Join us for this helpful and informative event!
Presenter Carol Jacobs is a life-long student of the plants, with formal education at Rocky Mountain Center for Botanical Studies (RMCBC-'96). She's currently an "Herbalus Educatorus" in SE Minnesota, after 20 years of working in the Woodlands & Prairies of the Midwest Corridor, from the Great Lakes of MN & WI down to the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas & the Piney Woods of NE Texas. She's a member of North Country Herbalist Guild (NCHG) and current Co-Director of Coulee Region Herbal Institute.
Her special interests include:
- Going Local! (Foods & Herbs)
- Local Probiotics; Native Plants
- Woodland Walks & Prairie Wisdoms (history & lore)
- Lyme Dis-ease & other conditions with similar underlying causes & treatment approaches through diet & herbs (Thyroid, Adrenal Exhaustion, Fibromyalgia, ADHD, etc.).
When: Saturday August 7th, 1pm -3pm lecture, Q & A to follow
Where: Community Room at Vernon Memorial Hospital, 507 S. Main St, Viroqua, WI
Directions: Turn East on Hickory Street, hospital parking immediately on left. Come through main hospital entrance, we will direct you to community rooms. (Note: Community rooms at the hospital not the Gunderson Clinic)
- Sponsored by Viroqua Food Coop -
It’s pickling season! Don’t miss out on the scrumptious little organic pickling cucumbers we have fresh in from Driftless Organics of Soldiers Grove to make your favorite pickles, or try this super easy refrigerator pickle recipe:
Bread & Butter Refrigerator Pickles
- 7-8 pickling cucumbers, thinly sliced (NOT peeled)
- 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
- 1 1/3 c. cider or white vinegar
- 1 2/3 c. sugar
- 3 Tbsp. pickling or non-iodized sea salt (the minerals in the sea salt might make the pickles slightly cloudy but will not impair them any other way)
- ½ tsp. celery seed
- ½ tsp. mustard seed
- ½ tsp. whole black peppercorns
- ¼ tsp. turmeric
Mix sliced cukes & onions in a large bowl. Dissolve sugar in vinegar & mix in salt, celery & mustard seeds, & tumeric. Pour over cukes/onions, stir gently, & pour into a clean quart jar or 2 pint jars (make sure liquid covers vegetables). Store in refrigerator; keeps for many many months.
We're receiving a pallet of organic Michigan blueberries this Tuesday, July 20th and are still taking pre-orders for 4lb boxes ($16.99/box). Talk to a produce worker to place your order!
We will also be retailing full pints & 2 lb. clamshells in the store.
-----
Wayne Kiel of Heritage Blueberry Farm in Holland, Michigan is a third generation blueberry farmer who has been picking blueberries on his farm since he was “knee high to a duck”, (“and before there were child labor laws”, he adds). His family has 48 acres of certified organic berries.
by Bjorn Bergman,
Vernon Area AmeriCorp Farm to School Member
What are your thoughts when someone says the words ‘school 
lunch?’ Chicken nuggets, french fries, over-cooked veggies? What happens when you give students the challenge of designing and preparing a healthy school lunch? This is what a national competition called Cooking Up Change 2010 asked students from around the nation to do, and a team of local students from Laurel High School rose to the challenge. They designed a healthy meal that not only tasted great, but propelled the team to the final round of Cooking Up Change 2010 in Detroit, MI this past May.
Cooking Up Change 2010 is a national healthy school lunch cooking competition put on by the non-profit Healthy Schools Campaign from Chicago. For the competition, student teams go through a rigorous process of designing a school lunch that uses ingredients from a list of foods commonly available to food service programs, uses at least one local food (within 250 miles of the teams home town), meets nutritional guidelines based on recommendations from the National Institute of Medicine, and, most importantly, tastes great. 
Soon after learning about Cooking Up Change 2010 in early March, I approached students that had participated in The Harvest Challenge, our local healthy school lunch cooking competition about entering. Dylan Bruce, Kateri Burton, and Anders Lewis from the winning Laurel High School Harvest Challenge team were excited for the opportunity to be on a team for Cooking Up Change 2010. I paired the team up with local chef Frank Wildingway to provide culinary guidance and inspiration.
