FAIRHOPE, Ala. — A new group to promote local food production in the Fairhope area is growing fast.

“We got started less than six months ago,” Ed Lawrence, president of the Local Food Production Initiative, said at a meeting attended by more than two dozen people Monday night at the James P. Nix Center. “We have a number of new committees that are getting started. We are also encouraging membership. One of our most active committees is the Community Gardens Committee.”

Lawrence said the group now has about 45 members and is seeking nonprofit tax status.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a longer farmer market season and a permanent place with a pavilion,” said Lawrence, adding that one of the group’s other major goals is to establish a community garden where plots would be available to people in surrounding neighborhoods.

“We met with the mayor four or five months ago and have been working with someone assigned to us by the city to find a site for a pilot community garden,” said Elaine Snyder-Conn, chairperson of the Community Gardens Committee. “We are also meeting with members of the City Council to educate them about the concept. We’ll be making a proposal to the council for the site we recommend.”

The first garden would include about 40 4-by-12-foot plots, she said.

“We might have a youth plot for students to plant, and one more easily accessible for the disabled,” she said. “The pilot garden will have certain requirements such as adequate sun, water and parking.”

A community garden is any piece of land gardened by a group of people, according to the American Community Gardening Association.

“We at the ACGA have a broad definition of what a community garden entails,” the group’s Web site states at www.communitygarden.org. “It can be urban, suburban, or rural. It can grow flowers, vegetables. It can be one community plot, or can be many individual plots. It can be at a school, hospital, or in a neighborhood. It can also be a series of plots dedicated to ‘urban agriculture’ where the produce is grown for a market.”

In Birmingham, the Jones Valley Urban Farm is a nonprofit group that has used the community garden concept for several years to grow organic produce and flowers, educate the community about healthy food and help make the city a vibrant community, according to its Web site, www.jvuf.org.

“Our farm is set up as a working community garden and educational tool for the local community,” said Bree Garrett, the group’s community nutrition organizer. “We have about 30 garden plots in downtown Birmingham. It helps to expose young people to a garden in an inner city and reconnects them to fresh fruits and vegetables in downtown Birmingham that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to. A lot of the students we work with are inner-city school children.”

The Birmingham group is starting a six-month training program in December to take place one Saturday a month through May called “Growing Together: Planning, Planting and Loving a Sustainable Community Garden for your Church, School, Neighborhood, or Club.”

“Each class will focus on a variety of subjects that will help you and your community develop and sustain a productive garden,” a notice for the program reads at the Web site of the Alabama Sustainable Agricultural Network, www.asanonline.org.

During Monday’s meeting of the Fairhope group, the LFPI heard about the pros and cons of organic gardening and alternatives to pesticides from Sndyer-Conn, a former scientist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Ayanava Majumdar, an entomologist at the Alabama Cooperative Extension System satellite office in Fairhope, who is originally from India, received his doctorate in North Dakota and recently moved to Fairhope with his family.

“We are trying to promote alternative approaches to pesticides,” Majumdar said. “But it’s also fun. Gardening is fun. I had a big garden in North Dakota. It was all organic. Of course, in North Dakota we didn’t have all the insects Alabama does.”

He said that instead of recommending pure organic production in the South Alabama area, he promotes sustainable agricultural methods, which use a combination of alternatives and lower-risk pesticides. He said he attended the conference of the Alabama Sustainable Agricultural Network in Andalusia last week and recommends the group’s Web site as a good resource for a complicated subject.

“The first starting points can also be the county extension service and the state master gardener’s program,” he said. “These two levels of resources will solve most of the day-to-day problems you have.”

Lawrence said the Fairhope group will not have a December meeting but will meet again in January.

“Tomatoes at grocery stores are not produced for taste,” said Snyder-Conn, describing one of the reasons for having local food production. “They’re usually awful. They’re produced to store well. Locally grown produce generally tastes a whole lot better and can have more minerals and vitamins.”

For information about the Local Food Production Initiative, contact Ed Lawrence at 928-4646 or edfairhope@bellsouth.net.