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When you buy a tomato or a pork chop from a guy in a sweat-stained cap, plaid cowboy shirt, faded jeans and dusty boots, you have a pretty good idea from where it came.

Concerns about the source of our food have driven more people to farmers markets in the years since "mad cow" disease, E. coli, salmonella and melamine became scary headline words.

For those of us buying at the grocery store, there's the USDA's new COOL — Country of Origin Labeling — Rule.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Country of Origin Labeling requires packaging — whether a sticker, bag tie or container's fine print — to declare from where it came. Processed foods are exempted, so the source of the bacon, bread and cheese in a frozen panini may remain a mystery.

The greater-Tucson area now has one or more farmers markets every day of the week, except Monday.

"I've been doing farmers markets for 30 to 40 years and finally, well, nobody's getting rich but ... ," says Thom Richardson, gesturing toward the customers and booths to either side at the Downtown Farmers Market and Arts and Crafts Mercado. It's held Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library, 101 N. Stone Ave.

The USDA's long-awaited COOL rules probably won't slow the farmers market trend, if a sampling of local fans of cutting out the middle man is any indication.

"The motivation for me to get here is to get organic, specifically, and I also like to support local" business, said Katinka Hooyer, shopping at Richardson's fruit and vegetable booth outside the library. "But, being a full-time student, price is a factor, too."

Library employee Ryan Reinbold said doing business locally was his main reason for shopping there. "I prefer not to go to chain stores," Reinbold said.

For fruit shopper Janet Peete, it's a matter of taste. "It tastes like fruit used to taste."

Wednesday was Whole Foods and Sunflower customer Dina Gonzalez's first time to buy at the Downtown farmers market, and she came for the organic produce.

Healthy food, practicing what she preaches as a physician at the Tucson Indian Center, is what brought Kathryn Eagle to the market.

"I do the Seeds of Wellness (program) with the Tucson Indian Center," Eagle said. "We promote healthier eating. But this is for my own use. It's cheaper to buy, and it's healthier."

"It's a bit of everything," said Nick Jett, a University of Arizona student and bike-shop employee who lives and works Downtown.

"This is my neighborhood," Jett said. "I don't think people realize how cheap it is to shop locally, (and) it makes more sense environmentally."

Richardson, who attends several area farmers markets, says the crowds have grown noticeably in recent years, particularly since the publication of former Tucsonan Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life".

It's a diary of the Kingsolver family's attempt to live for a year off food they produced themselves or obtained from growers near their southwestern Virginia farm.

One of Kingsolver's key points concerns the invisible carbon penalty for long-distance agriculture — the fuel involved in transporting fruit, vegetables, grain and meat thousands of miles — that could be avoided by buying food produced as close to home as possible.

"Everyone here at the farmers market needs to send her flowers," says Richardson, who credits Kingsolver with putting it all together, explaining the benefits of buying locally produced food to the consumer, the producer and the environment.

It's nothing new for Tucson celeb chef Janos Wilder, proprietor of Janos and J-Bar restaurants at La Paloma, seen shopping Sunday morning at the St. Philip's Plaza Farmers Market.

Wilder has credited FedEx and its ability to deliver fresh, choice and sometimes exotic ingredients from almost anyplace in the world with revolutionizing Tucson restaurant menus over the last two decades. But he also preferred to buy local long before it was the trendy thing to do.

Wilder said he learned to shop locally while a young chef working for a frugal boss at a restaurant in the remote Colorado town of Gold Hill in the 1970s. In part, he says, it was because no one wanted to deliver.

But after moving to France and working in a Bordeaux restaurant where shopping for groceries in the markets was the routine, he came to Tucson to open Janos in an old barrio house on the grounds of the Tucson Museum of Art in 1983.

Here, Wilder said, he lined up gardeners to grow the vegetables and herbs the restaurant would need long before the restaurant opened.

At that time, Wilder said, local meant limited. "Back then, you had beans and chiles and squash — not enough to really build a full menu on."

Now, the selection of locally produced organic vegetables, fruit and dairy products, free-range meats and even seafood, if you count the Sea of Cortez as local, is much greater, says Wilder.

But these days, he notes, most of the produce, meat and fish comes to him.

Walking around the St. Philip's Plaza Farmers Market Sunday, Wilder stopped at the Super Natural Organics booth to check out some melons.

"This is what you want," he says. "Ready to eat, and it tastes like cantaloupe."