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
Viroqua Food Co-op Conducts Community-Wide Challenge to Eat Local from August 15 to Sept. 15
Eating local is not just for foodies anymore. Whether it’s “60 Minutes,” the New York Times or the Vernon County Broadcaster, more and more media are talking up eating local. And, more shoppers are walking the talk, both as a way to become more mindful eaters and to support the local economy.
With that in mind, Viroqua Food Co-op for the second year is hosting the “Eat Local, America!” challenge this summer, inviting area residents to focus on eating more local food from Aug. 15 to Sept. 15.
Eat Local, America! is honor-based. Those wishing to participate simply sign a large poster at the Viroqua Food Co-op or log on to www.eatlocalamerica.coop.
Participants may choose the level that’s right for them. “Newbies” might start by eating one meal a week made with local food. Seasoned “locavores” can push the envelope – perhaps by making four out of five meals with local foods. Or participants can pick a personal goal somewhere in between.
During the Eat Local America Challenge and throughout the year, we call attention to local food on our shelves with a green shelf tag that says “Local”. At VFC we define local as grown within a 50 mile radius of Viroqua.
For this challenge, however, we are defining local food as being grown in Wisconsin or within 100 miles of your home. So we will have additional Miles-to-Market or Made in Wisconsin signs during the Eat Local Challenge.
If you want to learn more about the local farmers and food producers for the VFC, check out our website at
http://viroquafood.coop/food-thought
National Challenge Underway
Viroqua Food Co-op is joining other food co-ops coast-to-coast in the second, national Eat Local, America! All participating co-ops are members of National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) – a business services cooperative representing 111 retail food co-ops nationwide. Food lovers can learn about all participating Eat Local, America! food cooperative and initiatives at
www.eatlocalamerica.coop.
Sign-Up and Join
Put your taste for local food to the test! Beginning August 15, visit the Co-op to sign up for the challenge and learn more about helpful recipes and products that will make achieving the challenge as easy as a summer breeze. Or, visit the national Web site at www.eatlocalamerica.coop to follow other participants coast-to-coast.
To help you navigate through your own personal local food challenge, NCGA asked foodies, nutritionists, chefs, gardeners, writers and others to share their thoughts, recipes and encouragement about local food on the eat local blog. Charlene Elderkin, VFC Marketing Manager will be contributing to that blog - so check frequently for new local food tips, information and recipes at www.eatlocalamerica.coop/elablog2009
Why Eat Local?
Viroqua Food Co-op cultivates truly reciprocal partnerships and friendships with local growers and producers. Together, the VFC and local producers create viable market opportunities for local products, while giving co-op shoppers a convenient connection to fresh, delicious food of the highest quality.
Local food benefits Co-op shoppers, growers, communities and the environment. It’s also fresher and tastes better, because it retains more nutrients and promotes a healthy environment. With a shorter distance to travel, local food uses fewer natural resources, such as oil, in its transport.
In addition, eating local helps preserve and even stimulate the local economy, as dollars spent on local foods support regional farmers and producers. By keeping their wages in the community, much of the income they earn and the taxes they pay in turn go back to the local economy.
Locally owned by over 2500 members of the community, the Viroqua Food Co-op keeps its investment dollars in the vicinity by supporting local farmers and producers in the Driftless area. Since July 1, 2008 to present, VFC has purchased $479,500 worth of food from Wisconsin farmers. 20% or $94,000 was purchased from Viroqua area farmers.
Although we’re holding this challenge during peak season for fresh produce, it’s possible – and not too difficult – to eat local food year-round. Fruit and vegetables can be preserved until the next harvest season, via canning, freezing and dehydrating. VFC is the go-to source for local dairy products, including milk and artisan cheese, as well as eggs, meat, poultry, fish, honey, maple syrup, herbal wellness & body care products, and even pizza, salsa, sauerkraut and ice cream. Happy eating!
Local Food is now a “movement” with its own vocabulary and initiatives.
Something’s happening here. Local food is now a movement. There is so much interest in eating local food that new words are being created to describe what was, until recent human history, the only way one could eat.
The New Oxford American Dictionary announced last November that the 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) “Locavore.” Locavore was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also embrace local food as an environmentally friendly measure, since the average American food item travels 1500 miles to market (and that’s just domestic products).
Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as localvores rather than locavores.1 Jessica Prentice, one of the authors of the word, explains.
“I thought about both ‘localvore’ and ‘locavore’ and decided on the latter. First of all, it’s easier to say, has a better flow, and almost sounds like a ‘real’ word. But also my understanding is that the prefix ‘loc(a)’ has to do with place — as in ‘location’, ‘locomotive’ and ‘locus’... The ending ‘vore’ has to do with eating, and is the same root as the word ‘devour’. To me the word locavore means, in a sense, ‘a person who eats the place’ or even ‘one who eats with a sense of place’ or, better yet, ‘one who devours the place’ (I enjoy eating).
