There’s a change afoot. Florida is catching up to the locavore trend that has rooted itself in such food-centric locales as Brooklyn and Portland, Ore. But Florida is better positioned than many of those locales because it has the natural resources to sustain such a culture.

Florida’s citrus industry is grappling with the most serious threat in its history: a bacterial disease with no cure that has infected all 32 of the state’s citrus-growing counties.

A fifth generation resident of Manatee County, Shelby runs King Family Farm with her husband, Ben. The farm grows vegetables such as purple carrots, fennel, eggplant, peppers, heirloom tomatoes, celery, herbs, greens, beets, kohlrabi, and cabbage. They also have 20 acres of blueberries and 10 acres of peaches along with livestock, sheep, and horses.

Florida farmers markets have been slow to embrace food stamps. Allowing outside groups to get involved would speed up the process, lawmakers say, and help expand a concept that targets the growing obesity epidemic.

With a slim vote of 4-to-3, Manatee County commissioners will now ask staff to prepare an ordinance that will allow residents to keep chickens in their backyard.

Third annual Eat Local Week encourages community members to buy local food, invest in local farms and businesses.

While the rest of his classmates were stuck in school Thursday, Emilio Vega, 11, planted bread wheat seeds with first lady Michelle Obama in her garden on the South Lawn of the White House

The study was based on a statewide consumer survey. Prior estimates from other states had local food accounting for about 5 percent of all food sales.

When Woody Tasch went on tour to promote his book, Inquiries Into the Nature of “Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered,” he had no idea his collection of musings on how to spark investment in local agriculture would turn into a movement.

Backyard coops may be springing up around Manatee County soon thanks to the Manatee chapter of Citizens Lobbying for Urban Chicken Keeping.