The place you live offers options on what you eat. This past September 2007 the citizens of Wisconsin had an opportunity to participate in the “Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge” and become more aware of food choices that are locally grown or produced.
The Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge was a ten-day food challenge running from September 14th to 23rd, 2007. The purpose of the challenge was to help citizens become more aware of buying food from locally grown and raised sources. The challenge encouraged food shoppers to spend at least 10% of their food budget on food sourced within a one hundred mile radius of their home or from sources within the State of Wisconsin.
The event was organized by a statewide team of volunteers and groups to increase awareness of local food production and distribution (see a complete list of organizers). The supporters include groups such as the Center for Integrated Agricultural Studies at the UW-Madison, and the non-profit organization Michael Fields Agricultural Institute located in East Troy, Wisconsin.
Four steps to eat local
State-wide participation in the challenge included two main steps:
1. Sign up to “Eat Local”
2. Download the scorecard
Fortunately, residents in the Wausau area had the distinct advantage of two additional steps through the efforts of two local groups: the Simple & Sustainable Living Network of Central Wisconsin, and Downtown Grocery, who teamed together to add two enjoyable steps for challenge participants: a Wausau Team and bright yellow tags!
3. Join the Wausau team!
The Simple & Sustainable Living Network of Central Wisconsin is a community–minded group working on a number of projects and their September project was to organize participation in a Wausau “Eat Local” Team to increase the awareness and to provide a support network to maximize the goal to spend 10% of each families food budget on foods meeting the challenge critieria. The Network’s kick-off even for the challenge was a community meeting held in the lobby of the Unitarian Universalist Church, on the corner of Fifth and Grant Streets.
The September Kick-off meeting featured a presentation and discussion lead by a local farm couple, Kat Becker and Tony Schultz, on the economic and social benefits related to purchasing directly from farmers or producers at farm markets, from farmers themselves, or from stores that that emphasis local production, such as Downtown Grocery, which is a Wausau grocery store owned by a local farmer, Blaine Tornow.
4. Look for bright yellow tags at Downtown Grocery!
To assist participants in the challenge to achieve the 10% goal, Downtown Grocery in Wausau added bright yellow tags to over 200 store items that met the “Eat Local Challenge” criteria. The bright yellow tags made it faster and easier for shoppers to find items and focus their efforts to achieve their goal. Store staff saved time for the challenge participants because staff read every label on every item in the store to find all of the selections that met the challenge criteria thus giving shoppers the speed advantage to maximize food awareness and their dollars on local food. Food items were diverse and included fruits, vegetables, milk, cheese, butter, eggs, meats, teas, coffee, crackers, honey, maple syrup, maple sugar, frozen foods such as pasties, quiches, pesto and egg rolls plus baked goods, beer, soda, and snack items.
Shorten distance between food producer and consumer
Eating foods grown or produced as close to home as possible increases local production capacities, local diversity and local economic independence. Locally grown or processed foods can be found through directly purchasing from farmers, visiting farm markets, or shopping at locally-focused food stores. Several web-based search engines can assist consumers in finding farmers, farm markets and locally-minded food stores: for example, Savor Wisconsin, Eat Wild, or Local Harvest.
Shortening the distance between the food producer and the food consumer is valuable for many reasons and the ““Eat Local Challenge” outlined four ideas:
- It’s fun to find local foods such as visiting farm markets;
- It helps local farmers have a profitable market year;
- It helps the earth because local food uses less energy for transport;
- It helps communities by keeping more food dollars in the local area.
Sourcing food locally or sourcing food within our foodshed (a “foodshed” is a concept derived from the term watershed) is important because food buying is one of the easiest and accessible methods to help nurture our local economy by increasing local production capacities, increasing the diversity of items grown or produced locally, and helping to grow our local economic independence.
Eat responsibly
The idea to eat foods grown or produced close to home is not a new idea. Wendell Berry is a poet, farmer and philosopher. Over the past 30 years he has written about the benefits of growing local economies and supporting local farmers. A collection of Berry’s essays were published in 2002 and titled “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry” and a summary of those essays illustrates his notions of local food economies and his idea to “eat responsibly”. The idea to eat responsibly is summarized below through eight approaches to be mindful of when thinking about the food we eat:
- Deal directly with a local farmer whenever possible
- Prepare your own food
- Participate in food production to that extent that you can raise herbs in a window pot if that’s what you can do
- Learn the origins of the food you buy
- Buy food produced close to your home
- Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening
- Learn as much as you can of the life histories of food species
- Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production.
These approaches by Berry to eat responsibly correlate well with the four reasons outlined in the Eat Local Challenge criteria noted earlier to shorten the distance between the food producer and the food consumer.
