Poultry producers: please respond to this processing needs survey

A group of Southwest Wisconsin poultry producers is exploring the feasibility of locating a USDA poultry processing facility in Southwest Wisconsin.  They define poultry loosely to include chickens, turkeys, waterfowl, guinea hens, and rabbits.  Now they are working on assessing the potential demand for such a facility.  They have developed a survey for farmers in southwestern Wisconsin, northeastern Iowa, and northern Illinois to figure out if and how they might use such a processing plant.

The deadline to fill out the survey is November 30th.  Farmers can fill the survey out on-line or print out a paper survey and mail it in.  Below are links to the electronic survey, to a press release with more information about the project, and to the paper survey.

For more information please contact the project coordinators at driftlesspoultrycooperative@gmail.com, and they also have a facebook page.

Food and Agriculture at a Crossroads: Setting Competition Priorities to Protect Producers, Consumers, and the Supply Chain

Public Roundtable: December 7, 2018, UW-Madison Law School

The American Antitrust Institute (AAI) and the University of Wisconsin Law School are pleased to present the competition roundtable Food and Agriculture at a Crossroads: Setting Competition Priorities to Protect Producers, Consumers, and the Supply Chain. The roundtable will take up major competition policy issues involving concentrated food and agriculture markets, their interconnections to the broader national and global supply chains, and strategies for improving competition. The roundtable will begin with a briefing on the state of competition in food and agriculture, with a focus on gaps in the law or legal doctrine that makes developing competition policy particularly difficult. The day will feature three panels on topics that have important implications for competition enforcement and policy. Experts in antitrust and regulation from government, industry, advocacy, and academia will frame major competitive issues through the lens of different stakeholder and enforcement perspectives. The morning and afternoon discussions will each close with a roundtable session that gives participants the opportunity to react to and candidly discuss themes, issues, and policy recommendations for competition enforcement.

The roundtables are entitled:

  • Squeezed From Both Ends: Seller Market Power, Powerful Buyers, and Protecting the Producer

  • The Consumer and Food Sovereignty: Rising Concentration and Its Effects on Food Prices, Choice, and Quality

  • Food Supply Chains: Integration, Globalization, and What it Means for Competition and Stability

Registration is free for the December 7th event at the Law School, but required. For more information and to register, go to: https://www.antitrustinstitute.org/event/2018foodagrountable/

Family Farm Defenders, Wisconsin Farmers Union, the UW Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems and other partners are organizing a reception and community panel for the night before the Roundtable, December 6, 2018, tentatively at the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery Town Center, 7-9pm. No registration for this event is required.

Dick Cates retirement party

Dick Cates is a farmer raising beef cattle in the Spring Green area. Or is he???

Please join CIAS for a celebration of Dick Cates and his 23 years of service to the UW-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. During his time as director of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers, senior lecturer in the Department of Soil Science and interim Farm and Industry Short Course director, Dick educated and mentored beginning farmers, promoted land stewardship through managed grazing, and led sustainable agriculture efforts across Wisconsin.

Dick’s retirement party will be on Thursday, November 1st from 4:30 to 6:30pm in the Jackson-Tanner Commons on the third floor of the Soil Science Building, 1525 Observatory Dr. The nearest parking ramp is the Observatory Dr. Ramp (lot 36). Check the campus map for building location and parking options.

Refreshments will be served.

If you plan to attend, please RSVP here. Thank you!

#DairyTogether road trip!

Join other dairy farmers and coops on August 13 to advance solutions to the dairy crisis. There is a bus leaving from Wisconsin, full of dairy farmers. The bus will stop along the way for media opportunities and to pick up attendees in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

More details on Agrimark’s event page:

Discovering the world of wines

Want to learn about 
WINE and WINEMAKING? 

University of Wisconsin – Madison HORT 375.001-Discovering the World of Wines and Vines (21+ only; 2 credits) 

THIS SUMMER 2018 (6/18 – 8/12)

Moore Hall room 128 MW 5:00-7:30 pm

Open to students and the general public!

Contact info: Dr. Amaya Atucha  atucha@wisc.edu
Enrollment info: kjones26@wisc.edu

Farms organized as worker coops

Erika Inwald, the National Coordinator of the Domestic Fair Trade Association is seeking our assistance. As part of her Master’s program at New York University, she is working on a research project about farms that are structured as worker cooperatives. She would like develop a list of these kinds of farms and conduct interviews with the owners. She has asked for our help in identifying these farms.

To facilitate our input she developed a simple google survey:
“My goal with the questionnaire is to identify more people to talk to about this subject and identify more worker co-op farms that might exist.”

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdz-rIhYDprISqHSn_A1Rk4pVGfjN54JWozuyh2yof_XgrM2A/viewform

Iowa County Farm Tour and Gulf Seafood Monday October 9, 2017

Join Iowa County’s Uplands Farmer-led watershed group for a cover crops farm tour and seafood lunch

  • 9am         Fazenda Boa Terra produce farm (Lidia Dungue and John Middleton) 6580 State Rd  23, Spring Green
  • 10:15am   Walk to Michael Dollans’ inter-seeded cover crops, State Rd 23
  • 11:15am    Uplands Cheese dairy farm (Scott and Illana Mericka and Andy and Caitlin Hatch), 5023 State Rd 23 N, Dodgeville

The farm tour will be followed by lunch at Uplands Cheese Farm.

Come discuss cover crop practices for fresh market produce, grain and dairy systems. See no-till drilling irrigation, manure management, and other strategies to conserve soil and nutrients. Then enjoy brats and seafood caught by fishermen in the Gulf – whose challenges with nutrient build-up and biological die-off in the Gulf Dead Zone we seek to help through out conservation practices.

There is no fee, but please RSVP by Thursday, October 5 at http://bit.ly/covercroptourlunch or contacting Margaret Krome, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute (608) 283-1440, mkrome@sbcglobal.net or Gene Schriefer, Iowa County Extension (608) 930-9850.

Co-sponsored by: MFAI, Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship, Iowa County Farm Bureau, Iowa County Land Conservation Department, The McKnight Foundation, MOSES, Organic Valley, Savanna Institute, Southwest Badger RC&D, UW Extension, DATCP, UW-CIAS