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GREENSBORO - It's not exactly a Civil War, but a dispute among vendors who have shared tables for years at the Greensboro Farmers' Curb Market is creating hard feelings and attracting attention from City Hall.

At its heart, the question sounds simple but isn't necessarily clear-cut: What is local?

In recent months, market officials have enforced a rule banning the sale of products grown elsewhere.

The main idea, said Larry Smith, a Pleasant Garden farmer who also serves as part-time market manager, is that customers are looking specifically for locally grown food.

In fact, selling locally produced food is in the market's mission statement.

"Most people come here expecting it to be grown by the person selling it," Smith said. "When you go to the grocery store, you don't know where it was grown."

No one argues that there should be no rules regarding the sale of food at the market, which operates out of an old armory building on Yanceyville Street, or that the focus should not be on local products.

But sometimes customers are better served by allowing exceptions, some vendors say.

Mike Causey, who sells produce from his Dodge Lodge farm in the southeast corner of the county, said he grows virtually everything he sells. But some things don't grow well here, and he likes to offer a wide range of foods.

"It should be all about local," he said. "But it should also be about providing variety. The more variety you have, the more customers it draws."

This year, he was told he could not sell ginger and button mushrooms grown elsewhere. When regular customers found them missing, they weren't happy, Causey said.

As long as items grown elsewhere are labeled, having exceptions makes sense, he said.

"In my opinion, the city ... should do everything they can to help the farmers," he said. "There's so many things that are not able to grow in Guilford County or surrounding counties."

The market has a policy allowing vendors to receive a variance to sell something not locally produced. But some say those decisions are too arbitrary.

Ruth Foster, a longtime customer, was appalled to find she could no longer buy cheese and butter from an Amish family who brought the food from Ohio.

"The policy had nothing to do with what the customers' needs were," she said. "In spirit, it's good, but in practice, it's not working."

Foster has circulated a petition urging a change, and the market, which is run by the city, is seeking comments on a new policy that would allow more leeway for products sold there.

In a way, the tension could be a product of the market's growing success. With added attention comes added interest in the market's practices.

Saturdays bring throngs of people slowly cruising the aisles under the slow-turning ceiling fans. The atmosphere is almost one of an extended family. But sometimes proximity generates passion.

Smith said that, when it comes to the market, agreement can be elusive.

"Oh, Lord, yes," he said.

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin@news-record.com