CIAS Receives Wisconsin Idea Grant for Local Food

Posted January 2008

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. Building markets for food grown in our region can potentially reinvigorate rural communities and improve farm profitability.


The Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment is a unique gift to the University of Wisconsin-Madison that is designed to involve faculty, staff, and students, and to honor the Baldwins” pioneering leadership in extending the talent, knowledge, and resources of the campus to the people of the state, the nation, and the world.

For details about this project and other 2008 Baldwin Awards, read this UW-Madison news release:
Wisconsin Idea grants bring a community focus to current affairs

Vegetable Storage Crops Workshop

Learn how to extend your marketing season by growing and selling winter storage crops like carrots, beets, winter squash, cabbage, potatoes, onions, garlic and more. This workshop will be held on December 4 in Hudson and December 11 in Madison. For details, see the workshop flyer. Hope to see you there!

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CIAS in the community

CIAS Hosts Annual Meeting of Eco-Apple Growers

On Thursday, November 12, CIAS hosted its annual meeting of apple growers engaged in its Eco-Apple pesticide reduction program. Notably, the group of 48 growers celebrated the successful completion of a six-year effort designed to reduce the use of pesticides on orchards throughout Wisconsin. During the course of the program, all reporting orchards demonstrated a reduced reliance on pesticides in favor of a diversity of IPM strategies, and some realized a near-total elimination of organophosphate applications. CIAS thanks its team of growers for their enthusiastic and committed participation. In particular, CIAS wishes to thank Dave Flannery, Wendy Schafer, Bill Stone and Anna Maenner for their fortitude in seeing this phase of the project through to a successful conclusion. UW rsearchers Dan Mahr, Patty McManus, Matt Stasiak and Teryl Roper have been critical to the project’s success. Thanks also to EPA-V and the USDA for their support and encouragement.

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