D. Discussion Items
1. Local market development
- No report
2. Land for cultivation
- City Farmland Preservation Task Force and the MFPC have put city staff on the
spot for this at meetings held 12/14/22. Farmers should have nutrient management plans
in place, by state statute. The statute is implemented and enforced at the county level.
The farmer has the responsibility to develop such a plan. As a result, it would not be
burdensome or problematic for the City to add this as an ag lease requirement. FEY will
loop back with George Reistad for clarification and update regarding when City staff met
and what resulted if they met.
3. City Farmland Preservation Task Force
- This group is meeting biweekly and has picked up the pace on their work. Three
teams of three members each will be formed: land access and tenure, land
characteristics, and the policy/regulatory environment.
- Meetings are open to the public, from 3:00-4:30 pm, biweekly. Next meeting 1/25.
Meeting on 1/25 will be whether the topics generated are gathered in the right clusters
with folks allocated to groups accordingly. There will be opportunities for RAFS to assist
the Task Force, but Task Force Chair Fey doesn’t know what those are just yet.
4. Next projects brainstorming
- Stakeholder mapping exercise and possible outcomes
- Examples of things the City/County might do: Milan Food Policy Pact (City of
Baltimore has adopted this pact), Good Food Purchasing Program (adopted by NYC,
Chicago, LA Unified School District, and many others)
- Extension website has a list of local food organizations – we could begin by
asking orgs and groups to ensure that they are listed or update their listings by sending
information updates to Jess Guffey Calkins
- Much of this work falls under the the scope of the Food Plan WG, so let’s be
careful not to duplicate efforts
- At Extension, Lindsey Day Farnsworth and Cathryn Herlihey (grad student in urban
planning and water resources) are mapping stakeholders to strengthen relationships
between farmers and emergency food. From an email from Jess: “The purpose of this
project is three-fold: (1) to map out the existing farm to food access landscape in
Wisconsin, (2) to understand what is working well, and (3) to identify where additional
investment or strategic partnerships could increase our collective capacity to move more
culturally relevant, Wisconsin-grown product to households in need. As a result, we aim
to ensure that cumulative lessons from individual farm to food access initiatives and the
recent influx of federal funding for new and existing programs contribute to improvements
at local and system scales. For the purposes of this project, we are defining “farm to food
access programs” as any program that links WI-sourced produce with low food access
households.”
- Erin Barnes Lowe has done stakeholder mapping (nonprofits, local governments)
at a regional scale (6-state region) around how to expand managed grazing across the
region in a way that supports a more just food system. Stakeholders shared ongoing
work and projects at the regional scale; the information was intended for use internal to
the group.
- Susan Hessel suggested development of a crowd sourced GIS platform to
capture the information being discussed here. Questions about a project’s institutional
home and who would support and maintain such a data base. Susan knows someone
