Smart new grant program announced supporting value-added food businesses.

Farms and foods businesses in Southern Wisconsin just got a major boost that others should emulate. 

Badgerland Financial, our regional Farm Credit Administration lender, has just launched a very positive, creative new grant program that supports their customers and others who are interested in farm diversification and food entrepreneurship.

Their 'Beginning With Badgerland' grant program gives up to $1,500 grants to explore and grow food based businesses.  

Grants are available to any beginning farmer living in Badgerland Financial territory (see attached map), regardless of age.  The farmer needs to have less than ten years of experience operating a farm and should be able to show that farming is a part-time or full-time vocation.  (Full text is below)

This program includes the use of funds for developing value-added food products at licensed food processing facilities.

Our Innovation Kitchens can be used to develop these value-added products.  We have several programs that enable people to learn about growing their own small value-added food businesses.  The Badgerland Financial application is linked below.

There is great demand for regional and specialty foods.  This grant program gives Badgerland customers and others a way to grow and build businesses to meet this demand.  

This is a great tool for launching and growing farms and food businesses in Wisconsin.  Others should emulate.

Download the Badgerland Financial grant application

Badgerland Financial territory map 

Innovation Kitchens


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Below is the full description of the program.  Badgerland Financial's emerging market specialist Paul Dietmann's contact information is at the end:


October 23, 2013

Our Beginning with Badgerland Grant program is now up and running.  Grants are available to any beginning farmer living in Badgerland Financial territory (see attached map), regardless of age.  The farmer needs to have less than ten years of experience operating a farm and should be able to show that farming is a part-time or full-time vocation.

There are three grant funding levels depending on the amount of business—if any--that the farmer does with us:

• Beginning farmers who are Badgerland Financial loan customers with a loan principal balance of $50,000 or more can receive up to $1,500 in grant funding.
• Beginning farmers who use Badgerland Financial’s tax, accounting, or other related services, or have a principal balance of less than $50,000 on loans with us, or are “next generation” farmers that represent the next generation of a farm operation that already has a lending relationship with us (for example, the daughter of a family that has a loan with Badgerland Financial) can receive up to $500 in grant funding.
• Beginning farmers who do not have any business relationship with Badgerland Financial can receive up to $250 in grant funding.

Grant funds can be used to pay for a variety of farm business-related expenses including:

• The first year of tax or farm accounting services from a Badgerland Financial tax consultant or farm accounting specialist
• Purchase of farm accounting software
• Tuition for courses in farm business management, accounting, or related topics
• Registration fees for farm-related conferences or workshops
• Fees for development of a new value-added agricultural product at a licensed food processing establishment
• FSA guarantee fees
• Other farm business expenses

To apply for a grant, the farmer simply needs to fill out a brief application.  The Beginning with Badgerland Grant application form is available on our website, www.badgerlandfinancial.com, in the lower right-hand corner of the front page.  It can be completed and submitted online, or printed off and mailed, e-mailed, or faxed in.  There is no application deadline. 

If the application is approved, the applicant will receive a confirmation letter along with a W-9 and a postage-paid return envelope they can use to send receipts for grant-eligible expenses.  Expenses will be reimbursed 100% up to the total amount of the recipient’s eligibility level.

In addition to the Beginning with Badgerland grant program, we are developing an e-newsletter for beginning farmers and people who work with beginning farmers (if you’d like to be added to our e-mail list, please let me know).  We will also have a Beginning with Badgerland page on our new website, which is slated to be live by mid November.

If you have any questions, give me a call or send me an e-mail.

Thanks,

Paul Dietmann

Emerging Markets Specialist

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Badgerland Financial

1430 North Ridge Drive, PO Box 70

Prairie du Sac, WI 53578

608.370.6956 (o)  608.963-7763 (c)  608.643.0116 (f)

Toll free cell: 800.236.3376

NMLS #868481

badgerlandfinancial.com

Looking for regional food ingredients for your restaurant, store or brand?

The Innovation Kitchens we're helping have access to thousands of pounds of sustainably raised fall crops, grown in Wisconsin and nearby.

Think beautiful deep-orange pumpkin purees, butternut squash purees and chopped/frozen late season crops including colorful bell peppers.  How about delicious apple sauces and apple butters?

These great regional foods can all be farm identified.   They are lightly processed, frozen, or packed in jars for year-round sale and use.

Frozen purees and chopped/frozen mixes can be used by restaurants, stores and food entrepreneurs year-round as ingredients or specialty foods.  We can also package them in consumer sized containers for commercial sale.  Ongoing storage options are available.

We're looking for regional relationships with buyers and sellers that want to celebrate regional foods in the area.

Interested in access to great regional ingredients and foods year round?  Here's a great way to get them.


Innovation Kitchens

Remaking the Food System

The world is looking for solutions to make our food system more resilient, sustainable and effective.  This new article from Stanford Social Innovation highlights the emerging role that loan guarantees can play in moving this work forward.

"Many of us in the social enterprise sector—investors, entrepreneurs, philanthropists—see the need for an alternative food system that dramatically expands access to fresh food and supports sustainable local food production, and that ultimately helps create more resilient communities. For that to happen, we need to get outside our comfort zones and work together. Collaboration between philanthropists and investors in particular is essential to building an alternative food system."

"It helps that food is a hot investment area in Silicon Valley, especially on the distribution end, where scalable online distribution businesses are attracting substantial capital."
 

Smart investors, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists can utilize the Innovation Kitchen model to make regional foods profitable and sustainable.

