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
Written by Dani Lind, VFC Produce Manager
On a lovely Friday afternoon in the middle of July, Driftless Organics in rural Soldiers Grove welcomed me and five other volunteers out to their fields & packing shed to harvest (or “glean”) around 400 pounds of seconds, last pickings, culls, and market returns.
This was the first run of a pilot project of Valley Stewardship Network’s Farm & Food Initiative called “Kickapoo Harvest: Gleaning for Healthy Communities,” aimed at getting healthy, locally produced food into the hands of those who need it most in our region. The gleaned food was distributed to residents of Park View Manor, a fixed income housing complex in Viroqua, as well as the Living Faith Food Pantry.
Over the last year, volunteers of the fledgling Farm & Food Initiative (of which I serve on the Steering Committee, and VFC’s general manager, Jan Rasikas, serves on the Advisory Committee) completed a Community Food Assessment. Several of our findings inspired us to start this pilot gleaning project:
- Many low-income residents lack access to locally produced fresh fruits and vegetables.
- Most area vegetable farms must ship their produce to surrounding urban areas to make a living.
- In the vegetable farming business (except for those who grow for processing), only the cream of the crop gets shipped to market, often times leaving blemished and odd-ball veggies, or “seconds” – which usually don’t make economic sense to harvest, wash, pack, and ship - to rot in the field.
This 2009 pilot program engaged adult and youth volunteers to 
harvest this excess “unmarketable” produce and fruit grown at several area farms (participating farms include Ridgeland Harvest, Keewaydin Organics farms, Harmony Valley, Miles Farm, Slattery Family Farm, & Turkey Ridge Orchard). Once a month through October, the harvested produce will be cleaned and nicely boxed, CSA style, by volunteers before being distributed to Park View Manor residents.
In addition, area chefs (including VFC’s very own Kim Sandker, as well as VFC members Monique Hooker, Macon Luhning, & Frank Wildingway) are offering cooking demonstrations and recipes to residents along with their gleaned food boxes to help them out with some of the more unusual contents.
Excess gleaned produce is also being distributed to the Viroqua Public Schools’ 5th Season Project. This project was begun last year as part of the school’s Farm to School Program to purchase locally produced food, prepare and freeze it for use in school lunches throughout the school year. The School is partnering with us to 
provide them with some free gleaned produce as well as delivering seconds for the burgeoning Farm to School Program. In exchange, we get use of the Viroqua High School cafeteria for washing and packing gleaned produce.
With a year of experience under our belt, we hope to be eligible for grants to expand our project next year, enabling us to supply gleaned food to more community members in need. In the future we’d also like to assist local institutions (like schools, hospitals, nursing homes, jail, etc.) in purchasing locally produced food, providing new markets for seconds and other area farms’ products.
If you wish to donate your time or money to help harvest, wash and pack, or distribute gleaned produce, please call Jessica Luhning (608) 637-8568 or email jessicavsn@frontiernet.net.
Linking Local Farms and Institutions in the Chippewa Valley
In the March/April '09 issue of Pea Soup, we wrote about the Chippewa Valley Buy Local Consortium, a model for institutional partnership with local food producers. While the consortium had already begun delivering local food to Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, it was still working on becoming a legal entity.
The consortium is now a co-op! The official launch of the Producers & Buyers Co-op took place June 12 at the Eau Claire Area Chamber of Commerce Breakfast in the Valley.
The Co-op facilitates buying and selling for farmers in 12 counties in the Chippewa Valley region. Sacred Heart Hospital is a founding partner in the project and committed 10% of its $2 million food budget to purchasing local food products in order to provide a market to help the organization get off the ground.
“Having a stable market price allows me to do more long-range planning with my farm operation,” said Darrel Lorch of Lorcrest Farms, Inc., in Blair, Wisconsin. Lorch also serves as an ad hoc member of the Co-op board.
The Co-op intends to bring new buyers on board as products are sourced and serves institutions such as schools, universities, colleges, hospitals, and businesses that provide cafeteria services.
Currently, the Co-op is working to facilitate the production and purchase of locally produced meats (beef, pork, chicken, fish) fruits & vegetables, dairy & eggs, dry goods, and other locally-produced food.
“Support of the Co-op helps rebuild the local processing infrastructure (i.e. for processing meats, dairy, etc.), and expand local food production by providing a stable market.” said Co-op coordinator Mary C. Anderson*, a value-added farmer with extensive direct sales experience.
The idea for the Co-op began in January 2008, when representatives from River Country RC&D and Sacred Heart Hospital met with area farmers at the Midwest Value Added Agricultural Conference and Wisconsin Local Food Summit. In June 2008, Sacred Heart CEO Steve Ronstrom, pledged 10% of the hospital’s $2 million food budget to buying local food. On July 17 a Buy Local Buy Wisconsin grant was awarded to River Country RC&D to pioneer the best way to get local food to local institutions.
After many planning meetings with local farmers, March 26, 2009 marked the State’s formalization of Articles of Incorporation to create the Producers & Buyers Co-op.
To date, the Producers & Buyers Co-op facilitated the purchase over 26,000 pounds of locally grown product from over 14 local rural communities.
