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06 May 2022

Virtual Farm Tour at Vitruvian Farms

On Thursday, May 5, REAP Food Group, in partnership with Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Food and Nutrition, zoomed into eighty-three classrooms for a Virtual Farm Tour at Vitruvian Farms in McFarland. The tour marked the first in an ongoing series to deliver the sights and smells of Wisconsin-grown foods to MMSD classrooms through virtual farm tours, videos, and books. Geared to grades K-5, the live presentation included a tour of the farm led by co-owner Tommy Stauffer*, poll questions for the nearly 1,500 students gauging their knowledge of, and like--or dislike--of mushrooms, and a Q&A for Tommy. Hosts discovered that the students already had a rich vocabulary in mushroom varieties, and were at least amenable to tasting them! Watch a recording and stay tuned for the next tour at Wonka's Harvest in Hollandale before schools close for the summer. Virtual Farm Tour is made possible through a grant and brought to classrooms by REAP Food Group, in partnership with Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Food and Nutrition. Shiftology Communication Virtual Farm Trips® facilitated the tour. The unique PR firm offers "one-of-a-kind learning experiences by connecting participants to real working farms from the comfort of their computers, classrooms, conference rooms and living rooms." *Tommy Stauffer is also a REAP Food Group board member. https://youtu.be/FxqWG0x0Mgs ...

17 Apr 2022

REAP Food Group Welcomes New Executive Director

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Blog, NEWS

REAP Food Group's staff and board are thrilled to welcome Philip Kauth as our new Executive Director. After earning a Ph.D. in Horticultural Sciences, Phil spent eight years working with the Iowa-based non-profit Seed Savers Exchange. As Director of Preservation, Phil led a team that stewarded a living collection of 25,000 open-pollinated seed and plant varieties and a historic apple orchard. With Seed Savers Exchange, Phil's work fused his scientific training with the organization's mission to preserve and share seeds, their integrity, and culturally significant stories. "For communities to have control over their foodways, they need to have control over the seeds they want to grow and share," Phil explains. In pursuit of REAP's mission to make healthy food grown well, accessible to all, and in a manner that honors communities' agency over their foodways, Phil brings open ears and a collaborative spirit. He embraces a leadership style that emphasizes learning and building trust to maximize the values and strengths people bring to the table, and he draws from experiences partnering with historically underrepresented groups. Phil’s work with Seed Savers Exchange has included collaborations with Asian American farmers on the West Coast searching for linkages to ancestral food crops, the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network to restore seeds to tribal communities, and the organization's multi-disciplinary collaboration, the Heirloom Collard Project. “REAP has exciting times on the horizon and happily welcomes Phil Kauth to lead the organization into the future[.]...

18 Mar 2022

REAP Food Group Earns Madison Community Foundation Grant

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Blog, Grants, NEWS

We are thrilled to announce that Madison Community Foundation (MCF) has awarded REAP Food Group a $50,000 Community Impact Grant to expand our development and fundraising capacity. We will use the funds to hire a grant writer and train our board of directors in fundraising skills in order to grow support for our efforts to build a sustainable and just local food system. COVID-19 laid bare for REAP the unreliability of in-person events as fundraising drivers. Meanwhile, it presented an opportunity to collaboratively problem solve with community partners on the ground. In 2020 we co-created the Farms to Families Fund with Roots4Change to get food into the hands of families who needed it. The impact we saw from that collaboration showed us that we have even more work to do in the community. A focus on strengthening our development capacity in the immediate future will allow REAP to focus our energy into our core goals and on mission-oriented events without relying on restaurant partners to donate time and resources, especially as the food service industry deals with challenges exacerbated by a pandemic. We have big dreams to realize in our efforts to expand Farm to School programming beyond the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), to plan for future disruptions in our local food and farming value chain, and advocate for policies that support sustainable agriculture and a fair food system. “REAP is taking a strategic approach to long-term financial sustainability, recognizing the importance of using not just the development director but also the executive director and board members to build a strong culture of philanthropy[.]...

01 Feb 2022

Join REAP in Supporting the Healthy School Meals For All Act

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Blog

Free school meals pack a punch. They improve students’ learning readiness, behavior, and health outcomes, address racial disparities, eliminate stigma around free and reduced school meals, and support working families. They also have the potential to strengthen our local economy by creating jobs and bolstering our local agriculture. The fate of free school meals, meanwhile, faces a reckoning. When COVID-19 forced the closure of schools and childcare providers nationwide in March 2020, the USDA changed the rules governing access to school meals. They ripped away bureaucratic layers and among other moves, made free, healthy meals available to all students, regardless of financial need. As the June 2022 expiration date for universal free school meals approaches, Wisconsin State Representatives Kristina Shelton and Francesca Hong, State Senator Chris Larson, and WI State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly have introduced the Healthy School Meals for All Act (LRB 4605), which would permanently provide state aid to reimburse public and private schools that provide free meals to all students for the costs of those meals. "[W]hat must be our core value in Wisconsin is that no child should go hungry because a guardian in their life cannot afford a school meal."Rep. Francesca Hong “As a mom, chef and legislator I know first-hand the importance of building community through food. And what must be our core value in Wisconsin is that no child should go hungry because a guardian in their life cannot afford a school meal. All across this state, from our farmers and teachers to our students and school staff, we have learned that we must provide our children with more support during the school day,” Rep. Hong explained in a press release. REAP supports the Healthy School Meals For All legislation, and we hope you join us in raising our voices for healthy, reliable school meals for all by contacting your legislators today. Learn more about the bill at the Healthy School Meals for All Website and find additional tools for helping spread the word through the School Nutrition Association. ...