Did the Wausau Team meet their goal?
The “Eat Local Challenge” Wausau Team did well. Approximately 30 people participated on the Wausau team and 540 participants were registered state-wide. The full reports have not yet been tallied but overall the Wausau participants reported that they easily met the 10% goal and in many cases they had exceeded 50% or more of their food budget on local sources.
Challenges for the Challenge
The “Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge” opened awareness and discussion about local food options and opportunities to strengthen our local food economy. The challenge, of course had several challenges, for example:
- Revise scorecard: the Wausau Team will ask the state-wide organizers to revise the scorecard to account better for the value of food grown in one’s own garden;
- Extend the challenge to more than ten days: the Wausau Team will ask the state-wide organizers to consider extending the challenge to a full month versus only ten days to allow for more activities to be coordinated with the event;
- Move Kick-off meeting prior to start of challenge: the organizers of the Wausau Team held the kick-off meeting on the third day of the challenge and they’ll work to hold that first earlier to maximize the public awareness;
- Increase participation: the organizers of the Wausau Team will work to increase the number of participates through coordinated events such as movie nights to feature movies and discussions about food, farming, cooking, and cuisine.
Connect place to people
Eating food from local sources is not necessarily more difficult than eating foods sourced from other places but an awareness of the choices that are available makes food shopping easier. Helpful too are state-wide food events, such as the Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge, and local initiatives, such as local teams and bright yellow tags, to advance more quickly our food awareness to help connect place to people.
[Editor’s Note: Kevin Korpela is co-owner of Downtown Grocery.]
I totally endorse this as a regular customer of Downtown Grocery, but perhaps ya’ll should have a quick disclosure that Kevin is the co-owner of DT Grocery seeing as he’s pimping it out pretty hardcore :D
erik, I totally agree with you. It’s on our to-do list to have brief bios for all of our contributors as part of our effort to remain transparent to our readers. In the meantime, I’ll make sure we note it in the body of this article.
Thank you Kevin for the well documented article – we look forward to learning more about being responsible “citizens” in Wausau :-) Keep them coming!
Outside of Downtown Grocery & the farmer’s market – where else could people find locally grown produce?
As one taking the eat local challenge…I have said that it is the work of the devil. Damn you red beast of dietary accountability.
I got on the team, and did not really read anything, I just assumed I needed to eat all my foot from local production.
WHICH MADE MY LIFE IMPOSSIBLE
Not really, but it changed everything.
Damn you Downtown Grocery and your delectible foods and sundries!!
Whats next…locally produced radio? News? Websites? Music?
A lecture series talking about the future, held at Citizen Desk, in conjunction with Downtown Grocery…and probably UWMC, or a locally owned used bookseller…
great.
Now I have to pay attention to that too.
Seriously, I cant buy an xbox 360, though I want to…I want to play DIRT and SKATE…but with all this happening…I cant hang out in my underwear in my house all day.
I have things to read, and write, and listen to.
I blame Kevin for all of this.
Other locally-grown produce:
My wife and I partake in Sunny Sky Farm’s co-op. It’s a beautiful farm down in Amherst Junction, with a very bohemian vibe and top-notch produce (and they throw good parties, to boot). Local friends make the trip down weekly and bring back several shares which can be picked up in Rib Mountain. Co-op members are encouraged to stop by and help out each week, and there are work/group events certain times a season (for work that requires several sets of hands). Good peeps.
Tom…email me. I want in.
To Dino and anyone else who’s interested, you can get more comprehensive info at http://www.sunnyskyfarm.com. This season’s drawing to a close, but sign-up for next year is just around the corner. Must…go…to…bed…
Sorry about the accidental “.” at the end of the address. Should still take you there. If it wacks out your browser, use http://www.sunnyskyfarm.com
BTW, their website is sporadically updated & a little behind, but you’ll find the info that you need to get started.
This is the very kind of frikkin’ groovy stuff I like to see on a community forum. “Bohemian” … I’m all over that like a cheap coat. I wish it were spring so I could start truckin’ out to the farm at the Junction for my dewy comestibles. Parties? Did I read parties? Ain’t no party without Tom there! How very xlent. Hope this is a growing trend (groan, pun).
Dino et al.,
Please also consider Stoney Acres as a source for weekly vegetables during the growing season. Their website is http://www.stoneyacresfarm.net
I was a first-time share-holder this past season (my last box came today and I am really going to miss the weekly goodies.)
I will be a share-holder for each and every growing season until I leave the area.
