Visit the main Portland Farmers Market on any given Saturday morning and you’ll see tables spilling over with rainbow chard, beets, leeks and all kinds of lettuce. You’ll see vendors selling homemade salsa and tortilla chips, and cheesemakers plying their brie. It’s a scene that’s become part of America’s urban fabric. Today, there are over 8,140 farmers markets around the country.

But it wasn’t always this way.

America’s interest in fresh, local food was well underway by the time Michael Pollan’s influential The Omnivore’s Dilemma became a bestseller in 2006 and Michelle Obama started a kitchen garden at the White House. But just a few decades prior, the beloved farmers’ market was all but extinct in the US. Its near death — and spectacular comeback — shows how social movements, economic shifts and government policy can converge to resurrect a food system that’s healthier for people, the planet and cities themselves.