Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin

By Jeanne Merrill, Associate Policy Director

On January 4th in Stevens Point, over 200 people gathered for the first-ever Wisconsin Local Food Summit. Inspired by the growing consumer demand for locally produced food, the Summit brought together farmers and others to learn about efforts around the state to develop local food markets.

One of the highlights of the summit was State Senator Julie Lassa's announcement that she will introduce legislation to fund the Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin initiative. The initiative will address barriers to developing regional food markets, including the lack of food processing, distribution infrastructure, and marketing expertise in Wisconsin. Such barriers prevent farmers from individually or cooperatively selling their food products to regional food buyers, including schools, restaurants, hospitals and grocery stores.

The Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin program will provide competitive grants and technical assistance to farmers, community groups, local businesses and others to increase access to regional food markets for Wisconsin farmers, and develop regional food tourism trails. Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin represents the first comprehensive approach to keep food dollars in Wisconsin communities, which will help local businesses, improve farm income, and increase consumer access to healthy food.

Senator Lassa's bill to fund Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin is receiving broad, bi-partisan support. Close to thirty State Assembly and Senate members, from rural and urban districts, have signed on as co-sponsors of the bill. The bill requests $550,000 annually for the next two years, which is a modest investment that could retain millions of dollars of state's food expenditures in our communities.

Please consider writing or calling your state Assembly and Senate members to encourage their support of the Buy Local, Buy Wisconsin initiative. For additional information, including a list of the bill's sponsors, please feel free to contact Jeanne Merrill at jeannemerrill@earthlink.net.

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New Dean Embraces Land Grant Mission of Public Service

By Margaret Krome, Policy Director

On August 1, 2006, Dr. Molly Jahn became the twelfth dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, succeeding Dr. Elton (Abe) Eberle. (Photo courtesy of Cornell University)

Prior to taking this position, Dean Jahn spent 15 years as a faculty member at Cornell, with research in plant breeding and plant genetics, specializing in cucurbits and peppers. At the time of her departure in August, her lab had 40 commercial licenses in force. While at Cornell, Jahn helped create and then directed the Public Seed Initiative and Organic Seed Partnership to create nationwide collaborations between public sector researchers, seed companies and nonprofit groups to improve the use of public plant varieties and crop genetic diversity.

We recently asked the dean about her first six months on the job, starting with her impressions about Wisconsin's agriculture. "I was drawn to Wisconsin for its diversity and energy in agriculture," she said. "It's a dynamic and cherished agriculture, and there are opportunities for growth in a lot of high value markets. But of course, not everyone can chase the same high-value markets, which brings us back to diversity."

Question: What roles does Dean Jahn see CALS playing in advancing the state's agriculture toward one that is profitable and environmentally and socially sound?

"As a Land Grant institution, we have a statutory mandate to accountability and public service. Our job is to help get out ahead of trends and serve the state's agriculture and the opportunities that best serve the public's interest. This can mean bringing broad and integrated approaches to problems. It always pays to get all perspectives on a problem, which is why partnerships among a wide range of stakeholders is so important."

Question: Does she see significant challenges before the College?

"In addition to the obvious budget challenges facing the state, there are a lot of possibilities facing the state. Our challenge is to create the best possible collaborations, drawing the widest range of resources of all kinds, including the private sector, to recognize their stake in the state's agricultural future. Sometimes it's tempting to serve our own institution rather than stakeholders, but we must test ourselves against the original Land Grant mission of accountability and impact."

In mid-August Jahn spoke to participants at the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition's nationwide Farm Bill Kickoff in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. She created a number of new admirers in the national sustainable agriculture community that day. But it was not principally her extensive research history in organic breeding that impressed them. Rather, they were struck by her frequent references to the Morrill Act, which created the Land Grant University system in 1862, and to the commitments it imposes to be relevant, accountable, and serve the public's interests.

Michael Fields Agricultural Institute researcher Walter Goldstein has worked with Dr. Jahn in the past. We are pleased to join him in welcoming to Wisconsin a new dean who holds a demonstrated commitment to collaborating with non-traditional as well as traditional partners, a pragmatic problem solver, and someone who voices a commitment to reclaim the historic Land Grant mission. Welcome, Dean Jahn!

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Making Healthcare Affordable

By Dayna Burtness, Policy Intern

In urban and rural communities alike, the struggle for affordable healthcare can have crippling effects for families. Families who are self-employed, like farmers, and those who are underinsured have struggled to meet the rising costs of healthcare. For some it means going without healthcare and for others it means working two or more jobs just to make ends meet.

