One crucial aspect of knowing your grower is that your grower will know the variety of vegetable, fruit, or nut that he or she is selling. On a large conventional farm, decisions as to what to grow are often made by business people or by a farmer with his business hat on. His market is the wholesaler, and the wholesaler wants a low priced product that will not spoil during shipping. Just ten large supermarket chains control 50 percent of the fresh produce in this country, and what they say goes. But the small-scale grower has the opportunity to grow varieties that taste good, because that’s what his market looks for.

There’s no way you can identify your own personal taste profile—that is, the foods that you like the best and want to seek out—unless you know the variety of foodstuff you’re seeking. Once upon a time, when I would go to the market to buy potatoes, baking potatoes filled one bin and red “new” potatoes filled another. And that was about it. Today, I can go to the market and find Yukon Gold, Yellow Finn, Burbank Russet, German Fingerling, Russian Banana, Kennebec, Red LaSoda, and so on. Because I can identify varieties, I know that Red LaSoda is my favorite for making mashed potatoes, that German Fingerlings excel in potato salad, that Kennebec and Burbank Russet have the best-tasting flesh for baking, that Yukon Gold develops a sweet flavor and crispy texture when peeled and pan-fried or roasted, and that Yellow Finn makes superb french fries. The point is that there is no such thing as “the potato.” Every potato is one or another of the many dozens of cultivated varieties on the market, and every potato has a variety name.

It disappoints me to go to a market and find fruits and vegetables sold without variety names. Nectarines are a case in point. The best nectarine I ever tasted was Snow Queen variety, which I discovered at an exposition of farmers’ market purveyors in Oakland, California, in 1987. I was astounded at the quality of this fruit. It looked pretty much like most nectarines, with cream-colored skin and blush-red areas, but its white flesh was smooth and very juicy, with a melt-in-your-mouth quality and a succulent flavor that surpassed any other nectarine of either white or yellow flesh that I’d ever eaten. I look for Snow Queen in vain these days, however, because when nectarine season comes around in late June, the fruit is invariably sold at supermarkets, farmers’ markets, and even roadside stands without any variety name attached. If I were a nectarine farmer and had Snow Queen to sell, I’d want the variety name to accompany the fruit right to market, so that customers in the know could find it among the fifty-two varieties sold commercially in the United States.

I believe that as consumers, especially organic consumers interested in top quality flavor and freshness, we have the right to know the name of the variety of vegetable, fruit, nut, herb, or what have you that is being offered for sale. The variety name should be there every time in every market. As Steve Reiners, associate professor in Horticultural Sciences at Cornell University, told me, “There are many factors that determine the flavor of fruits and vegetables. The most important is probably the choice of variety.”

I encourage you to ask your food seller to name the varieties he or she is selling. Many supermarkets have a place where you can make suggestions on a slip of paper, and keeping variety names attached to foods from farm to market is one good suggestion for helping you to identify high-quality produce. If your market has no suggestion box, call and ask for the manager’s e-mail address and drop him or her the suggestion. The more of us demanding to know what we’re buying, the more likely purveyors will be telling us.

Choice varieties vary from place to place across the United States. Not all garden crop varieties do well in all climates across this broad continent, so asking your local farmers which varieties they sell is a good way to regionalize your selection of foods. Be aware that for a conventional farmer, good yields are of primary importance, while the organic farmer is much more likely to choose varieties that taste great.