After a few meetings and a very successful cooking trial, the team had developed a beautiful school lunch menu consisting of a rice pilaf with tons of veggies and chicken, a spinach salad with roasted tomatoes, pinto beans, shredded carrots and raisins, and a mouth watering peach cobbler. In late March, the team submitted their entry for the first round of the competition to a judging panel of culinary experts in Chicago and we all crossed our fingers.
The competition features two tiers: a qualifying round and the finals. The qualifying round consists of teams developing and nutritionally analyzing recipes and them submitting them, along with a nutritional report on their meal, a series of supplementary questions and photos documenting the whole process.
The panel of judges combs through the submitted documents from each team and rates them with specific judging criteria such as: According to the team’s analysis, does the meal meet the nutritional guidelines? Do the ingredients complement each other? Does the recipe show creativity through the combination of ingredients, cooking process, etc.? From the qualifying round, the top three entries would be chosen to prepare and serve their meal for a prestigious panel of judges at the Cooking Up Change 2010 finals in Detroit, Michigan on May 17th, 2010.
Two weeks after the team submitted all the competition paperwork, I received a call from Healthy Schools Campaign – our Laurel High School team had been selected as one of three in the nation as a finalist for Cooking Up Change 2010. We were going to Detroit in May! Hooray!
Fast forward to Monday, May 17th. The previous day the students 
and I flew into Detroit and now were at breakfast with Monique Hooker, a local chef from DeSoto and Farm to School volunteer extraordinaire. The team was nervous yet excited to get in the kitchen. Soon we were on a shuttle over to Southeastern High School in Detroit for the competition.
After going over the kitchen space with the contest organizers, the team jumped right in and began preparing their meal. Each student tackled one of the dishes. Kateri masterfully put together the peach cobbler, Anders whipped up the spinach salad and Dylan sliced, diced and cooked for a good hour before he completed the delicious rice pilaf.
While the team was working their magic, the two other finalist teams were also preparing their meals in the same kitchen. The St. Paul Community Design Center Culinary Crew from Minnesota prepared a meal of crunchy pesto chicken, polenta pizza, and Minnesota Slaw, while the Tohono O’odham Community Action Cooking Club from the Tohono O’Odham Native American reservation in southern Arizona prepared a delicious meal of tepary bean quesadillas, Baby Spinach and pear salad with carrot vinaigrette, and yogurt peanut butter dip.
After two hours of cooking in the hot and cramped high school kitchen, it was time for the teams to present their meals to the judges. The Laurel team plated up tasting portions of their lunch and served them to a prestigious panel of 21 judges, including Karen Duncan, wife of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Christie Vilsack, wife of U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. The food looked and tasted great and the judges were clearly very impressed.
After all the teams presented their meals to the judges, they gathered in the kitchen and shared their leftovers with each other. The food and the company was fantastic. I was extremely impressed with the lunches that these talented high-schoolers had prepared.
After about an hour, the students left to relax back at the hotel for a few hours. But on everyone’s mind was the announcement of the winning team and school lunch the following morning.
The next morning during the opening plenary of the 5th National 
Farm to Cafeteria Conference, the students from all the teams gathered at one table at the front of the ballroom hall to eat breakfast and await the results of Cooking up Change 2010. Rochelle Davis, executive director of Healthy Schools Campaign was joined by Margie Saidel, from Chartwells-Thompson Hospitality and Chris Ely, from Applegate Farms to announce which team had prepared the winning school lunch. And the winner is... Tohono O’odhan Community Action Cooking Club!
While the Laurel High School team did not take home the top honors, each student from the team received a cookware set from T-fal and many accolades from conference attendees, including Ann Cooper, the Renegade Lunch Lady.
Later that afternoon, the conference lunch featured one item from each team’s meal that made it into the final round of Cooking Up Change 2010. The Laurel Team’s peach cobbler was served to all in attendance and it was a huge hit. During the lunch the team spoke in front of all the conference attendees (over 700 people) about their meal. It was really a powerful and amazing experience.
I am so proud of Anders, Kateri and Dylan for taking on a direct role in what is fed to them in their cafeteria and to others around the nation by getting involved in healthy cooking competitions like Cooking Up Change. It is so powerful to see them having an effect on school lunch reform at the local and national level.