“There have been profound changes over the past century for farm families and rural communities, and in the 1990s alone Wisconsin lost almost 40% of its dairy farms. It’s our responsibility to buy local food to support our local agriculture industry,” said Rick Beckler, Co-op organizer and Sacred Heart Hospital’s Director of Hospitality Services. “We have had an outpouring of warm compliments on our food from patients, our Meals on Wheels patrons and employees.”
*Mary Anderson email: Mary.Anderson@rcdnet.
UPDATE 11/09/09 - The
first annual meeting of the Producers & Buyers Co-op will be held
November 10 at 6 p.m. at Sacred Heart Hospital’s Community Auditorium
(900 West Clairemont Ave.) and the public is invited. Members will
elect new officers and approve bylaws and have opportunities to share
the organization’s recent success and future goals and taste local food
products. Please RSVP by calling (715) 579-5013. A reception will begin
at 6 p.m. and the program will begin at 6:30 p.m.
The annual Co-op meeting will provide information on membership opportunities for farmers and processors, and institutions.
A Model for an Institutional Partnership with Local Food Producers - Initiated by Sacred Heart Hospital of Eau Claire, WI
When Rick Beckler came to the 2008 Midwest Value Added Ag Conference and WI Local Food Summit, he 
was a man with a mission. That mission: score some local food for Eau Claire’s Sacred Heart Hospital, where he works as Hospitality Services Director.
Among Rick’s responsibilities is purchasing the hospital’s food with a budget of over $2 million each year. He had purchased local food in the past, but the barriers of seasonal production, transportation, processing, delivery and pricing were slowing his ability to make progress. In one of the final sessions of the conference, Rick stood up and addressed the farmers. “I’ve got $2 million to spend on food – does anyone here want a piece of that?” Needless to say, he got their attention.
I was very excited to see the Sacred Heart Hospital display at this year’s Value Added Conference, and motivated enough by my conversation with Rick to come to the 7am presentation. The question I had come to the conference with was, “How do we overcome the barriers to establish local/regional food systems?” While some speakers focused on more research to find out what is happening on the ground, which could then be used to steer public policy, here was a group that came together through a perfect storm of circumstances to create a new model for local food systems. They began working on the bugs of their new model by proceeding with buying and selling rather than waiting for politicians and researchers. If you build it, they will come, indeed!
After the ’08 Local Food Summit, Sacred Heart Hospital partnered with River Country RC&D, (a local not-for-profit with over 10 years experience in value-added agriculture) and began hosting focus groups and planning meetings with farmers to develop the infrastructure to channel local products into institutions. In late February funding for local food initiatives became available through the newly state-funded Buy Local Buy Wisconsin Grant.
By the time the grant was announced the group had two weeks to put the application together to meet the deadline. Pam Herdrich of River Country RC&D was the primary writer of the grant application, the goal being the creation of the Chippewa Valley Buy Local Consortium, which would bring together farms and institutions who wish to sell and purchase food locally. Sacred Heart hospital pledged up to 10% of it’s $2 million food budget to purchasing local food, and committed in-kind support of $15,000 in matching funds in the form of staff, supplies and support.
While waiting to hear about the grant, the Steering Committee decided to begin “working-out-the-bugs” by starting with delivery of beef products to Sacred Heart. For example, institutional buyers such as Sacred Heart have had the convenience of ordering on a Monday and receiving on Wednesday. To begin the local ordering process, a date needs to be set with a local state inspected processor and it may take a few days to a few weeks. And as industrial buyers typically use a number of the same cuts, the chefs at the hospital needed to fine-tune the menus to use available cuts.
In June the Steering Committee received notice that they would receive the grant. They proceeded to work with farmers to grow chicken and pork and beef that met the basic requirements to sell into the project. This allowed more time to coordinate processing dates before fall, when additional processing dates are unavailable. Also in June, the first delivery of local product by the consortium to the hospital was made;
a whole steer from Lorcrest Farms of Blair, Wisconsin.
On July 17, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle visited Sacred Heart Hospital to announce the statewide “Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin” (BLBW) grant awards during a hospital delivery of food from local farmers. Governor Doyle chose Eau Claire as the city to announce the grants due to the innovative partnership being created between Sacred Heart Hospital and River Country RC&D, presenting a check to RC for $41,660.
The grant officially launched the Chippewa Valley Buy Local Consortium. A kind of buying club, the Consortium employs an experienced coordinator, Mary C. Anderson1. Mary worked for River Country RC&D for 10+ years and has extensive experience coordinating and developing sustainable agriculture and community based programs. She is also a farmer with her own State license for meat production, and has personal and extensive direct experience in product quality and safety.
As Coordinator, Mary facilitates buying and selling by reaching out to farmers in the Chippewa Valley. The Consortium facilitates the task of finding 
and developing local food sources, organizes the process of buying and selling, and inviting other area institutions to buy local food, manages product orders from institutions, fills orders and coordinates deliveries.