09 Jan 2022

A Message from our Executive Director

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Blog, NEWS

Dear REAP Friends, We are all still cheering over a strong year-end campaign, excited that countless hours of deliberation on how to grow and deepen our impact is starting to come to fruition and that your support and investment means we hit the ground running in 2022. In that context, there is another big change coming: this spring, I will be moving on after serving as the Executive Director of this vital community organization for the past five and a half years. My family has an opportunity to temporarily relocate overseas, and as we see the window of time as a family of 4 get ever-smaller, we feel this was the right time to take the leap if we do this together. It has been a true honor and deep privilege to learn, listen, work and celebrate with so many smart and passionate people who choose to work to make the world a better place. Given the scale of our global - and local - problems, it’s tempting to give in to cynicism, maybe too easy to convince yourself you can’t do anything about it. And yet, every single day, I am surrounded by caring, creative humans who - to quote Theodore Roosevelt - step into the arena and dare greatly to rise to the challenge of dismantling racism, rebuilding a just food system, reversing environmental destruction and co-creating the community that reflects our diversity and shared values. And as I listen to the conversations of my own young teens, I feel even more hopeful that we are in good company with the next generation of changemakers coming our way. REAP is doing important work at the nexus of food systems, social justice and environmental protection and we are seeking that next dynamic leader to harness the momentum, continue to forge deep partnerships and lift up the ridiculously talented team at REAP who serve farmers, children, chefs, and food businesses and dare greatly every day to build a just and sustainable local food system. Maybe you know that person? Maybe you are that person? I couldn’t imagine a better place to land, or a better time to be joining REAP. And I look forward to joyously writing those checks, attending farm dinners and contacting elected officials as a proud member of REAP Food Group. The position description is posted on our website, please help us spread the word. Yours truly, Helen Sarakinos ...

09 Dec 2021

REAP Earns USDA Local Food Promotion Program Grant

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Blog, Grants

We’re pleased to announce that REAP Food Group recently received a USDA Agricultural Marketing Services (AMS) grant through the Local Agriculture Marketing Program (LAMP) Local Food Promotion Program (LFPP). The $250,000 award will be used to design and pilot a Wholesale Farm Fresh Atlas and readiness program to serve small- and medium-scale farmers in southern Wisconsin. Building off of the strengths of the direct-to-consumer Farm Fresh Atlas, REAP will design and pilot a digital Wholesale version of the Farm Fresh Atlas. It also plans to create a Wholesale Readiness technical assistance program for small- to medium-scale farmers who want to sell wholesale in southern Wisconsin. This includes sales to aggregators, food hubs, grocery stores, restaurants, and anchor institutions such as hospitals and schools. With a projected cost of $256,284, the planning project will focus this program in southern Wisconsin, though many of the technical assistance materials will be available and useful to producers and buyers statewide. “With many years assisting Wisconsin’s second largest school district with local food procurement, our farmer connections and our partnerships with hospitals and higher ed, REAP is well positioned to help both food producers and buyers understand and overcome the hurdles to get local food into institutional kitchens,” says REAP Executive Director Helen Sarakinos. REAP Farm to Business Director Anna Landmark adds, “With the wealth of family farms and anchor institutions in southern WI, this region can really reap the economic benefit of investing in local and sustainably-grown food.” The USDA invested a total of $75.4 million across 41 states to 172 LAMP projects within the Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program (FMLFPP). LMLFPP grantees’ efforts support the development, coordination, and expansion of direct producer-to-consumer markets and local and regional food business enterprises. “These grants will help maximize opportunities for economic growth and ingenuity in local and regional food systems. The [LAMP] grants have a history of generating new income sources for small, beginning, veteran and socially disadvantaged farmers and creating new market opportunities for value-added and niche products.” -Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Meanwhile, we’re thrilled to congratulate Madison-based FairShare CSA Coalition on their own LFPP grant to build capacity and increase access to markets through an aggregated CSA model. ...