Wisconsin has consistently had one of the lowest percentages of uninsured citizens in the country. In 2005, only ten percent of the Wisconsin's population was uninsured for part or all of the year. However, these numbers do not include the growing number of those people who are under-insured, which can have devastating impacts when an unexpected illness or accident occurs. In this article, I look at how Wisconsin farmers are affected by a lack of healthcare insurance and review four healthcare proposals before the state legislature.

Farmers and others who are self-employed often bear the brunt of rising healthcare insurance costs. A 2005 Wisconsin Farm Bureau survey found that farmers are disproportionately affected by rising healthcare costs. Thirty-one percent of farmers surveyed had no health insurance or only catastrophic insurance, an unacceptably high portion of a demographic so central to Wisconsin's culture and economy.

In response to these and other concerns, four different healthcare reform bills have been introduced in the Wisconsin legislature. Outlined below is how each plan could affect Wisconsin farmers and their families.

BadgerCare Plus - Supported by Governor Doyle

• The plan: BadgerCare Plus would combine all the existing public healthcare programs to reduce administrative costs, create universal coverage for children, and increase coverage for pregnant women, the self-employed, farmers, and caregivers.
• Effects on farmers: Under the current BadgerCare system, farm equipment depreciation is counted as income when determining eligibility for the program. Under the BadgerCare Plus proposal, equipment depreciation would not be included as income if it would make parents ineligible for the coverage. If income without depreciation is still too high to be eligible for BadgerCare Plus, farmers could buy in at cost, which the Governor's office estimates would be roughly half of the average insurance costs for farmers now.

Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan - Supported by the WI-AFL-CIO

• The plan: This program is based the Workers Compensation and Unemployment Insurance plan, the health insurance program used by organized labor. The legislation would create a "Labor-Management Commission" that would choose a single insurance company to cover essential medical care for all public and private workers.
• Effects on farmers: Although the self-employed and farmers would not be directly covered, they could buy into the plan at cost, a significantly lower price than what farmers are paying on average for individual plans currently.

Wisconsin Health Plan - Supported by the WI Farm Bureau

• The plan: The WI Health Plan, administered by a private, non-profit corporation, would give all residents under age 65 a credit which they would use to purchase a qualified Tier 1, 2, or 3 health insurance plan. Tier 1 plans would be completely covered by the credit; Tier 2 and 3 plan costs would be subsidized by the credit, giving health insurance companies incentives keep their costs low to become a Tier 1 program. In addition to the credit, residents who are ages 18-65 would receive $500 annually to use for other healthcare needs. The program would be financed by employee and employer taxes.
• Effects on farmers: Farmers would receive the same benefits as other participants.

Health Security Act - Supported by the Coalition for Wisconsin Health

• The plan: The HSA would create a publicly funded program that would provide healthcare for all residents of Wisconsin. Funds currently used for Medicaid and Medicare, General Assistance Medical, Healthy Start, and HIRSP, as well as, taxes would go into a trust fund to finance the program.
• Effects on farmers: Farmers would receive the same benefits as other Wisconsin residents.

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Lessons in Farmland Preservation

By Margaret Krome, Policy Director

Last fall, I spent five days touring Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania with a group of fifty Wisconsin farmers, local and state officials and others, discovering how, in the face of enormous development pressures, leaders in these states have protected thousands of farms. One farmer explained us why he had preserved his farmland. "It just wasn't clear to me that I had a God-given right to keep future generations from farming this land," he said.

The problem these leaders began to address twenty and thirty years ago is now squarely facing Wisconsin, where, farmland is converted to housing and commercial uses at alarming rates. From 1950 through the 1990s, Wisconsin lost 24% of its farmland, leaving them fragmented and expensive. Forest lands are also becoming more fragmented as larger owners sell lots for housing and recreational uses.

Not everyone realizes that when we buy a piece of land, we're actually buying a bundle of rights, including mineral rights, development rights and others. Furthermore, such rights can be separately held or sold, and each right has a market value, based on the demands for its use. So in a rapidly growing community, the right to develop land for residential or commercial uses has a greater value than it would in an area without a market for those uses. Thus, a key strategy to protect prime farmland is to protect the right to develop it.

