For those of us working on building our regional food infrastructure, it has been a busy couple of months. Up to March 6, we were writing, emailing, and zooming to develop successful proposals to DATCP to rebuild our food systems. The Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) program is a one time USDA Agricultural Marketing Service effort to provide states with capital to make our food systems more resilient. Of all the states, Wisconsin received the second largest federal investment: $27million. Only California had a larger program.
Wisconsin Food Systems submitted a proposal to build the information platform our small and medium sized businesses need to improve B2B transactions. We also wrote letters of support for several other proposals to demonstrate that we are in this together. One of those proposals supported the expansion of RE Golden’s warehouse in Madison. Bobby Golden was a founder of the local wholesale food movement, bringing truckloads of food to ICC and Mifflin St. Coop in the early 70s. His company, now owned by his son and partners, continues the tradition, serving Madison area restaurants with local foods. Other proposals supported the Wisconsin Food Hub Cooperative’s efforts to move Wisconsin produce throughout the state, with a special commitment to serving the underserved. Our Tribal partners submitted several proposals to restore Tribal trade routes for foods native to Wisconsin such as manoomin, maple syrup, and white corn.
Proposals were due March 6 and the word is that 255 proposals were submitted, totaling $158 million in requests. We expect funded projects will be announced this summer. Perhaps state government and private investors might step in to further meet this demonstrated need? We know that not all the projects requested will be funded through this program so making sure that our work is inclusive and strategic is more important than ever. We will continue to build alliances and work together to realize the food systems we envision.
(Rumor has it that this program was inspired by the Madison Terminal Market report. How cool is that?)
Wisconsin Food Systems, Inc. 