Join the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge, September 14-23

Posted August 2007

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 $150 on food during these ten days, you would need to spend $15 on local food to participate in this challenge. You can also include local food that you grow, hunt or gather yourself, or obtain from others. If you already eat local food, or if you are up for a bigger challenge, you can exceed this goal.

For this challenge, we are defining local food as anything grown or made in Wisconsin, or within a 100 mile radius of your home.

The Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge is organized by the Central Rivers Farmshed, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, Northwest Wisconsin Regional Food Network, REAP Food Group/Buy Fresh Buy Local Southern Wisconsin, Sustain Dane, UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS), and UW-Stevens Point Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM).

For more information, go to the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge website. (This link goes to the 2008 Challenge site.)

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!

Events

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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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