A special thanks goes out to the team’s sponsors, Viroqua Food Co-op and Organic Valley. We couldn’t have made this happen without them. The team would also like to send out a big thank you to Frank Wildingway and Monique Hooker for culinary guidance and Bev Buss for embroidering the team’s chef whites.
For more info on the competition visit the following websites:
http://healthyschoolscampaign.org/event/cookingupchange/2010/welcome.php
http://healthyschoolscampaign.typepad.com/healthy_schools_campaign/2010/05/qa-with-cooking-up-change-national-finalists-laurel.html
Thank you, Co-op owners, for participating in the one percent Wednesday donations program by turning in your donations ballot. Your vote counted! Here are the top twelve organizations that received the most votes:
- Vernon Area Farm-to-School
- Valley Stewardship Network
- Vernon County Humane Society
- Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School
- Alliance Conserned for Environmental Safety
- Driftless Community Radio
- Mcintosh Memorial Library
- Habitat for Humanity/Vernon County
- Door of Hope
- Vernon Trails
- Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service
- Vernon Memorial Hospital - Hospice House
Thank you for voting! *Updated* The schedule for the 2010-2011 year is now posted on the community outreach page of our website.
On the second Wednesday of every month we donate 1% of the store’s gross sales to one of the top non-profit organizations selected by the Co-op owners. We also place donation jars at each cash register to accept donations from shoppers throughout the month for that same organization. We contact these organizations so they can encourage their supporters to shop on 1% Wednesday, thus increasing the amount the Co-op donates. The advantage of this system is that it is directed by you, the owners.
By: Jan Rasikas, General Manager
I am fortunate to attend national and regional meetings where leading economists speak about the state of our economy and trends for grocery retailers. Despite the overall belt tightening in recessionary times, products and companies representing ethical business practices did not experience the anticipated declining sales.
In fact, many economists predicted sales to drop substantially for this category but it’s the opposite of what happened. The price of organic and ‘green’ products did not stop consumers from purchasing; instead they kept or added organic and green products to their shopping lists!
This means many consumers, with less to spend, select high quality organic foods and decide to support companies that give back to their communities. Why, we might ask? Well… I leave this for the economists to spin; they too need a job.
But we get a bird’s eye view here at the Viroqua Food Co-op. We experience firsthand the commitment folks have to the health and wellbeing of their families, community and the environment. They choose organic foods, cook from scratch, and clean their homes with non-toxic products. They recycle, compost and grow their own veggies. When we tell the story of a company who donates a percentage of their profits to charity, certifies for Fair Trade or follows environmentally sound practices, we see shoppers making a choice to support those companies. When we mark a product as local or regional, we know we’re helping folks recognize the importance of building a strong local food economy.
Beware American consumer! These days’ being green is a marketable idea that doesn’t require the proof of good intentions or actual practices. Green-washing and Local-washing are attempts to jump on the bandwagon to gain increased sales! Green and local products are attractive to retailers because of their growth trends, but calling it local doesn’t make so. Big box stores are advertising themselves as ‘your local outlet.’ Garden products labeled as ‘green’ and organic were recently discovered to contain not one certified organic ingredient.
At VFC, our local tags signify a product as grown or produced within a 100 mile radius of Viroqua. Regional tags are for products from the 4 states around us and greater Wisconsin. As for green; the VFC used many green building materials and practices when we built our current store, but we’re not stopping there! Here are a few of our recent projects along with a few coming up:
- We have plans for photo voltaic or solar thermal panels on our south roof to heat water and collect energy. We are eligible for grant money and incentives but also need to add our own funding to complete the project. Watch for details and opportunities to help us achieve supplemental solar power at the Co-op!
- Jeff, VFC’s facilities manager, is using 6 watt LEDs (light emitting diode) to replace the 20 watt spotlights. They carry a 15 year warranty and cut energy usage by over 66%.
- 2 woven aluminum night curtains were installed on open air coolers, with more coming this year. The curtains reduce energy consumption by around 30%, extend compressor life.
- An air curtain was installed over the front door to reduce hot/cold energy intrusion into the building.
- We’re beginning to replace our 4' full spectrum fluorescent lighting tubes throughout the store with LEDs that use 15 watts, cutting energy usage by over 50% in those fixtures.
- Improved recycling containers in the seating area and the patio are coming soon.