07 Dec 2021

REAP & Roots4Change featured in Facebook Live Event

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Food, Uncategorized

On November 23, REAP Executive Direction Helen Sarakinos teamed up with Mariela Quesada Centeno of Roots4Change in a thought-provoking FB Live conversation with the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies on Food Innovations in COVID-19. The pair shared the roots of and lessons learned from the collaborative Farms to Families Fund (FFF) which provided food for Latino families and supported local farmers and food producers hard-hit by COVID-19 from Spring, 2020-Spring, 2021. WI State Assembly Representative Francesca Hong, Grassroots Farm LLC farmer and Monticello Community Kitchen Co-op co-founder FL Morris, and La Crosse Environmental Sustainability Planner Lewis Kuhlman joined in the panel, sharing their own unique projects to improve food access during the pandemic. Watch the entire conversation here. ...

09 Jul 2021

The 2021 Farm Fresh Atlas has arrived!

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NEWS

The Farm Fresh Atlas is here! Go beyond farmers’ markets to support local farmers through the Farm Fresh Atlas of Southern Wisconsin, organized by Madison-based REAP Food Group. Originally launched in 2002 as a trifold pamphlet, the latest edition is 40 pages detailing the region’s farms, farmers’ markets, restaurants, specialty stores, grocers, and other businesses dedicated to promoting good food grown well. Grab a copy at your local farmers’ markets or browse statewide at farmfreshatlas.org. ...

18 Jun 2021

REAP featured in USDA’s Seeds of Success series

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Uncategorized

REAP and our Farm Fresh Atlas partners were recently in the national spotlight! We were featured in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Seeds of Success series which highlighted a USDA Farmers Market and Local Food Promotion Program grant we received in 2016. The grant was awarded to launch, promote, and study the effects of a searchable, mobile-friendly, and online Farm Fresh Atlas. This support allowed us to create a consolidated Farm Fresh Atlas website for all state-wide Atlas publications. As a result: Atlas listees sales increased 50% from 2017 to 2019 Weekly customer counts increased 293% from 394 in 2017 to 1,500 in 2019 A three-year economic survey of farmers indicated 80% had increased sales resulting from the guides, an increase of $4.1 million in the state farm economy Forty-six beginning farmers and 322 experienced farmers received marketing training and resources to further advance their businesses Thank you so much to the USDA for their support of this project! It is an honor to publish the Farm Fresh Atlas of Southern Wisconsin each year and to advocate for Wisconsin's farmers and food producers. To view the entire report, please click here. ...

19 Mar 2021

REAP seeking full-time Farm to School Director

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NEWS

[EDIT: POSITION CLOSED] Posting Date: March 18, 2021Deadline for Application: April 15, 2021Location: Madison, WIAppointment: Full Time Join a team that is passionate about creating a just and sustainable local food system for all residents in Dane County and WI. We seek a team member who will share our commitment to bring curiosity, inclusivity, collaboration to the work of building a just, culturally responsive and resilient food system in Dane County and Wisconsin. Position Summary:REAP Food Group, based in Madison, WI, is inviting applications for a Farm to School Director, a role that will bring more healthy, WI-grown, and culturally appropriate food to children in K-12 settings, and provide educational resources around food and agriculture that reinforce our organizational values of equity and inclusivity. The primary focus of the work will be at the city and county level. REAP’s Farm to School partnership with Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) has been a model statewide for growing markets for local farmers and increasing access to local and sustainable food for all children. The Farm to School Director candidate will collaborate with colleagues who oversee institutional food procurement and community outreach programming to implement REAP’s Farm to School Program and provide strategic direction and program management to continue to grow our impact.REAP’s mission is to transform communities, economies and lives through the power of good food by: building the next generation of healthy eaters and leaders through youth education; educating and connecting sustainable WI farmers to institutional and individual buyers; strengthening and amplifying community-led solutions to food system challenges; Educating consumers so they can be advocates for actions and policies that support an equitable, just and environmentally sustainable food system; and, celebrating with community around good food*. We define “good food” as food that is produced, processed, sold, consumed, and re-circulated in a manner that is transparent, is racially and ethnically equitable and socially just, builds up thriving local economies, and promotes healthy and sustainable natural, social, and economic environments. Position Summary: Strategic Leadership– ● Lead strategy and goals for the Farm to School initiatives including the Farm to School Partnership with MMSD ● Nurture our Farm to School Project partnership with MMSD while evaluating strategic opportunities to grow our work to other districts in the county; ● Be informed and when needed, engaged, on relevant local, state and federal policies affecting the Farm to School program; Program Management: ● Oversee our initiatives to engage and educate diverse communities of kids including Harvest of the Month activities, summer Farm to School programming, and fresh snack educational resources; ● Support and facilitate successful procurement and promotion of local foods by Madison Metropolitan School District for menu items, garden bars, snack program and UpRoot Farm to School food truck; ● Manage REAP Farm to School Snack Program to ensure qualified schools receive a weekly REAP-sourced fresh snack and accompanying educational materials; Outreach and Communication– ● Represent REAP and the Farm to School Program on statewide network of WI Farm to School leaders, and on local coalitions and committees....