband, Leroy, were customers that first weekend; now they manage this market and another one at Adams Boulevard and Vermont Avenue -- and they even do some farming themselves, raising aloe vera that they turn into soaps and lotions to sell at the markets.