If you‘re into locally grown food, southern Wisconsin is a great place to be. With farmers’ markets every day of the week, pick-your-own farms, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms, and grocery stores and restaurants that offer local fare, the only trick is to find them all. And that’s really no trick, thanks to the newly released [...more]

The UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems has been awarded a grant from the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment that will help feed Wisconsin’s growing appetite for locally grown food. The project will look at tackling distribution challenges that make it difficult to get more regionally grown food into mainstream grocery chains. [...more]

Support local food, farms and communities. Take the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge from September 14-23. During these ten days, spend at least 10% of your food budget on locally grown and locally made foods. If local food is new to you, then 10% of your food budget is an easy starting point. If you spend [...more]

The last decade has seen rapid growth in the number of farm-to-school initiatives in the United States. Despite the proliferation of farm-to-school programs and the significant energy and resources that have gone into their implementation, there have been few systematic assessments of these initiatives. We use the experience of the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch [...more]

Printer-friendly version (PDF) How do you get kids to eat their vegetables? Americans are bombarded with news about childhood obesity and the importance of replacing junk food with healthier fare. But this is no easy task when children are enticed with empty calories by advertisers, restaurants and even schools. When you look at the big picture, [...more]

Seventh graders at Sherman Middle School are learning healthy cooking from the pros. Two Mondays each month, L’Etoile chefs Tory Miller and Eva Ringstrom teach the students how to cook with fresh produce. Their class not only extolls healthy eating, but also gives the students experience preparing fresh produce. This class is part of Wisconsin [...more]

Greetings. Thank you, Chancellor [John D.] Wiley. That was a lovely introduction that you said about me, but when I started out, my path was not so clear. I know that all of you have great dreams. I am here today to tell you what I have learned about getting to make those dreams real, [...more]

This report provides background information for farmers who are considering selling their products through retail stores. Is retail the right option for you and your products? How can you prepare yourself and your products for sale? What do buyers need, and what do they like and dislike about locally produced goods? This report can help [...more]

The bounty of our spring and summer gardens is still a few months away, yet hundreds of Madison school children and their families will enjoy Wisconsin fruit and vegetables in the middle of winter during three upcoming winter harvest dinners. As part of the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch farm-to-school initiative, students and their families from Chavez, Shorewood [...more]

Printer-friendly version (PDF) Home Grown Wisconsin (HGW) is a cooperative wholesale business located in south-central Wisconsin that markets produce from member farms to restaurants in nearby cities. Its goal is to expand the market for fresh produce through professional distribution of high quality products that convey the quality, variety and value of Wisconsin’s harvest. Other farms [...more]