We make a positive impact on our community by choosing local, organic and truly green products and practices.
Go Co-op!
Photo credit
Every year, the average US citizen spends over $400 on bottled water. This is 1,900 times the price of tap water, yet Americans still use an average of 28 billion bottles of water yearly. Of those 28 billion bottles, 22 billion end up in landfills (where it then takes 300 years for the plastic to biodegrade). The production of bottled water, according to the What’s Tappening website, uses as much as 17 million barrels of oil—enough to fuel a million cars for an entire year.
In a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 47% of respondents said they drank bottled water because of what they saw as health and safety problems with tap water. But the idea that all bottled water is pure is a marketing myth. Bottled water generally is no cleaner, safer, or healthier than tap water. In fact, the federal government requires far more rigorous and frequent safety testing and monitoring of municipal drinking water.
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates only the 30 or 40 percent of bottled water sold across state lines.
- According to a Natural Resources Defense Council study of 103 bottled water brands, about one-quarter of the brands tested contained bacterial or chemical contamination in some samples at levels that violated “enforceable state standards or warning levels.”
- The same study found one-fifth of the tested brands “exceeded state bottled water microbial guidelines in at least some samples.”
- When combined with bromide, ozonation—a process increasingly used to disinfect bottled water—can produce bromate, a possible human carcinogen. In 2006, FDA ordered a recall of several brands of bottled water with bromate levels that exceeded the standard of 10 parts per billion.
- The FDA has less than one full-time employee devoted to bottled water oversight. The rules apply only to bottled water packaged and sold across state lines, which leaves out about 60 to 70 percent of water bottled and sold within a single state. FDA regulations also exempt carbonated bottled water.
- The FDA requires that companies test for bacterial contamination in water only once per week, and they must test only four empty bottles once every three months for bacterial contamination. When it comes to chemical, physical, or radiological contaminants, a sample of water must be checked only once a year.
- The FDA, charged with overseeing the health and safety of bottled water, does not test bottled water for phthalates like DEP—a chemical that is used to produce plastic water bottles and which is also a potential cancer agent in humans.
- The EPA requires that water systems serving more than one million residents test 300 water samples per month, while utilities serving three million people or more must collect and test 480 samples monthly, far more than the once–a–week test for bottled water.
Another reason to stop buying bottled water is the release of independent studies regarding bisphenol-A (BPA) and how this chemical may be adversely affecting our health. First synthesized in 1891, BPA is used in the production of epoxy resins and polycarbonate plastics worldwide. It is used to make plastic bottles of all kinds and is often used as a coating inside canned goods to protect the contents from exposure to the metal.
However, as these plastic bottles and canned goods age, BPA has a tendency to leach into the contents where, according to several studies, they adversely affect our health in many different ways.
The plastics industry says that BPAs are benign and that there is no cause for alarm, but there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. According to its critics, BPA mimics naturally occurring estrogen, a hormone that is part of the endocrine system. “These hormones control the development of the brain, the reproductive system and many other systems in the developing fetus,” says Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a developmental biologist at the University of Missouri. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can duplicate, block or exaggerate hormonal responses which lead to a wide range of developmental difficulties.
In recent years, scientists have moved from studying BPA’s damaging effects in laboratory animals to linking it to heart disease, sterility and altered childhood development in humans. Many questions still remain about dosage effects and the full nature of those links, but this January the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that “recent studies provide reason for some concern about the potential effects of BPA on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland of fetuses, infants and children.” We are just in the beginning stages of understanding how BPA affects our health but given the preliminary findings, the outlook is not rosy.
As Science continues to search for a culprit in the rising rates of cancers, tumors, miscarriages, Down’s syndrome, birth defects, autism, and a wide range of other maladies, BPA figures to be at least a contributing factor.
And if the impact on human health weren’t bad enough, a survey of 200 sites in 20 countries around the world has found that bisphenol-A is ubiquitous in Earth’s oceans.
The oceanic BPA survey, presented March 23 2010 at an American 
Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, was conducted by Nihon University chemists Katsuhiko Saido and Hideto Sato. At an ACS meeting last year, they described how soft plastic in seawater doesn’t just float or sink intact, but can break down rapidly, releasing toxins. In their new findings, they showed that BPA-containing hard plastics can break down too, and found BPA in ocean water and sand at concentrations ranging from .01 to .50 parts per million.
