locavore, n. a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced foods.

Do you shop at farmers’ markets, grow or pick your own vegetables and fruit and preserve it for the winter? Can you shake the hand that picked your carrots? Does the idea that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better drive your buying decisions? Then you might be a locavore!

The word locavore— think LOCAL and omni-VORE — was coined in San Francisco a few years ago by folks suggesting that residents eat locally grown food whenever possible. Locavores try to consume food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius, a small step that helps the environment while supporting local farmers. Others have followed that first movement, referring to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.”

However you spell it, it’s the word that lexicographers at the New Oxford American Dictionary chose to be the 2007 Word of the Year and a word to watch.