Category Archives: Uncategorized

Conference on regional economic cluster development

Free event september 25th in Minneapolis: Regional Innovation Clusters and Economic Competitiveness

The Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul region and the Minnesota economy have benefited historically from competitive industries and innovative business, academic, and policy leadership.  This success is manifest through a concentration of corporate headquarters and innovation clusters in a range of industries – medical devices, life sciences, food, publishing, retailing, information technology, finance, insurance, and the arts, among others.

This forum will feature presentations and lessons learned from regional innovation cluster initiatives in Minnesota, Oregon, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Puebla, Mexico, and will explore job and economic development strategies through state, local, and educational policies.

 

Want to sell wholesale?

Looking for a buyer? The Local Food Expo has a couple of display areas for you at its meeting next Tuesday, September 18. Hosted by the Institutional Food Marketing Coalition, this event brings buyers and sellers together to swap business cards and learn about their mutual interests and concerns around wholesaling food grown in our region. They are especially interested in meat and cheese vendors. To register for the meeting. reserve a display table or learn more, go to www.ifmwi.org. Register now!

WANTED: a nuanced Driftless narrative

“Authenticity is a rare and valuable commodity, and people will travel far to find it,”writes editor-at-large Bobby Ghosh in Time’s Fall 2012 issue of Style and Design. And authenticity is about integrity. What does this tell us about developing a narrative for the Driftless that shelters the region’s integrity while inviting people into the region to taste of its bounty? Ghosh goes on to say, “When everyone wants a piece of paradise, can paradise stay intact?”

Need legal?

A colleague of many of ours at CIAS – Rachel Armstrong -  finished law school and set up a legal consultancy business, targeted at farmers. Farm Commons blog has some information that may be useful to you as you start or revamp your business.

For all you CSAers, Rachel is conducting a webinar on December 10th about the legal issues in running a CSA farm. The webinar will emphasize structuring volunteer programs in particular- unpaid interns, worker shares, or casual volunteers- while covering business legal issues in general for the CSA farm.

 

Organics as value-added approach for Driftless agriculture

Jim Riddle recently did a video on “What is Organic?” for SPNN and the St. Paul Farmers Market. View it at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQskVbWGT2c

During the interview, he was asked about GMOs, and why people are concerned. I mentioned that researchers in Europe have found Bt corn damages the liver and other internal organs of lab animals. Here’s a link to one of the studies I was referring to, “A Comparison of the Effects of Three GM Corn Varieties on Mammalian Health,” published in the International Journal of Biological Sciences: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm

From Lila Marmel @ WDRT

I produced a news story for WDRT, which will air TODAY on the WDRT Local News at 5:30 pm. The station is at 91.9 FM, and can also be streamed live at wdrt.org. The Local News is also available on the website for a week following the broadcast, but will probably not be posted until some time tomorrow. Look for it on the upper right area of the home page.

– Lila Marmel

Follow-up note: Go to http://snd.sc/SxXcrA to listen to the file. Nice interviews with Neil Heinen from Channel 3, the CBS affiliate in Southern Wisconsin, Brad Niemcek, the Kickapoo Community Kitchen, Tony Roth and their greenhouse / fishfarm. There are some fun clips of participants sharing some of their creative messaging on the Driftless — “Glacier-free since 8,000 BC”.

August 13 workshop speakers

The August 13th workshop “Telling Our Story” is happening soon! If you haven’t registered yet, please do. tiny.cc/driftlessforum

We are finalizing the day’s farm tour hosts, and have confirmed three speakers for the event. Nancy, Rossana and Neil will talk about agriturismo in Italy, and share their thinking on communicating about our farm and culinary richness  in the Driftless. Their bios are posted below. The rest of the day will be devoted to tours and participants crafting regional story themes. We are finalizing arrangements for an informal dinner the night before for those of you who plan to arrive Sunday.

Nancy Christy Heinen is the owner of the consulting firm Meaningful People, Places and Foods, working with companies, universities, organizations and nonprofits to craft well designed, meaningful food and work cultures. Her work has included creation of several social enterprises that merge sustainable agriculture and hiring people who have been disenfranchised from the workforce. Nancy is the former co-owner of the Wilson Street Grill and The Kennedy Manor. She has produced more than a half dozen videos and one related workbook on employing people with disabilities. She is currently working with the Goodman Community Center on a USDA grant to teach kids at risk skills needed to preserve local, sustainable food that is grown for the center and then made available for food pantry recipients in Dane County food pantries as well as Goodman’s own food pantry. She is the co-author of the monthly column Genuine Articles for Madison Magazine. She lives in Madison with her husband Neil and their dog Baguette.

Rossana Strunce is a native of Milan, Italy and moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 1994 with her husband and their two children. She attended the Interpreter School in Milan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she earned a Bachelor Degree in Anthropology as well as a TESOL certificate (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). She has worked as an interpreter for Madison Mayor Sue Bauman when she went to Mantova, Italy to sign a sister-city agreement. Since then she has participated in many of the Mantova-Madison visits as an interpreter in both locations, as well as giving several presentations about Italian culture and traditions. More recently, when she is not teaching English as a second language to immigrants, she has been undertaking the new project of promoting the Italian agriturismo in the United States. She just came back from a trip she organized accompanying a group of 8 Americans on a two-week vacation around Northern Italy. Her hobbies are playing tennis and travel with friends Neil Heinen and Nancy Christy to scout new agriturismo sites throughout Italy.

Neil Heinen is the Editorial Director for WISC TV and Madison Magazine. He is also co-author, along with his wife Nancy, of the monthly column Genuine Articles. Heinen has served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Opinion Journalists (formerly the National Conference of Editorial Writers) including serving as president in 2007, and is a past president of the AOJ Foundation. He is a member of the clinical faculty of the Kettering Foundation, and a member of the adjunct faculty of Edgewood College. He is a member of the board of We The People Wisconsin.