Remaking the Food System.   Stanford Social Innovation Review.  Sept 30, 201.  By Don Shaffer, President and CEO of RSF Social Finance.

Innovation Kitchens 

"The Invisible Faces of Hunger"

"Madison, where the farm-to-table movement thrives and foodies flock to an eclectic restaurant scene, is also home to the increasingly worrisome, yet often unrecognized issue of food insecurity."

Thanks to authors Nancy Christy & Neil Heinen.

 

The Invisible Faces of Hunger.  Madison Magazine.  October 2013

Photo credit: Madison Magazine

"We just need more farmers"

Smaller scale food processing plants are needed to grow new farms and to help existing farms diversify.

Without safe, legal processing facilities there is no way new farms and new foods can reach the market efficiently.

Their first hurdle is getting into the game financially.  The expense of starting can be daunting.

My pal Terra Brockman is quoted in a recent article on this subject:

"Younger farmers are having difficulty breaking into agriculture, and the reasons mostly boil down to land and capital, said Terra Brockman, founder of Bloomington-based agricultural organization, The Land Connection."

But once these new young farmers are in the game, what do we do to help them grow their businesses?  Sure there are farmer's markets and CSA programs, but I'm convinced we need smaller scale, appropriately equipped food processing plants to move the bounty of these small farms into the wider marketplace year round.

“There’s never been a public more conscious about their eating habits,” he (Dylan Cook) said. “For what it is, it’s never been easier. We just need more farmers.”

The demand for regional foods and specialty foods has never been higher.  Unless we provide our new farms the processing plants to take their foods to market year round we are not going to solve this problem.

Farming can be tough road to hoe for the young.  Bloomington (IL) Pantagraph.com

The Land Connection.  Healthy farms and healthy food for beautiful Central Illinois.  Great work Terra and friends.

Photo for a Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen farm customer marketing their produce year round.

"Costco: Private Label Only Gets Bigger" - Why contract food manufacturing matters.

Smart North American businesses are increasingly selling food products under their own private labels.

This is not a trend, it's a fact.  The European food system has been perfecting this model for decades.  Now we are catching up.

This is a huge opportunity for  contract food processors.

Here is a good article and quote from Costco's CEO backing this up:

“'I think the private label or controlled label, as long as it's quality, is going to become a bigger part of the business,' said Costco CEO Craig Jelinek..."

"When we first went to it about 22 years ago, it was very slow, but now anything that we put Kirkland Signature brand on, people are not concerned about trying it.”

For any business organization that wants to be connected to regional or specialty foods, now is the time to look at having products made and sold under your own private label. 

Costco:  Private Label Only Gets Bigger .  Store Brands / Decisions.  August 27, 2013

Photo is from the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen preparing local foods for a private label customer. 

"Q: What makes an entrepreneur great?" MIT Technology Review.

"Everyone I know has their own style.  The unifying characteristics are all the same:  drive, inability to play well with others, decisiveness, general indifference to reason on occasion."

The quote above is from Max Levchin, entrepreneur, tech leader, and founder of several companies including PayPal.

Mr. Levchin opens the Entrepreneurs section of MIT Technology Review's current article '35 Innovators Under 35'.

The quote is in the current MIT Technology Review, Sept/Oct 2013 - Creative Destruction.

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Photos from a creative new food entrepreneur working through the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen.

Here comes The Conscious Carnivore!

My friend Bartlett Durand and his amazing Black Earth Meats team just celebrated the arrival of their first retail store in Madison, The Conscious Carnivore.  Opening soon.

The Conscious Carnivore specializes in No Antibiotic No Hormone Local Beef, Pork and Chicken.

My family loves Black Earth Meats.  Everything about their food is wonderful.  Their story just keeps getting better.

We look forward to shopping at the Conscious Carnivore and introducing friends to this great story.

Congratulations Bartlett and all involved!

The Conscious Carnivore

Black Earth Meats

The Female Face of Farming - 1 million women working the land

We are seeing many more women farmers as we develop our commercial food processing operations at the Wisconsin Innovation Kitchen and elsewhere.

There was a good article and photo essay recently in Modern Farmer Magazine titled 'Photographing the Female Face of Farming'.

This is an important quote from the article:

"...the number of women-operated farms had more than doubled between 1982 and 2007. If you add primary and secondary operators, women make up 30 percent of U.S. farmers, with nearly 1 million women working the land."

This photo is my friend Christine from Solveien Farm delivering produce to the Innovation Kitchen for light preparation and freezing for commercial markets.

The Innovation Kitchen model is creating new and profitable opportunities for farms, food businesses and people who support sustainable food.  Congratulations Christine. You're one in a million!  


Photographing the Female Face of Farming.  Modern Farmer Magazine, Aug 29, 2013, Lori Rotenberk.   Photographer Marji Guyler-Alaniz

Solveien Farm - Albany, WI area

Putting America Back To Work - "Consumers are hungry for a sense of community. (Locally made) goods have a distinctive character and authenticity."

Parade Magazine did a great Labor Day issue about putting America back to work.

Many ideas focused on opportunities in regional and local commerce.

"Consumers are hungry for a sense of community.  (Locally made) goods have a distinctive character and authenticity."  - Rajeev Batra, PH.D, University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

I think this argument is especially valuable in the world of local, regional and specialty foods.

Putting America Back to Work:  5 Ways 'Made in the USA' Is Staging a Comeback.  Parade Magazine Sept 1, 2013

Photo credit:  Michael Edwards and Parade Magazine