Stoney actually has drop points in Wausau (one on the east side and one on the west side.) They are presently considering adding one for Weston as well if that is how the demographics work for the next growing season.
They also have some large family events during the season but I will admit I didn’t attend any of them. It is not my thing, I was in this for the food. I guess I am a bit of a hermit. So be it.
Please check them out, though – it is a good gig.
moose
I was wondering if a list could be compiled somewhere on this website of non franchise, non corporate shopping alternatives in wausau, with everything from electronics to kitchen supplies to food, entertainment, appliances, etc. Any locally operated buisness that is not a Wal-mart, barnes & noble, best buy or McDonalds, or even local online retailers to combat Amazon.com and so forth.
velcroboy,
What a wonderful idea.
Hey Andy, Marcus….how ’bout it?
moose
What a good idea! As you may know, Andy and I built this website with the ability to create multiple independent blogs. Would it make sense to create one entirely devoted to local small business & eateries?
Marcus,
Create an independent blog? You are talking to a borderline “techno-tard” here. I have no idea if that is a good idea or not. That is why you are in charge.
I do like velcroboy’s idea of non-franchise, non-corporate, mom and pop type places to shop. Town Line Market and Zillman’s come to my mind as two small, family owned businesses. They are not “big box” establishments. I’ll give you an example – if I need a sandwich I am much more content handing my money over to Town Line Market than to Subway.
I’m going out on a limb here but I am guessing that velcroboy is newer to the area. People who grew up in Wausau or have lived here a long time know of many of the mom and pop places. I think they just assume that everyone knows about them. Believe me, that is not the case. I really like the idea of a centrally located listing of non-corporate businesses.
moose
A comprehensive listing of local businesses would be a nice resource. We at Downtown Grocery were thinking about that concept too because about two weeks ago we added a new link to our website “Local Links” featuring local food and art type enterprises. Our list is short at this time with only about 17+ links but it’s a start and this weekend I’ll add Townline Market and Zillmans to the list and Frostman Fish Market too. Thank you all for adding your opinions to my post as I’ve enjoyed reading the past 14 comments about food!
I just checked on a new website idea: “localwausau.com”. It’s open and ready for that entrepreneurial Wausau citizen interested in a large but worthwhile project to follow velcroboy’s idea “…of non franchise, non corporate shopping alternatives in Wausau” where the first stop to shop could be “localwausau.com”!
Hi Moose – Please allow me to expand upon my previous comment.
The Citizen Wausau website is built using software that behaves like MySpace, or Facebook. In other words, once you have a login, you can use that login to create other pages (or blogs) within this website. Users can then customize the look and feel of their site with several pre-made templates (though custom templates could be created as well).
Take for instance “Widgets.” If you thought Widgets deserved a blog, you could create one within this site at http://www.cititizenwausau.com/widgets We’re also looking at implementing tools that would allow users to link to other pages as, “friends” and those sort of social networking features.
Now – before we all get too excited — Andy and I have not turned this feature on . . . Yet. We agreed to apply our initial focus on building our audience before we would allow everyone to start their own blog all at once.
I imagine many people will want to start personal blogs, but also – there may be some pages that could be topical, say “City Politics” for instance – or in this case, “Local Eateries.” The possibilities are really limitless.
Stay tuned – we should have some of the first blogs ready to roll in the next few weeks.
Marcus,
Thank you for the explanation. I think I understand the concept although I have to confess, I don’t belong to either MySpace or Facebook so that reference was lost on me.
Kevin had an interesting idea as well to make the “ShopWausauMomAndPop” listing its own site, which I assume you would both link to. I don’t have the answer here. Is this something that you, Andy and Kevin should sit down and discuss?
moose
Hey Im back its been a couple of weeks since I posted and it seems the idea took off. I have actually lived in wausau off and on(mostly on) for the last 13 years. I am aware of most the places already suggested and i believe that the community as a whole should recognize these places and realize the benefit it offers to keeping the money trail local. A couple places i can think of off hand would be Kreuger’s Bakery, Yankes Bookstore, How about Sound World for electronics (are they local or not I’m not sure.) how about the Furniture and Appliance on Stewart are they local? What about clothing stores,? Oh yeah how about that furniture store on 6th st and the other one on 2nd ave and Maple. I would like this list to not just be about places for food, but everything we as consumers enjoy. hey don’t forget every bodies favorite music store in town the Inner Sleeve.etc, etc
ok i guess it died
I think you should make a post about it
Kevin,
Thank you for including Townline, Zillman’s, and Frostman’s markets in your local links.
The next time you update that list, could you please include Inner Sleeve? Mike is a really great asset to this community.
Thank you, I’ll stop bothering you now.
moose