As for what those numbers mean for public and environmental health, it’s hard to say. BPA can cause reproductive disorders in shellfish and crustaceans, and doses below a single part per trillion can have cell-level effects, but the path from water and sand to ocean animals needs to be studied.
About three million tons of BPA-containing plastics are produced each year. The United Nations estimates that the average square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of plastic trash.
“Marine debris plastic in the ocean will certainly constitute a new global ocean contamination for long into the future,” wrote Saido and Sato in their presentation.
A number of states have already banned BPA in baby bottles. Other U.S. Co-ops, including Linden Hills of St. Paul, MN and the Ashland, OR Food Co-op no longer sell water in plastic bottles smaller than a gallon. In Minneapolis, TapMpls.com is a city-wide effort to encourage citizens to take the pledge to drink tap water. Pioneering restaurants in San Francisco have pledged to kick their bottled water habits and only serve tap water to their customers as part of Food & Water Watch’s Take Back the Tap Campaign. What should VFC do?
As a mission-driven cooperative with close to 80% of our sales purchased by owners, you vote with your dollar. VFC staff does not want to be the food police, but we will provide you with information so you can make an informed choice. Sales of small plastic bottles of water are strong in our store; does that mean our owners are voting for them, or they just don’t know the issues? 
Until enough of our owners stop buying single serve bottled water, we’ll continue to offer it. But we’re offering an irresistible deal to entice you to switch over to reusable water bottles.
Bring in any clean, stainless, glass or BPA free plastic container that’s under 64 oz. and fill it at VFC’s Reverse Osmosis station for a mere 25¢.
The next time that you reach for a plastic bottle of water to quench your thirst, think about the possible costs that have nothing to do with the price on the bottle.
Sources:
takebackthetap.org/
www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/bottled/take-back-the-tap/
www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/ocean-bpa/
www.waterfiltering.com/bottled-water/bpa-bottled-water.html
by Carol Willis, Wellness Manager
Springtime arrives in a few weeks. With spring comes the urge to give our home a thorough cleaning, and doing the same for our bodies might be a good idea as well. Somehow it seems like the natural thing to do after the long winter.
The Co-op has a good selection of internal cleansing kits and weight management products in the supplement department. I mention these types of products together as they are often quite similar. My purpose in this article is to take a look at some of the ingredients and their functions. First we will categorize some of the herbal ingredients and then get acquainted with some of the other ingredients so you can make an informed choice.
Internal cleansing formulas
These usually contain herbal bitters, laxatives, mucilaginous herbs, carminatives, diuretics antispasmodics, anti-inflammatory herbs, liver tonics and adaptogens.
- Bitters stimulate the flow of saliva which contains the first digestive enzyme that our food meets and they also stimulate the flow of bile: artichoke leaf, dandelion leaf and root, black cohosh, yellow dock, blessed thistle, angelica, gentian, turmeric, chicory root, bitter orange.
- Stimulating laxatives increase peristalsis (intestinal movement): cape aloe, rhubarb, buckthorn, senna, and cascara sagrada fit into this category. Bulk laxatives aka fiber: psyllium seed husks, plantain, pectin.
- Mucilaginous herbs soothe the intestinal tract: Slippery elm, marshmallow, chickweed.
- Carminatives relieve flatulence: Fennel, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, dill, angelica, hops, chamomile, sage, peppermint.
- Diuretics help rid the body of excess fluids: Dandelion, burdock, nettles, cornsilk, juniper, hawthorn, uva ursi, parsley.
- Antispasmodics reduce spasms in the intestinal tract as well as elsewhere in the body: black cohosh, dill, wild yam, cardamom, celery seed, valerian, peppermint, St. Johnswort, chamomile, rosemary, skullcap, fennel, licorice, fenugreek, mullein, ginger.
- Anti-inflammatory herbs do just that, reduce inflammation: Turmeric, yarrow, licorice, chamomile, rosemary, clove, chickweed, marshmallow, fennel, black cohosh, irish moss, angelica, hawthorn.
- Adaptogens aid in reducing the effects of stress on the body: ashwaganda, eleuthero senticosus (formerly known as Siberian ginseng) gotu kola, American and Korean ginsengs, rhodiola, schizandra, reishi mushroom.
