Monthly Archives: April 2013

Menus of Change

(Could someone organize something like this for our region?)

June 10-12, Cambridge MA

Here for more information.

This leadership summit, presented by The Culinary Institute of America and Harvard School of Public Health, will help you NAVIGATE an increasingly complicated world of shifting consumer values and demands, public health imperatives, escalating food costs, and looming environmental challenges. Harvard nutrition expert Dr. Walter Willet (left) is chairman of the Menus of Change Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee, a group that together with the CIA and our Sustainable Business Leadership Council is working to create an integrated platform of strategies and tools to help you build forward-looking—and delicious!—menu concepts for the future.
Confirmed speakers to date include Sam Kass, senior policy advisor for healthy food initiatives at the White House; Barton Seaver, CIA graduate, author of For Cod and Country, and director of the Healthy and Sustainable Food Program at the Harvard University Center for Health and the Global Environment; Andrea Illy, CEO of illycaffè, and director of his company’s economic, social, and environmental sustainability value report; and Rick Bayless (left), chef, author, television host, and sustainability advocate.

 

http://www.magnetmail.net/actions/email_web_version.cfm?recipient_id=1217469004&message_id=2595838&user_id=CIA_&group_id=1013146&jobid=13819482

Open-source Biomimicry curriculum

Cobb Hill, VT

Offering an open-source curriculum by Sustainability Leaders Network designed to strengthen and inform the biomimicry movement among educators and learners locally and around the world.

The more our world functions like the natural world, the more likely we are to endure on this home that is ours, but not ours alone. – Janine Benyus, leading biomimicry scholar

About this curriculum
This course offers an introduction to biomimicry and how to learn from nature. With an emphasis on getting outside and exploring the land around you, the biomimicry curriculum that we have designed, tested, and refined focuses on observing, appreciating and learning from nature and natural systems in your locality. Cognizant of the ways in which consumption and population growth have degraded our environment, we focus on positive solutions learned from nature and ways to take meaningful action.

I know all of the statistics of destruction, but I have chosen to come to this out of love, because I love this place. And I want to stay here. I want to stay home. – Janine Benyus

Course goals
Through this course, teachers and learners alike will:

  1. Become knowledgeable and enthusiastic about biomimicry.
  2. Get outside and strengthen relationships with the local environment.
  3. Learn to better recognize, observe, and think creatively about processes and systems in nature.
  4. Shift to see nature not as something to exploit, but as a teacher and model.
  5. Collaborate with nature to devise and apply practical solutions to current challenges.

Colleagues Edie Farwell and Dominic Stucker designed the original curriculum, Edie taught the course at The Sharon Academy in autumn 2012, and Dominic Stucker and Alex Bauermeister further developed the course for publication.

Business Investors Showcase

Slow Money Wisconsin and LION to host 2013 Business and Investors Showcase

Slow Money Wisconsin and LION  (Local Investment Opportunities Network) will host the 2013 Business and Investor Showcase featuring local food and fiber businesses on Friday, April 26 from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at the Lussier Family Heritage Center, 3101 Lake Farm Road in Madison.

Hosted by Tera Johnson, founder of tera’s whey, Jim Gage, president of Town and Country Resource Conservation and Development, and Rebecca Ryan, director of Next Generation Consulting, the event is designed to spark conversations and connections among sustainable food and farming entrepreneurs, investors, intermediaries, food activists and members of the public who are interested in supporting the local food system.

The 2013 Showcase includes 10-minute presentations from a juried selection of nine local, sustainable food and fiber businesses, including:

•                Judy Tholen, JRS Country Acres, delivering 100% Wisconsin produced cage free vegetarian fed brown eggs to grocery stores, restaurants and institutions within 200 mile of Lake Mills, Wisconsin.

•                Adrian Reif, Ōm Boys Food Movement (OBFM), manufacturing and selling a line of fresh, home-style nut butters and a line of uniquely nutrient-dense, raw, sprouted, and gluten free cereal-granolas.

•                Bill Anderson, Crème de la Coulée, offering French “esoteric” soft-ripened artisan cheeses made with raw milk from Wisconsin organic dairies.

•                Rufus Haucke, Just Local Foods, an aggregating, processing, marketing and distribution hub located in the Food Enterprise Center in Viroqua, WI, sourcing from over 100 family run farms located throughout the state of Wisconsin. 
Walter Harvey, Taste of Soul  Foods Innovation Kitchen, a start-up food processing operation that will manufacture a line of small batch preserves, condiments and dry rubs, and will manufacture products for food entrepreneurs looking to outsource preparation, packaging and labeling of private recipes.

•                Jacy Eckerman and Heidi Speight, Yum Tum, LLC, offering freshly frozen baby food produced from local organic produce.

•                Gilbert Williams, Lonesome Stone Milling, a local flour mill and a seed cleaning operation, offering wholesale local stone-ground flour to bakeries as well as product mixes for home use.

•                Ellen Barnard, Food Enterprise and Economic Development Kitchen (FEED), a food business incubator and community kitchen facility that will feature 5 commercial kitchens, and food-service training programs for unemployed youth and adults.

