Sheri Griffin, far left at podium, project director for the R.I. Public Market Center, Farm Fresh Rhode Island, moderates a panel discussion yesterday at the Local Food Forum sponsored by Farm Fresh Rhode Island at Brown University.

The Providence Journal / Bill Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Sure, the shoppers still hunt for tomatoes as they scan the produce at the winter farmers’ market downtown. But most don’t leave empty-handed, instead cradling fresh eggs or winter squash, beets and radishes fished out of baskets by the AS220 stage.

Local food foragers, it turns out, do not hibernate in the cold weather.

“The interest continues,” said Sheri V. Griffen, the marketing director for Farm Fresh Rhode Island, which is organizing winter markets this year for the first time. “People will keep coming.”

Growing interest in local food and the popularity of the winter market is inspiring an unusual optimism among the state’s farmers, who have struggled in recent decades to survive New England’s high costs and low temperatures.

Yesterday, participants at Farm Fresh’s Local Food Forum, at Brown University, said they see new opportunities for revenue in the winter, when their land has traditionally laid fallow. Orders from schools, chefs and members of community-supported agriculture programs are pushing farmers to build greenhouses and plant hearty crops for winter harvest.

“There is a lot of potential. People love local stuff,” said Tyler Young, who bought Young Family Farms in 1997. “When people bite into a local peach, they will pay anything.”

Burdened with a high cost of land, labor and energy, Rhode Island farmers have laid down their plows in droves. From 1900 to 1980, total farmland dropped from 550,000 acres to about 62,000, an 89-percent decline.

That shrinking slowed in recent years, held off in part by the spread of farmers’ markets, where produce is priced far above wholesale rates, and the growth of so-called agritourism, such as corn mazes and pick-your-own fruit and vegetable activities.

Now, a movement to limit the distance from farm to plate is further strengthening local producers.

Total employment in agriculture, fishing and forestry is projected to increase 12 percent by 2014, to 2,107 jobs from 1,875, according to the state Department of Labor and Training.

“Farming is one of the most difficult ways to make a living,” said Kenneth Ayars, chief of the Division of Agriculture at the state Department of Environmental Management. “But we are sustaining agriculture. Public interest in local agriculture continues to rise exponentially.”

Challenges remain for the state’s estimated 900 farms. Despite the high cost of gasoline, large West Coast growers still sell their produce here for less than local producers, who have a shorter growing season to generate most of their income. Meeting demand for local food, moreover, is challenging for small farms that lack the drivers and vehicles to make deliveries.

After most farmers’ markets shut down in the fall, finding buyers gets complicated.

“Around Christmastime, we’re dead in the water,” Allan Hill, co-owner of Hill Orchards in Johnston, said. “We’re pushing to get more retail.”

This year, however, Hill and several other farms began selling thousands of bushels of apples to Sodexho, a food service company that supplies 13 Rhode Island school districts. Local apples can survive in cold storage through February, and schools are also serving students local potatoes and other vegetables in the winter months.

“My first shock was that the kids liked it,” Mike Marrocco, food service director for Cranston schools, said. “Kids have accepted it very well. You don’t hear people say, ‘Where are the French fries?’ ”

At the same time, a growing number of restaurants are choosing local ingredients, paying higher prices so they can list the names of familiar farms on their menus.

At The Castle Hill Inn and Resort in Newport, for example, 15 local farms supply the kitchen, where executive chef Jonathan Cambra cooks with local eggs, milk, herbs and seafood throughout the winter.

“It’s a huge commitment that not a lot of chefs want to do on a regular basis,” said Cambra, whose grandfather grew potatoes on Aquidneck Island. “But we’re happy to take in as much as we can. It’s fresher and the quality is superior.”

That process could soon be easier, if Farm Fresh opens its planned central distribution center in Providence.

Although details are sketchy, the warehouse could eventually include its own delivery trucks, while also serving as a year-round farmers’ market for local fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs, seafood and meat. Farm Fresh may also install a cold storage unit and a community kitchen, where farmers could churn out salsa, jams, chutney and applesauce.

“The vision is to have everything we can imagine under one roof,” Griffen told the 200 participants gathered yesterday at a Brown dining hall. “Farm Fresh is making this as flexible as possible to meet as many needs as possible.”

bgedan@projo.com