Is your class or dorm reading the campus common book—In Defense of Food—this fall? Are you looking for people who can bring this book to life and add depth to your discussion? CIAS recently launched a website that can link you to faculty, staff, farmers and entrepreneurs working in sustainable agriculture and food systems. The site also includes links to relevant programs and groups on campus, as well as organizations working across the spectrum of conventional and sustainable agriculture. Visit gobigread.cias.wisc.edu to take advantage of these resources! [...more]

Whether you are cooking at home or enjoying a meal out on the town, the 2009 Southern Wisconsin Farm Fresh Atlas can steer you to local, sustainably grown food. The 2009 edition will be available for free in Madison and across southern Wisconsin beginning April 18. [...more]

Farmers use a variety of systems to raise healthy animals. Today, most meat in the grocery store or at the local restaurant is from animals that were raised in a feedlot and fed significant amounts of grain in addition to hay and pasture. Grass-fed meat is from animals that are put “out on grass,” or fed a forage diet. [...more]

CIAS staff member Steve Stevenson is co-author of a new book on the crisis faced by mid-scale farms and ranches, and strategies for reviving these operations. Food and the Mid-Level Farm makes it clear that the demise of midsize farms and ranches is not a foregone conclusion and that the renewal of an agriculture of [...] [...more]

Friends of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers will be pedaling for pledges when they roll out Friday, June 13 in the 5th Annual Ride to Farm. A group of determined cyclists will make a three-day trip from a farm near Nichols in Outagamie County to a farm at Elkhorn in Walworth County. [...] [...more]

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]

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]

The UW-Madison’’s School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers has received its biggest contribution ever—a gift of $50,000 pledged by FCS Financial Services, a farmer-owned financial services cooperative based in Wausau. The gift will support increased programming and initiatives, such as distance education classrooms, internships and mentoring, for this one-of-a-kind program for beginning and transitioning farmers. Program [...] [...more]