- Liver tonics: By some accounts the liver has over 500 processes to perform on a daily basis, so herbs to help keep the liver healthy are very important. Liver tonics include dandelion, burdock, chicory root, turmeric and milk thistle.
Weight Management
- Hoodia is a succulent plant from Africa that is an appetite suppressant, the chemical constituents in Hoodia send a message to the hunger center in the hypothalamus that you are satisfied and therefore not hungry. Is that a good idea? You will have to decide.
- CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) is reported to reduce body fat while increasing lean muscle mass, having an affinity for reducing belly fat. Food sources of CLA include grass fed beef, lamb or eggs and it is also derived from safflower oil for inclusion in CLA supplements.
- Chitosan is a polysaccharide from the shells of crustaceans such as lobster, crab and shrimp. It is a “special” fiber similar to cellulose that manufacturers claim has the ability to bind with fat molecules and convert them into a form that the body cannot absorb. Further, vitamin C is often added to chitoasan in weight loss products to enhance its effectiveness.
- 7-Keto is a metabolite of DHEA, the most abundant steroid in the blood of adult humans. As with so many things, DHEA naturally declines with age. 7-keto supplementation is well tolerated and not converted to estrogens or androgens in the body. The claimed purpose is to help maintain lean muscle mass.
- Phase 2 is made from white kidney beans. It is the first carbohydrate blocker clinically proven to delay the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates. It is included on the FDA’s GRAS(generally regarded as safe) list.
- Digestive enzymes naturally decrease as we age and unless we are eating sufficient fresh raw produce, we may benefit from supplementation.
I hope this information aids you in choosing either an internal cleanse or weight loss product. Still let me remind us all to seek the advice of medical professionals before starting on programs to cleanse or lose weight, especially if we have previously existing health conditions. Additionally remember there is no replacement for regular exercise and a well balanced diet.
Resources used in writing this article:
David Hoffmann, FNIMH, AHG. Medical Herbalism: The Science and Practice of Herbal Medicine. Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 2003.
www.phase2info.com
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid
www.vanderbilt.edu/ans/psychology/health_psychology/chitosan.htm
read part one here
2008
In January, Locavore was named 2007 word of the year, an indication of the acceleration of the local food movement. Luhning, Rasikas, and I attended the DATCP Value-Added Conference that was now combined with the 2nd annual WI Local Food Summit.
Unknown to us, Rick Beckler of Sacred Heart Hospital, Eau Claire also attended this conference, with the express intent of procuring local food for the hospital. (See March 2009 Pea Soup) That meeting resulted in the creation of the Chippewa Valley Consortium. Later this year the first BLBW grants were made available, and the Consortium received funding to support its formation.
In September VFC participated in the second Eat Local Wisconsin Challenge and the first NCGA-sponsored Eat Local America Challenge, and partnered with FFI to host a sold-out Community Harvest Dinner (featuring all local foods) at the Viroqua High School 
cafeteria, with over 200 attendees.
The FFI steering committee was working hard on the community food assessment. Quickly realizing that they did not have the economic expertise needed, VSN hired Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center
to complete the economic assessment. While they had no intention of starting any other projects until the research was done, Americorp grants to provide positions for Farm to School projects became available, and with strong support from local schools, they jumped in.
2009-2010
In January Rasikas, Lind, representatives from two other Food Co-ops and I participated in a panel presentation “Retailers and Your Local Product” at the Value-Added Conference in Rochester, IL. While at the conference I met Rick Beckler at the Sacred Heart Hospital Booth. I learned that the hospital had committed to buying 10% of their food ($200,000) from local sources, had formed a consortium of buyers & producers and received the BLBW grant. By June the consortium had transformed into the Producers and Buyers Co-op, a multi-stakeholder cooperative. This would prove to be a vital piece in providing VEDA with a working cooperative model of scaling up local food systems
In May FFI completed the Community Food Assessment
(an impressive study well over 100 pages, available on the VSN website). Luhning stated that VSN gained a much better understanding of the food system through the assessment process, but “the number one benefit was the relationships we developed.”
