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Family farmers and local business owners gathered Sunday evening in the hopes of finding a place in Gainesville to sell their products, which include a cold-hardy avocado that produces fruit in Gainesville's coldest winter, biodynamically grown produce and unpasteurized goat's milk and cheese.

About a dozen vendors gathered at the Citizen's Food Expo to inform a large crowd interested in learning how to eat locally and gain support for the Citizen's Co-op of Gainesville.

Photo by Katie Tschopp: Michael Espinosa grills tempeh and fresh vegetables at the Citizens Food Expo on Sunday afternoon in the Sun Center Plaza.

The event was coincided with the movie "Food, Inc." - a cinematic depiction of massive food corporations - which is playing this week at the Hippodrome Cinema.

"What you see, the things that they put into the food we eat everyday, is really eye-opening," said Liz Nesbit, co-founder of the Citizen's Co-op, an organization working to create a permanent grocery store for locally grown organic food.

She hopes to have the co-op store open by the fall of 2010 if they can reach the 500-member mark. The group reached 400 members on Sunday.

Ryan Brouillard, co-owner of Abundant Edible Landscapes, said he fully supports the efforts to re-establish a co-op in Gainesville, adding that there was one in the early '90s that closed.

His company used the expo on Sunday to highlight its services as licensed landscapers who focus on planting food-producing plants.

Brouillard said the company's best seller is the cold-hardy avocado, which produces fruit slightly larger and oilier than the Haas avocado.

Patrick Ross of Sandhill Farm near Micanopy said his family farm feeds 35 families. He emphasized that the 30-acre farm doesn't use pesticides, but it rather focuses on biodynamic agriculture - a practice of using natural pest deterrents and compost as a fertilizer.

"We're being hampered by some things going on at the farmer's markets, with people buying whole sale produce and selling it," Ross said.

Ross said his farm now donates excess production to charities but could use a place like the co-op.

And Joe Pietrangelo, owner of Glades Ridge Dairy in Lake Butler, said his dairy needs a place like the co-op now that it was suspended from the farmer's market on U.S. 441.

Pietrangelo sells unpasteurized milk products, which is technically against Florida law, however he labels both his milk and his cheeses as "for animal use only."

Pietrangelo said that for most of his customers, they understand the health risk of unpasteurized milk but also know that it has more natural enzymes than regular milk.

"Food, Inc." runs through Oct. 1. For more information about eating local, visit www.citizensco-op.com.

ATTIYYA ANTHONY, Avenue Writer via Independant Florida Alligator

You don't have to dig deep to see that Gainesville's soil is ripe with growth.

On Sunday, the Citizens Co-op sponsored two sold-out showings of Robert Kenner's "Food, Inc."

The show attracted more than 200 people and raised $1,060 to go toward opening a community-owned grocery store in Gainesville, said Robert Matrone, cinema manager at the Hippodrome State Theatre.

"Food, Inc." is a 30-minute documentary that details the negative health effects of hormone-injected meats, pesticide-sprayed fruits and vegetables, the increasing number of food-related E.Coli and obesity cases and the detrimental effect that our industrial food market has on smaller farms and communities.

"The movie can leave you feeling hopeless and depressed, but the Co-op wanted to offer people the information but also show the thriving community that Gainesville already has established around food," said Liz Nesbit, a co-founder of the Co-op. "We want people to come out of the film and not feel like, 'What can I do?' but, 'How can I become a part of the solution?'"

The Co-op also held a food expo in connection with "Food, Inc." More than 10 vendors sold their home-grown products from Gainesville, Micanopy, Melrose, Ocala and other surrounding areas. There was a showcase of plants and herbs, including included shiitake mushrooms, ginger roots, peppermint, unpasteurized milk, sweet habanero peppers, rosemary and soap made from goat milk.

James Steele, owner of The Herb Garden Nursery in Melrose, has been growing fruits and herbs for culinary and medicinal purposes for more than 40 years. He used his knowledge and resources to create www.gainesvillefarmfresh.com, a networking site for those interested in growing, producing or purchasing locally home-grown products.

"I love interacting with my food, growing what I'm eating and helping customers with the herbs that they're growing," Steele said, as he jumped at the opportunity to give a passer-by advice on how to tend to her aloe roots. "I'm also seeing that people appreciate the growth process and like knowing where their food comes from."

Five members are needed to commit to a location and building for the community grocery market, which would distribute fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy, eggs, meat, seafood and herbs on a weekly basis. There were more than 400 members at the event.

"I'm really pleased with the turnout. It's satisfying to see how easy it's been to pull something like this off," Nesbit said. "We have lots of support and a lot of people want to see something like this put into fruition."

Membership is $100 and gives partial ownership to the store, meaning that you get a say with the board of directors, what items are to be placed on shelves, and at the end of the year, all the profits get redistributed back to the owners. If 500 members join, the Co-op will open the community-owned grocery store in the fall of 2010.