PROJECT HISTORY
Over the past couple years, staff at the Agricultural Innovation Center (AIC), Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) and others have been fielding calls from distributors, retailers and larger food industry players interested in procuring local foods. While their interest is promising and reflects growing consumer demand for such foods, their calls prompted the realization that the supply and infrastructure for such a “scaling-up” of regional food production has its limitations and is unable to meet such a demand.

Building a viable local and regional food distribution system provides small and mid-size farms with an opportunity for a sustainable livelihood and build thriving community-based economies. Existing local food projects, however, have tended to focus on niche markets and localized efforts. We hope this project will address increasing affordable local food access to more mainstream markets, while maintaining the values and transparency of direct farmer-consumer relationships.

PROJECT GOALS
In order to create the necessary infrastructure, we will work with farmers interested in supplying a wholesale market to develop the organizational and business capacity to meet the high-volume demand of distributors. With our combined resources at CIAS and AIC, we see our strengths being farmer-directed research and business planning/outreach.

Our primary objectives are:
Objective 1: Strengthen relationships and improve transparency among all sectors of the food supply chain.
Objective 2: Support the development of locally-owned food entrepreneur businesses

Project Contacts:
Anne Pfeiffer, Agricultural Innovation Center
anne.pfeiffer@ces.uwex.edu

Michelle Miller, Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
Email: mmmille6@wisc.edu

Heidi Busse, Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
hbusse@wisc.edu