How LOCAL Can You Go?

Viroqua Food Co-op Conducts Community-Wide Challenge
to Eat Local from Sept. 5th to Sept. 14th

Want to eat more local foods, but curious just how local you can go?
The Viroqua Food Co-op is hosting an “Eat Local America” challenge throughout this summer, inviting area individuals to try to consume 80 percent of their diets (or four out of every five meals) from food grown or produced locally. We are also participating in the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge, challenging you to spend 10% of your food budget on local products for ten days. Both challenges will begin September 5 and continue through September 15. How Local can you go? Sign up for both and see!

Eat Local America Challenge
The Viroqua Food Co-op is joining nearly 70 other natural food co-ops coast-to-coast in Eat Local America. All are members of National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) – a business services cooperative representing 110 retail food co-ops nationwide. The Eat Local America challenge invites you to consume 80 percent of your diet (or four out of every five meals) from food grown or produced locally. It’s honor system-based; those wishing to participate will simply sign a large poster at the Viroqua Food Co-op and try their best.
Eat Local America is not your typical challenge. Because it is framed around each region’s peak harvest times, length and timing varies for each co-op, as does the definition of “local.” The Eat Local America challenge celebrates the uniqueness of our regional food supplies, as well as a collective and emerging passion for eating more local, organic foods.
Food lovers can learn about all participating Eat Local America initiatives at www.eatlocalamerica.coop.

Eat Local Wisconsin Challenge
The Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge was developed by a statewide team of community food group volunteers, organizations and university staff. The Wisconsin ELC is designed to educate our community about the importance of buying locally grown and raised foods and encourage individuals to spend at least 10% of their food budget on Wisconsin locally grown or produced food (or within 100 miles) during the 10-day challenge period. (If you are eating home grown, estimate the cost of the food as if you were purchasing it.)

We are participating in the state-wide organization for ELC, and with Valley Stewardship Network on the local level. VSN is facilitating a local Farm Food Initiative. Besides the Eat Local Challenge, FFI is currently working on a Vernon County Community Food Assessment and is collaborating with local schools on a Farm-to-School Program.

The goals of the Food and Farm Program are to encourage the development of a sustainable, local food system by:

• Engaging, educating and mobilizing a broad network of county residents;
• Improving access to healthy, locally produced foods;
• Strengthening the economic viability of regional agriculture;
• Addressing the issue of institutional barriers for local producers.

More information about the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge will be available on the ELC website, including a sign up, scorecard to track your food purchases, where to find local food, a blogging site and more. The website will go live in August, but last years information is still up if you want to take a look.

We will be kicking off the Eat Local challenges at a Harvest Festival on September 6 at Viroqua High School. More details will be announced on our website, weekly emails, the August CAP flyer (which is inserted into the Vernon Co. Broadcaster and LaFarge Epitaph) and our September newsletter.

Find Local Food
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 an additional miles-to-market or Made in Wisconsin sign for those products that meet the criteria of the ELC.

Other ways to find local food include:

• The Southern Wisconsin Farm Fresh Atlas, which is available here at VFC on the shelves by the bulletin board.
• The Savor Wisconsin web site (www.savorwisconsin.com) links you to Wisconsin food products and services. It includes listings for farmers’ markets, restaurants, food co-ops and specialty retail stores.
• The US Department of Agriculture provides a listing of Farmers Markets across the country.

We have several cookbooks in the Co-op book section to assist you in eating seasonally.

Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables by Farmer John Peterson and Angelic Organics. With exciting recipes grouped by season and by vegetable, The Real Dirt Cookbook provides cooking tips, serving suggestions, and evocative descriptions of each dish, and teaches readers new ways to use a surplus of basil, cabbage, tomatoes, or whatever veggie is plentiful. Find new ways to use a huge variety of fruits, vegetables and herbs. Also included in the book is an Illustrated Vegetable Identification Guide and tips on long-term vegetable and herb storage and preservation methods (such as freezing, drying, canning, and lactic acid fermentation). The Real Dirt Cookbook is an invaluable resource on growing, cooking, and storing real food.

Tastes from Valley to Bluff: The Featherstone Farm Cookbook
By Mi Ae Lipe. Located several hours southeast of the Twin Cities, Featherstone Farm is nestled in the fertile Wiscoy Valley just outside Rushford, MN. Now they have compiled an excellent resource for the home cook: Tastes from Valley to Bluff is as much an in-depth reference guide as it is a diverse and enticing recipe book. The book offers detailed information about a large assortment of vegetables, including nutritional information, selection, storage, handling, history, and combination ideas. With 275 recipes to choose from (over 200 are vegetarian, 111 are vegan), this 416 page book is loaded with information you can use, from walking the aisles of your produce department and learning to select ripe, delicious food, to taking it home and preparing it like a professional.

Why Eat Local?
There are many benefits to eating local food. It’s good for the economy, because money from each transaction stays in the region. It connects community members to the people who produce their food, while helping to support endangered family farms.
Plus, since food doesn’t travel far from where it’s produced, eating local also helps protect the environment by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Local food is more nutritious and simply tastes better, because it’s often harvested or processed the same day it arrives at the co-op.
Although “local” is a buzzword used by many retailers, the Viroqua Food Co-op has for years cultivated truly reciprocal, long-term relationships with local growers and producers, offering our members and shoppers a convenient connection to fresh and delicious food of the highest quality. In fact, we were local before local was cool. Eat Local America reflects food co-ops’ continued appreciation of and commitment to healthy, local food.

More About Eating Local
Although we’re holding this challenge during peak season for fresh produce, we hope to educate our shoppers that 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. But don’t think local is limited to produce. The Viroqua Food Co-op 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, sauerkraut and ice cream.

If you want to learn more about the local farmers and food producers for the Viroqua Food Coop, check out our website at http://viroquafood.coop/food-thought