We've heard a lot about the benefits of eating local foods in recent years, with bestselling books such as "The Hundred-Mile Diet" or "In Defense of Food" extolling the virtues of sustainable and organic farming.

Eat local -- Eat organic! The consumer benefits from fresher and more nutritious foods on the table. The environment wins with a reduction in pesticides, and less fuel is used getting local foods to nearby markets. Our nation's food security is all the more stable.

And the cost/benefit analysis for the consumer? You might pay a bit more for lettuce, peppers and tomatoes -- but those ingredients will be so flavourful, you won't have to think about buying salad dressing. It all works out in the end.

Yet, even though I am a regular in summer months at farmers' markets in Toronto and Vancouver and am well aware of all the benefits of the "fresh picked" produce, I never gave much thought to whether Canadian farmers were reaping rewards as well from this recent shift in their production and marketing methods. That is, until I met author Margaret Webb one recent Saturday morning at the Brick Works farmers' market in Toronto's Don Valley.

Webb, a former farm girl who grew up with the family business near Barrie, Ont., has just published "Apples to Oysters: A Food Lover's Tour of Canadian Farms."

Now an urban dweller and a teacher of journalism, Webb was at the Brick Works farmers' market  to read from her new book, chat with market-goers about the new trends in agriculture, and host a picnic sampling of fresh bison meat and farm-fresh salads from the market.

Also on the agenda that morning, a talk with a couple of Ontario farmers who had made big changes to their practices in recent years -- not only converting their farms to organic methods, but taking the greater leap in selling their produce directly to customers.

Webb recently spent a long summer crossing Canada, living and working with farmers who have made similar choices about their livelihoods, and in the book she chronicles their successes and failures in trying to transform their practices for this new economy of food.

In this emerging organic food marketplace, the producers work a heck of a lot harder to provide our daily bread. In return, they ask us to pay a bit more cash for their quality goods.

Farming, fishing and eating up a storm

The 13 chapters of Webb's book introduce the reader to a fascinating cast of characters from sea to sea and all the way up to Whitehorse. The storytelling is vivid. I read at least one "foodie" book a month; this is the first since Ruth Reichl's "Garlic & Sapphires" that had me wondering if anyone was snapping up movie rights.

On the East Coast, Webb chronicles the adventures of a P.E.I. oysterman who has cornered the market on quality, some dulse producers in New Brunswick who may have discovered a new mystery of nutrition, and two Newfoundlanders who've heroically struggled to revive the cod fishery with an environmentally-sound form of fish farming.

And who ever knew that hog farming could be so fascinating? Webb got great stories from a Manitoba producer who is bucking all the awful trends of the deservedly-maligned industry, and then follows up with a compelling story of a huge organic flax seed business in Saskatchewan. Then it's on to Alberta for the inside story of a cattle ranch family that fought environmental destruction from a nearby oil company and shifted their business to organic beef, for their own health and sanity.

The delight in Webb's tale of her summer on the farm comes from her own interactions with the farmers and food producers. She hoists herself up the ladder to pick apples at an orchard in B.C., rolls up her sleeves to yank Yukon Golds out of the ground in the Far North, and she helps out with milking chores at a remote Quebec dairy farm where artisanal-cheese making is undergoing a renaissance. She gives us a real taste of farm life, and reveals for us time and again that farm life is family life.

And at every stop, she lives up to the "Food Lover's" part of the title, making sure at the end of each work day to enjoy the very thing she's writing about. She makes a point of cooking for her hosts, or taking them out to dinner at restaurants where they have marketed their produce, and in one chapter describes for the reader the sheer sense of danger and joy from drinking a glass of fresh raw milk from the dairy farmer's prize cow.

Each chapter concludes with recipes from her travels, some of her own design and others credited to the farmers or their chefs and friends.

Not many farmers are getting rich off their efforts to change the world one crop at a time, but it's clear from Webb's chronicles that their lives have been enriched from these efforts.

I've had a lot of questions for farmers at these local food markets over the years, but they are usually too busy selling to crowds and restocking their shelves on a Saturday morning to stop and chat for long.

"Apples to Oysters" answers many of these questions and posed some new ones. (Am I going to have to get into baking, canning and freezing to make the summer market experience last year-round?)

The book is rich in real stories from the frontlines of a food revolution. Webb is quite certain the agricultural industry is at a "tipping point" and this new model of organic farming will see Canadians eager and hungry -- to pay a bit more for simple, good food.

Canada AM will be talking to Margaret Webb and farmers who are working the local food markets next week.