Receiving the grant was a great boost to the group’s efforts, but the job ahead was mind-boggling. There was no model for a local/regional food system to service institutions in the state of Wisconsin. It was up to this group of farmers, River Country, Sacred Heart Hospital and the newly created Consortium to figure out the next steps.
By December the General Structure and Operating guidelines for the consortium were completed. They created a work flowchart to identify all the players and steps between farm and fork, as well as an organizational chart.
Currently the Consortium is working on becoming a legal entity. “We have been advised that this looks like a multi stakeholder cooperative,” says Mary. “The pros are that it is set up to have people enter and exit the co-op easily, any profits can be funneled back to the memberships; cons are that it might be slower to make changes (not as nimble when issues arise). We have been actively looking for funding all along but we are not counting on any additional grant dollars to launch; we are hoping to be self sustaining through membership and transaction fees.”
Why would a hospital be willing to overcome the many barriers to purchasing local food when they could just put in one order to a national food service distributor and have everything delivered just they way they need it when they want it?
“We wish to provide patients and employees fresh food products with greater nutrition, a longer shelf life and reduce fuel/transport costs,” says Steve Ronstrom, CEO of Sacred Heart Hospital. “Following our historic Franciscan Mission to benefit and support our community, we wish to further invest in the local economy to provide additional community jobs and encourage sustainable agriculture.”
“The hospital’s commitment to purchasing local products provides a ready-made market that reduces need for farmers to advertise and reduces the risk to farmers in expanding their production,” said Rich Purdy, PhD, president, River Country. “With other regional buyers participating someday–hospitals, universities and even public schools–the local economic impact will be significant.”
There is another motivation for buying local that isn’t often talked about. Because they participate in disaster planning, whether physical disaster or a possible pandemic, hospitals have to think about things most people don’t want to.
“When considering any kind of disaster”, explains Rick Beckler, “we must have 3 days of product on hand and know who is going to service us. If our water supply was gone, we have back-ups on contract for water to be trucked to us. But what do we have locally to supply us if food delivery comes to a halt - because everything now is coming in on jet or truck? Knowing we have local production capabilities and have the avenues to access these products is very important to us.”
In other words, if a pandemic or natural disaster were to shut down transportation in the middle of winter, the hospital needs to have a plan for how it will feed its patients. And so should any institution, whether it be a nursing home, school or prison. Developing these local connections and infrastructure now not only grows our local economies (independent of what is happening in the larger economy), it is essential to our food security.
What is happening here in the Driftless Region and how can we learn from the example of leadership in the Chippewa Valley? Who might the players be?
In the Sept. 08 issue of PeaSoup, Rufus Hauke2 informed us of a new venture started last year under the umbrella name of Keewaydin Organics, marketing & distributing produce from 15 other local farms in order to provide a more stable supply of local, organic product to meet the growing demand for local food.
The Farm Food Initiative, facilitated by the Valley Stewardship Network3 has been working on local food issues for almost a year now. They are very interested in seeing how they could apply the lessons of the Chippewa Valley Buy Local Consortium here in the Driftless Region.
The goals of the Food & Farm Initiative are to improve access to healthy, locally produced foods for all members of the community; strengthen the economic viability of regional agriculture; and resolve market barriers to local producers. “Consumers like you and me and food purchasing institutions like schools and hospitals in the Driftless Area spend $208 million buying food from outside of the region every year,” says Jessica Luhning, VSN Projects Coordinator.
“We are losing $208 million in potential wealth every year that could be recirculated in our communities to keep our diversified, family farms viable and our citizens healthy. We have the resources in our farmers and our knowledgeable citizens; our biggest challenge will be funding for a project of this scale. If the community will support a project like this, the Valley Stewardship Network would love to have a seat at the table. The key here is community support.”
Vernon Memorial Healthcare (VMH)4 would also be interested in the opportunity to work with a consortium of producers to explore the various options for purchasing food locally. “Quality, value, access and cost are key considerations in any decisions we make on behalf of our patients,” according to VMH Chief Executive Officer, Garith Steiner. “VMH recently approached Sibby’s Organic Zone about having their ice cream available in our restaurant, The Grille and on the menu for our hospital inpatients,” he said.
The Chippewa Consortium funding came through a Buy Local Buy WI grant. But “although the BLBW program passed in the 07-09 budget, the grant program was not slated for permanent funding,” says Teresa Cuperus of the WI Dept. of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP)5. “DATCP believes this was a technical error in the budget process and we hope to fix it during the current budget cycle.
We will know the status of the BLBW grant program with the passing of the FY10-FY11 budget later this spring/early summer. If the grant program continues, I would anticipate the next call for proposals in the fall of 09.” There are other possilbilities for funding which Teresa can direct interested parties to.
The Consortium put their group together and applied for a grant in less than two months. Can the Driftless be ready to rock and roll in six?
by Charlene Elderkin, Marketing & Membership Manager, Viroqua Food Cooperative
1 Mary Anderson, Mary.Anderson@rcdnet.
2 (608)606-0666, rufus@keewaydinfarms.com
3 (608)637-3615, jessicavsn@frontiernet.net
4 jsteiner@vmh.org
5 (608)224-5101, Teresa.Cuperus@wisconsin.gov
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