•                Bartlett Durand, Black Earth Meats, processor and distributor of sustainably raised meats (beef, pork, lamb, goat) One of the only USDA inspected, certified organic, certified humane processing facilities in the country offering

Ten minute presentations will be followed by Q&A with the entrepreneur and individual and small group interaction time is built into the day.

Brian Bengry, of Conscious Capital, will also present the case for building an investment portfolio that includes local investment.

If you are a local food activist, an impact investor, a sustainable business entrepreneur, a program officer, or an individual interested in line-of-sight investments, the Showcase is an opportunity to participate in what Entrepreneur.com called “one of the top five trends in finance” and Rodale called “one of the top ten trends in organics.” Tickets to the Showcase include a locally sourced breakfast and lunch, and are $30 for general public and $15 for students at http://tinyurl.com/slowshowcase or call (888) 406-7969.

Join Showcase presenters, nurture capitalists, investment advisors and university students for pre-event networking reception on Thursday, April 25 from 5:30-8:00 p.m. at Brocach Irish Pub, Capitol Square, Madison. Tickets are $10 for the general public and $5 for students.

Sponsored by: Slow Money Wisconsin, LION, Town and Country RC&D, Incredible Edibles Investment Club, Kailo Fund, and Sustainable, Edible, Economic Development (S.E.E.D.), with the support of the Wisconsin School of Business.

============================

Slow Money Wisconsin supports efforts toward creating a resilient, sustainable economy by increasing our investments in small-scale, sustainable food and farming enterprises in the region. www.slowmoneywisconsin.org

 

LION (Local Investment Opportunities Network) connects local investors in the Madison, Wisconsin area with local business owners who need capital. For businesses, LION is an alternative to banks or other commercial lenders. For investors, LION is a way to see where your money is going, and who it is helping. It enables you to invest in what you know and can see, in the local businesses that make Madison and Dane County the unique place it is. http://lioninvestiment.com

National Good Food Network Webinar on Local Meats Processing: Successes and Innovations

Thursday, April 18
3:30 – 5:00pm ET
(12:30 – 2:00pm Pacific)

Free! Register Now

Local meat and poultry can’t get to market without a processor, but processors are pulled in many directions: Farmers would like more processing options, the kind of processing needed depends on the market the regulations are complex regulations, and even with premium-priced meats, the profit margins are slim.
So how can local meat processing survive … and even thrive? Lauren Gwin and Arion Thiboumery, co-founders and co-coordinators of the national Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network, will share the results of their research on this topic, featuring innovations and lessons learned from successful processors around the country.
We’ll also hear from several regional support efforts to improve access to local processing: Kathleen Harris, of the Northeast Livestock Processing Service Company; Casey McKissick, of NC Choices and the Carolina Meat Conference; and Chelsea Bardot Lewis, of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and Vermont Meat Processing Task Force.
The full research report will be released the day of the webinar – be among the first to ask your questions of the investigators!

 

Presenter

Lauren Gwin

Oregon State University, NMPAN

Presenter

Chelsea Bardot Lewis

Vermont Agency of Agriculture
Presenter

Arion Thiboumery 

Lorentz Meats, NMPAN

Presenter

Casey McKissick

NC Choices, Carolina Meat Institute

Presenter

Kathleen Harris

Northeast Livestock Processing Service Company

 

 

Midwest Aronia Growers Conference

From Dale Secher, Carandale Farm, Vice President Midwest Aronia Association

Another year has come and gone and we are only days away from the 3rd annual Midwest Aronia Association conference.  I hope that those of you who are actively involved and/or are thinking about getting involved with aronia, have been checking the website, <www.midwestaronia.org>.  The conference is at the same location:  Holiday Inn Northwest, 4800 Merle Hay Rd, Des Moines, IA, this Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 4, 5, & 6.

 
The best way to keep informed about the exciting new progress being made, is to join the MAA for an annual fee of $75.00 that will entitle you to members only information on the website.  You will also receive quarterly newsletter with much information.  If you have already made plans to attend the conference, I will be looking forward to seeing you there.  If it works into your schedule, it is not too late to participate.  Log onto the website for details.
 
FYI, one of the reasons why I have neglected to keep you informed about MAA activities through this listserv has been my pre-occupation with an exciting new project that could ultimately transform how we grow and market little known fruit crops such as aronia.  Working with a grant from the Wisconsin Dept. of Agriculture, and in cooperation with the Center for  Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) at UW-Madison, we are providing input for a new website.  The website, which will be hosted by UW-Madison, is due to be launched in June.  It will be about the potential for promoting a sustainable integrated cropping system incorporating uncommon perennial fruit crops including, and perhaps featuring aronia.
 
The website will summarize information and observations about more than 50 perennial fruiting species and provide some incite on how these might be grown, harvested, processed and marketed in an integrated manner using the principles of economics of scale and ecological symbiosis for a more sustainable food supply and marketing system.
 
This has become a larger and more time consuming project than anticipated and a major distraction from other ongoing activities, but it could be a major opportunity for aronia growers to add value and reduce risk.
Â