The study was presented to the community on May 21st. Ken Meter, who had done reports in 38 regions of 18 states, praised the efforts in the region, saying he believes “local food may be the best path toward economic recovery.” For example, consumers in Southwest Wisconsin spend $208 million on food from outside the region. If those consumers would purchase 25% of their food directly from local farmers, it would produce $33 million of new farm income every year - enough to offset current farm production losses.
“The discussion here has been one of the more advanced discussions I’ve had on local food anywhere in the country,” said Meter, “With the success of CROPP in this county, and other organizations and people, you have a lot of foundation to work with.”
Now that the assessment was complete, FFI decided to focus on a Gleaning Project, one that they could do with the resources they had – volunteer labor and relationships with the schools and farmers. Luhning had volunteered for a gleaning project back in Bellingham, and Becky Comeau, FFI member, had visited a gleaning project in Vermont. Through the gleaning project FFI learned first hand about surplus food in the area going to waste – they harvested 3000 lbs. of produce that season that otherwise would have rotted in the field. (See Sept. 09 Pea Soup). These “seconds” are high quality, sometimes odd-sized, but in the case of bumper crops, are simply “firsts” that would cost the farmers more to harvest than they would be able to sell them for. The lack of a market for seconds was very evident.
The Ohio-based NCR closed its Viroqua manufacturing plant in March. In July VEDA acquired the 100,000 square foot facility and its fifteen acres of land.
“Our attention now focuses on locating and working with regional businesses, farmers, producers, processors, manufacturers and community members interested in participating in this innovative, multi-business facility.” said Noble. Luhning and VFC’s Jan Rasikas became a part of the steering committee for this project.
Over the summer Sonya Newenhouse of Madison Environmental Group had been hired by WTC-La Crosse to facilitate conversations with other La Crosse institutions that wanted to increase local food in their food service programs and invited Sue Noble to participate. FFI had identified the need of a processing facility for seconds and developed relationships with area schools that were seeking local food through the Farm to School Program. All the pieces were coming together when the BLBW grant funding was announced. With the example of the Chippewa Valley Producers and Buyers Co-op in mind, they applied for the grant.
Luhning and Noble put the initial proposal together in two weeks and were one of 70 applicants. They were one of 30 invited to submit a full proposal. 22 letters of support from local institutions, business, NPO’s and Farms were included in the grant proposal that would form a Local Foods Initiative to serve a five county region - Vernon, La Crosse, Crawford, Richland and Monroe.
A key part of the proposal was the development of a multi-stakeholder cooperative consisting initially of five local producers, three large producer groups (Organic Valley, Harvest Moon Farms and Keewaydin Organics), four processors (Keewaydin Organics, CROPP Cooperative, Westby Co-op Creamery and Premier Meats, Inc.) and six institutions (Western Technical College, UW-La Crosse, Vernon Memorial Hospital, Three Rivers Waldorf School, Viroqua Area Schools and Pleasant Ridge Waldorf School) to market, sell and distribute fresh and value-added food products. Four of the five institutions committed 10% of their food budgets to purchasing local food. VEDA received the largest grant of the nine proposals that were funded: $40,000 for two years.
Premier Meats opened in December, a 12,000 square foot facility between Westby and Viroqua. A $1.9 million dollar success story from VEDA’s Entrepreneur Club, it added tremendous momentum to local food activity in the region. Two-thirds of the building is dedicated to the processing of meat while the other third includes a retail shop hosting many local food items: fresh and frozen beef, pork, lamb, dairy and additional products. It has the capacity to process 150 head of beef, as well as hogs and sheep.
Plans for the use of the former NCR building continue - the building will serve as a central distribution point for local produce in the BLBW grant. It will also house other local food businesses and provide space for local food community activities
Nicole Penick, who is now the coordinator for FFI, has been hired as the coordinator for the new Western Wisconsin Local Foods Initiative. Nicole has a BA in Community Leadership & Development, and is working on her thesis project on Farm to Institution Food. Her work for FFI will also apply towards her Masters degree.
Even with the example of the Chippewa Valley Producers and Buyers Co-op, developing a multi-stakeholder cooperative is really breaking new ground. While this type of co-op is common in Europe and Canada, it is extremely rare in the US. Producers, Buyers, Processors, Distributors and Employees will all have a seat at the table in determining fair prices and co-op policies. It truly is a new paradigm for building a sustainable food system.
