EAST BAY — The locally grown food movement is sprouting like a sunflower, but there are still some holdouts to be converted, as Chef Casey Riley knows all too well.

“The word is out in my industry. I was telling my boss earlier that the cooks at Castle Hill are basically ready to start a revolution,” said Mr. Riley, director of culinary operations for the Newport Restaurant Group, which oversees Castle Hill in Newport, The Boathouse in Tiverton and several other restaurants. “And then you turn around and the sales staff is eating macaroni and cheese out of a box from the microwave.”

Mr. Riley, a farm-to-table champion who’s the brainchild behind the Local Food Fest returning to Castle Hill next Tuesday, made his remarks last week in front of a packed audience at Newport’s Jane Pickens Theatre following a screening of a provocative new documentary, “Food, Inc.” The screening and panel discussion was a benefit for the Rhode Island Center for Agricultural Promotion & Education (RICAPE), which works to support farmers in Rhode Island and southern New England.

The often-disturbing film pulls back the curtain separating the average American family from the large-scale agricultural food production model — first created to meet the demands of the fast-food restaurant industry 50 years ago — arguing that it damages the environment and leads to unhealthy food:

• Low-income families eat fast food because it’s cheap, but end up paying expensive medical bills in the end.

• Cows are fed corn — heavily subsidized by the U.S. government — instead of grass to fatten them up quickly, thereby increasing the threat of E. coli.

• The 47,000 products in an average modern supermarket are controlled by only a handful of multinational corporations, creating an “illusion of diversity.”

• Farmers are manipulated, coerced and sued by big business in order to keep the production line moving as quickly as possible.

And so on.

“The industrial model is clearly broken,” said Don Minto, who raises grass-fed beef and other animals at Watson Farm in Jamestown. Farmers have realized that for a long time, but consumers are now beginning to get the message through news of food recalls and more attention given to the local agriculture movement, he said.

Farmers, state officials, educators, restaurateurs, organic and natural food markets and others in attendance said despite the disappearance of local farmland over the years, locally grown food is more visible than ever — and consumers’ mindset is ripe for change.

“Not too long ago, we had 1,000 dairy farms. Now we have 18 dairy farms,” said Stu Nunnery of Little Compton, RICAPE director. “But the good news is, when I moved into Rhode Island seven years ago we had 13 farmers’ markets. Today we have 43.”

One of them was bustling at Haines Memorial State Park in Barrington last week, with vendors hawking fresh local produce, honey, fish, flowers and more.

“The real problem is that people have lost the connection to their food. I think the farmers’ markets are the first thing that reminds you of what’s here and how food is really made,” said Michelle Pugh, a nutritionist who was there presenting a “Veggin’ Out” cooking program with the Johnson & Wales Community Service Center.

Ms. Pugh visits farmers’ markets all over the state and said she sees more people buying locally grown food every year. “Even better, it’s not the elite anymore. We’re really starting to see the everyday people coming out, and that’s really what’s going to change the tides for local foods,” said Ms. Pugh, who saw “Food Inc.” in Vermont recently, an experience she called both “fabulous and scary.”

‘Consumers of the future’

Educating the next generation of food consumers about locally grown products is also key, said Mr. Riley, because children are “the consumers of the future.”

To that end, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently awarded a grant to RICAPE and Kids First RI, a school-based nutritional education program, for their “Lettuce Begin” program that encourages children to plant a spring crop of lettuce and other greens.

“Children are going to learn how to grow their own food, they’re going to learn about the nutrition in the foods that they grow and they’re going to learn about the connections between schools, their homes, their bellies,” said Mr. Nunnery of RICAPE, whose goal is for every school and youth group in Rhode Island to have a garden education program by 2010.

Kids First started 10 years ago with an informal supper and discussion in Johnston that brought together a few local farmers with a school’s food service director, said Dorothy Brayley, the organization’s executive director. A year later, apples from Rhode Island orchards were in Cranston’s public schools and more districts joined every year. In 2008 the organization met its goal of having each of the state’s 36 school districts have at least one local product on their menus, she said.

The East Bay area is second only to Cranston in the numbers and variety of local products purchased by schools, said Ms. Brayley, who lives in Little Compton. “The increase over the last three years has been phenomenal,” she said.

Besides feeding children fresh local food, the program is providing local farmers with a new market. First and foremost are local potatoes, with Rhode Island schools using 40,285 pounds from the 2008 harvest, up from 1,700 just two years earlier.

“Local Rhode Island substandard white potatoes were perfect because they can be simply washed and oven-roasted. French fries are gone and kids are eating oven-roasted potatoes,” said Ms. Brayley, adding that these small, size B spuds, also known as “junk potatoes,” taste as good as red potatoes. “We’re fine as long as they don’t become chic!”

The Young Family Farm in Little Compton is just one of the growers providing produce for Kids First. “Most crops that go to Kids First are potatoes, squash, peaches,” said Karla Young, who runs the farm with her husband, Tyler.

Ms. Young sees a growing support base for local food, despite some resistance from many baby boomers. “Too many people of my generation are used to just going to the market and buying as is. I’m about 50, and the generation just under me is the driving force,” said Ms. Young, noting that the number of smaller farms is actually on the rise in Rhode Island.

Hurdles to overcome

But not everyone is enamored with the idea of more local farms, no matter how small. Ken Ayers, chief of the R.I. Department of Environmental Management’s Division of Agriculture, said he often comes across Rhode Islanders who are opposed to the “sites and smells” of farms.

Still, “the local farm movement in Rhode Island is as strong as it’s ever been,” said Mr. Ayers, speaking as a panelist at the “Food, Inc.” screening.

But what about sustainability? The industrial model for food production was created to keep up with demand, so can you really feed everyone with locally grown food?

Mr. Riley said The Mooring restaurant in Newport feeds over 1,000 people on Saturdays, with 40 menu items that each use about seven or eight ingredients. “To have that sustained locally is almost impossible,” he acknowledged.

But the grassroots movement is still growing, he said. When he first came to Rhode Island 15 years ago as a young chef, Mr. Riley couldn’t find anyone to sell him local produce. Today, local food that’s healthier and better tasting is delivered directly to restaurants’ doors, he said.

Hope for the future

One of the points made in “Food, Inc.” is that consumers have more power than they think, since they “vote” for a particular product every time it’s scanned at the checkout line. The battle against the tobacco companies is a model for how irresponsible behavior can be changed by consumers, according to the documentary.

The organic food industry is growing by 20 percent annually and there already are positive signs that big business is willing to meet the demand for healthier products, the film points out.

Embracing big business may be the answer to getting more organic and locally grown products to American families, said Ms. Pugh at the farmers’ market in Barrington. She pointed to Wal-Mart’s decision not to carry milk containing growth hormones as proof that the bigger corporations are ready to bow to consumers’ demands.

“That’s really going to really change the face of the industry,” she said.