Each community and state we visited last fall used a different combination of approaches Some bought development rights from farmers and put them in a trust with the county. The farmer was paid the market value for the difference between the land's value for farming and its value for development. Whereas farmers in one township might sell their development rights for $12,000 an acre, in other communities with less development pressure, they would cost less. A Maryland farmer invested those payments in mutual funds and bonds for retirement. "I'm still farming, and it's still my land. It's protected for farming forever, but I can sell it or pass it down, just as I always could." He said that his land had actually increased in value, because now other farmers want to buy it, since it's in an area that protects farmland.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, leaders craft deals where developers can buy development rights from farmers only if applied in areas that are zoned to receive development. Called "transfer of development rights," developers are glad to be allowed to develop at higher densities, bringing them more money, but farmland is protected, as farmers from whom development rights have been purchased cannot develop their land.

These and other programs we saw cost varying amounts, and each community described a different combination of funding sources to support their program. But all had a few pieces of advice in common.

"Protect farms in clusters." This helps farmers support each other as well as the agriculturally-related businesses that won't survive if land gets too fragmented.

"You'll need real leaders." Every community could point to local, legislative and farmer leaders, who recognize the importance of agriculture to their counties and worked to protect it.

"Preserving farmland has profited our local community economically." Not only are farms are critical for their economy, but many jurisdictions save millions of dollars each year by not having to pay for extra roads, sewage extensions, schools and other costs that development incurs.

Above all, "Get started soon," everyone told us. Don't wait until development pressure has pushed up land prices so high you can't afford to protect it.

Wisconsin's Working Lands Initiative is a broad coalition of groups committed to protecting the state's farmland and forestlands. They are holding three events at the end of February in Menonomie, Kimberly and Oconomowoc, to discuss effective strategies, including speakers from our tour last fall. Register at the Wisconsin's Working Lands Initiative website.

(Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS)

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Innovations in Food Systems

Eat Healthy Rebate

January marked the one-year anniversary of the innovative "Eat Healthy Rebate," a program created by Physicians Plus Insurance Corporation, a Madison-based health maintenance organization (HMO), and the Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC). To encourage healthy eating habits, Physicians Plus offers rebates to families and individuals policyholders who subscribe to one of twenty-four Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farms. Subscribers of CSA farms receive weekly or bi-weekly boxes of fresh, locally produced fruits and vegetables during the growing season. Over 970 Physicians Plus members have taken advantage of the unique rebate program. Close to half of the members are first-time CSA farm subscribers, according to Laura Brown, MACSAC Coordinator. "Farmers benefited by reaching their share limits much faster," she said. As of right now, Physicians Plus is the only insurance company offering a CSA rebate program, but Brown encourages everyone to get your insurance provider onboard by contacting them through your employer. To find our more about CSA farms and the Physicians Plus program, join MACSAC farmers, Physicians Plus representatives, and Mayor Dave at the Olbrich Gardens on Saturday, March 24th for the "Eat Healthy Rebate" open house. For more information, visit the MACSAC website.

FEAST's Mobile Market

It would be impossible to put an entire farm on wheels, so a group based in northern Wisconsin did the next best thing. The FEAST program?Food security, Education, Access, Sustainable agriculture, and Tradition?put an entire farmers market on wheels. Nutrition and community food security groups were concerned that seniors and others using food assistance programs in Ashland and Bayfield counties did not have adequate access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they joined forces to form FEAST. Every week from July to October, a market manager, a nutrition educator, and a group of producers certified to accept senior and WIC farmers' market vouchers take their mobile market truck on the road, stopping in communities in both counties. Want to replicate this exciting new model of food access in your community? Contact Amy Syverson, FEAST project coordinator, at 715-685-0839.

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Garden Student Program Workshops

We are pleased to announce our 2007 Garden Student Workshops. From Soils 101 and Beekeeping to Tractor Safety and CSA Planning, our one and two day workshops are designed for different levels of experience. For a full listing of workshops and to register online, please click here.

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Cooking Demonstrations

Chef Julie Jasinski, of Fields Best at the Milwaukee Public Market, offers encouragement to keep your New Year's resolutions with a six-week series of free demonstrations called "Healthy Cooking for the New Year." Chef Julie will be offering free instruction that will include basic cooking techniques and essential knife skills as well as tips on menu planning and preparation. Chef Julie Jasinski will show how to prepare hearty winter food while maintaining healthful selections, with ways to enhance flavor without adding fat by using fresh ingredients, herbs and spices. These free weekly demonstrations continue through early March 3rd.
» Download schedule [pdf 60kb] | Milwaukee Public Market web site

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