Noble and Luhning are excited about the prospects. “We have the opportunity to be a showcase region for rebuilding rural economies in a sustainable way,” says Luhning.
“The motivation to go for the grant was based on more than a year of work, planning and discussions about local food together,” adds Noble. “The grant is also a great next step for a lot of the local businesses I’m working with, who focus on food and agriculture.”
In addition to the crucial leadership provided by Luhning and Noble, nearly all the work from the Valley Stewardship Network’s Food and Farm Initiative to this point had been done by volunteers - and without those committed enough to roll up their sleeves and
take action, our community wouldn’t be ready for the next steps in the Driftless Good Food Revolution.
Part One: 2006-2007
“I don’t call this a movement anymore, I refer to it as a revolution.”
Thus spoke Will Allen, founder of Milwaukee’s urban agriculture 
project “Growing Power.” Allen was the opening keynote speaker of the recent Midwest Value-Added Conference and Wisconsin Local Food Summit in Eau Claire that VFC produce manager Dani Lind and I attended. If one is going to be a part of a revolution, this is one that is exciting, intellectually stimulating, full of relationships with all kinds of people, and tasty. The Good Food Revolution.
Here in the Driftless we are ahead of the curve in many ways, but the challenge of the missing distribution and processing infrastructure needed to market our products to local grocers, schools and institutions remains.
We are preparing to meet that challenge, now assisted by the award 
of a $40,000 Buy Local Buy Wisconsin Grant to VEDA (Vernon Economic Development Association). You may have seen the photo of the ribbon cutting at Premier Meats in the Vernon County Broadcaster, with a short article announcing the award, presented that day by Wisconsin Ag. Secretary Rod Nilsestuen to develop the Western Wisconsin Local Foods Initiative. It is a story worth expounding on, one that is transforming our local food system and our local economy.
2006
In January of 2006 VEDA was formed by a group of community leaders and business executives from throughout Vernon County. VEDA hired Sue Noble as Executive Director, whose philosophy of economic development is to grow communities from within by creating the environment for economic development to occur. As a way to capitalize on the creative people and entrepreneurial spirit here, Noble partnered with Laura Brown from Crawford County UW Extension to start the Vernon/Crawford Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club.
2007
In April Jessica Luhning moved with her husband Macon to Viroqua 
from Bellingham, Washington. Luhning had finished her graduate work in Rural Land Use & Agricultural Planning and had managed a farmland preservation program. She and her husband wanted to move back to the Midwest, and found Viroqua through online research. Jessica was hired by the Valley Stewardship Network days after arriving; Macon found a position with Organic Valley.
At this time, VSN was a quiet organization. Its focus was on water quality issues, and Luhning’s 15 hours a week was plenty of time to accomplish her work.
In October of 07 the State of Wisconsin Legislature unanimously passed the Buy Local Buy Wisconsin Bill. The first statewide program supporting local food, the goal of the BLBW initiative was to shift 10 percent of the state’s consumer and business food expenditures to foods grown by Wisconsin’s producers.
In the spring of ‘07 Vernon County was faced with its first CAFO issue. Luhning was passionate about preventing the contamination that industrial agriculture could wreak, and made a case to the VSN board that as an organization, they needed to take a stand. Suddenly the controversy thrust this quiet, unknown organization into the limelight.
The VSN board quickly realized that the CAFO issue was very divisive. Rather than focus on what they were against, they formed the Food and Farm Initiative in November 2007. “We want to support our small farmers, so they remain viable,” says Luhning. “If we’re doing something positive, we bring awareness to the issues.” Sara Martinez and her husband Matt Urch were instrumental in the creation of FFI. VFC’s Dani Lind became an active member of the FFI steering committee, and Sue Noble and VFC General Manager Jan Rasikas came aboard as members of the advisory board.
The first task of the newly formed FFI was to complete a community food assessment. “Although VSN had a strong knowledge of water quality,” Luhning said, “We didn’t have a solid background or understanding of our local food system. We needed to do the research to legitimize ourselves so we could really be a strong voice against industrial agriculture; at the same time providing a strong foundation from which to develop a sustainable food system.”
Read Part 2 here.
by Charlene Elderkin, Marketing & Membership Manager