“New England localvores added the ‘L’ because (I believe) they didn’t like the association with ‘loca’ as in the Spanish for ‘crazy.’ I live on the West Coast, where ‘loca’ in that sense is more a positive than a negative. We’re less serious out here... :-) Also, if journalists wanted to question me on that association, it would be an opportunity to explain that what is really crazy is the amount of unnecessary importation and exportation of food that currently happens in our globalized food system.” 2
When I attended a marketing conference for food co-ops last October, I heard another new word that sounded rather strange to me. In a presentation about local food, Doug Walter of the Davis Food Co-op in California referred to the area they defined as local as a “foodshed.” I’d heard of watershed, and tool shed, but foodshed?
It turns out that foodshed is not a new word made up by marketers. The term foodshed, borrowed from the concept of a watershed, was coined as early as 1929 to describe the flow of food from the area where it is grown into the place where it is consumed. Recently, the term has been revived as a way of looking at and thinking about local, sustainable food systems.3
On the heels of foodshed is the word “farmshed.” A farmshed is the network of people, businesses, organizations, and productive lands that create a local food economy. Similar in concept to a foodshed, the farmshed idea helps us envision and strengthen our community’s relationship with the regional landscape.
That we have to have a movement complete with specialized language, focus groups and political funding to encourage the creation of stronger local food networks is a sobering wake up call to just how disconnected we Americans (and even Wisconsinites) have become from our food.
One of the online responses I read on the discussion page of the “locavore” announcement was: “Hmmmm…..locavore - makes sense it was coined in San Francisco - for those of us living where it is winter 9 months of the year (and poor skiing the other 3) we’d be looking at scurvy and worse if we were locavores. Another nice conceit for those in lotus land!”
Hmmm. Try telling that to my dear departed grandparents, Verna and Alfred Geiger.
Verna & Alfred raised ten children on a Dodge County Wisconsin farm during the depression. Too poor to own their own land, Alfred was a laborer on someone else’s farm, but they were provided with a house to live in (where my mother remembers waking up to frost on the covers), an area to garden and raise ducks and chickens, and a dollar a day for wages. I’m sure the Geiger’s ate 95% local food, mostly of their own making, out of sheer necessity. And all of their children survived into adulthood without getting scurvy.
While I was raised in Madison rather than on a farm, my mother Arlene passed on her local food preservation skills to all of her ten children. Lots of mouths to feed, but lots of hands for harvesting, washing, peeling, chopping, canning & freezing. She bought food at farmers markets and U-pick farms. She even bought live chickens, butchered them on the farm she purchased them from, brought them home and canned chicken and dumplings. Lest you think Arlene had plenty of time on her hands, she also worked at least 3 part time jobs.
So, I know that eating locally can be done, whether you live in a city without access to a garden or in the country. And it can even be done, thanks to the demand that has created more availability of products, without having to process your own food. As Michael Pollen says in In Defense of Food “…before the resurgence of farmers’ markets, the rise of the organic movement, and the renaissance of local agriculture now underway across the county, stepping outside the conventional food system simply was not an option for most people. Now it is. We are entering a postindustrial era of food; for the first time in a generation it is possible to leave behind the Western diet without also having to leave behind civilization.” 4
I don’t think the point of the local food movement is to convince every person to eat 100% local, but rather to increase our purchase of local foods consistent with our values and develop stronger local food networks. There are real consequences for the choices we make when eating food. There are consequences for our health, the health of our food culture, the health of our local economy, and the health of the land (locally, as in clean groundwater, and globally, as in climate change).
For example, “If every US Citizen ate just ONE MEAL A WEEK (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 MILLION BARRELS OF OIL every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big differences. Becoming a less energy-dependent nation may just need to start with a good breakfast.”5
Here at the Viroqua Food Co-op, we label food that is grown or produced within a 50-mile radius of Viroqua as Local. Next time you’re shopping, watch for these green labels and you’ll be surprised just how many products you can buy even off-season that are local. You don’t have to wait until spring to consume Wisconsin meat, cheese, milk, eggs, bread, spinach, root vegetables, celeriac, ice cream, frozen pizza, beer, wine, salsa, granola and sauerkraut, to name a few.
So why, you may ask, am I going on about local food well before spring? To give you plenty of time to prepare for this September’s “Eat Local Challenge.” VFC will host two Eat Local challenges. The Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge, a statewide program, encourages Wisconsinites to spend ten percent of their grocery budget on local food for ten days. The NCGA Eat Local America Challenge, which food co-ops around the US are participating in, asks for a higher level of commitment – 80% local for a minimum of one week or maximum one month. You’ll hear more about the details as the time gets closer.
Even making small, incremental changes in one’s food purchasing takes some thought and advance planning. Take advantage of the time between now and September to research what is available locally, consider menus and recipe options. We will continue to provide information on local food in each issue of the Pea Soup and on our website leading up to the challenge. Be sure to check out the list of local food resources, local farmers and producers on our website, viroquafood.coop/food-thought.
“The more eaters who vote with their forks for a different kind of food, the more commonplace and accessible such food will become.” 4
Charlene Elderkin
Marketing & Membership Manager
1 Oxford University Press blog, http://blog.oup.com/2007/11/locavore
2 http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005109.html
3 http://www.cias.wisc.edu/foodshed/index.html
4 Pollen, Michael, In Defense of Food. Penguin Press, 2008, pg. 14
5 Kingsolver, Barbara, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, A year of Food Life. Harper-Collins, 2007, pg. 5