WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — In the 1920s, the advent of fast food enabled busy Americans to eat dinner on the go. Some 30 years later, the TV dinner took the country by storm.

More recently, popular low-carb and low-fat diets, as well as a growing interest in foods with particular health benefits, have given rise to new food trends. But as the population becomes more diverse and Americans’ work schedules and family lives change, these trends are becoming more difficult to predict, according to Kevin Keener, a Purdue University extension educator specializing in food entrepreneurship and processing.

“We don’t really have a mainstream consumer anymore,” Keener told a group of food producers and extension educators during the final session of Purdue’s 2007 Farm Sustainability Tour last week. Nevertheless, Keener said farmers wanting to tap into emerging niche markets for food could benefit from studying past years’ food trends and the drivers behind them. Most notably, the top trends for the past couple of years show an increasing number of U.S. consumers choose foods that don labels like “organic,” “natural,” “fair-trade” or “locally produced.”

“We call this category ‘farm-friendly and fair-trade.’ The consumers in this category are interested in understanding where their food comes from, who’s grown it, why and how,” said Keener.

The farm-friendly, fair-trade crowd embraces foods that are perceived to be healthy, environmentally and worker friendly and produced locally by small family farmers. Keener divided these consumers into two subgroups: the “foodies,” or connoisseurs, who take an active interest in all the steps of the production process, and the “friendlies,” who choose foods from an ideological standpoint.

“Both of these groups have high disposable income. But you need to keep in mind that one-third of U.S. families make less than $35,000 per year and they will go with what they can afford,” he said. Instead of buying an anonymous packet of bacon at a superstore like Wal-Mart, the farm-friendly, fair-trade consumer wants to go out to the farm and connect with the producer. Opening a farm store where people can buy their food directly from the source is one way for farmers to respond to that demand, said Keener.

But people have different expectations on farm sales than they did back in the day when it was common to wade through mud and manure to pick out a pig on the farm.

“You want people to have a pleasant experience,” Keener said. “They want to meet the owner, see the animals and enjoy the flowers.”

Customer service is key to farm sales today, and providing literature as well as a website with information about the farm and its products can also help establish a connection between the customer and the farmer.

Stan Skillington, owner of Skillington Farms in Lebanon, Ind., shared some of his experiences with selling beef, pork and poultry directly to the consumer.

“You’ve got to think like the consumer,” Skillington said. For example: “The consumer is used to buying (meat) in pounds, so we sell it in pounds. I don’t use terms like ‘live weight’ and ‘hanging weight’ with customers.”

Skillington sells all-natural meat and poultry and will likely take his operation a step further to meet customer demand for organic foods. “We’re probably going to get certified (organic) pretty soon in order to appease the consumer. We already meet all the requirements,” he said.

Another opportunity for farmers looking to profit from the latest food trends could be in selling their products at farmers’ markets, which have boomed the past 10 years – increasing from 2,410 in 1996 to 4,385 last year – or selling directly to restaurants.

“There’s an increased interest in serving local food, and chefs are always looking for products that are unique and have limited shelf life,” Keener said. “But remember that not all outlets will be your market. Some restaurants are mainly looking at the bottom line.”