REAP Food Group was founded in the late ’90s, and officially registered as a nonprofit in 2002. For the past two and a half decades, it’s worked to connect the community with local food producers.

You might know REAP best through the Farm Fresh Atlas, a directory that helps consumers find local food in Wisconsin.  A print edition of the Atlas might be hanging on your fridge. It’s also now a web database, and the 2024 edition details over 400 farms, farmers’ markets, and producers.

The Farm Fresh Atlas is one example of REAP’s collaboration and understanding of regional food systems. Now, REAP is heading up a new, USDA-funded collaborative to create a food systems action plan for the Dane County region.

The action plan is dependent on input from local farmers, food retailers, institutional buyers, food banks and pantries, community organizations, and local residents. Our guests today liken the project to putting together a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle in order to build a more complete picture of our local food system.

REAP’s Executive Director Phil Kauth and Events Coordinator/Farm Fresh Atlas Cooardinator Noah Bloedorn join us in the studio for more on the action plan. Bill Warner, of Snug Haven Farm and the Dane County Food Council, also joins us for a conversation about growing south-central Wisconsin’s food systems.

We also talk about other new projects from REAP, including “Mosaic Dinners,” a storytelling and community-building project in partnership with Dane County Food Collective and UW-Madison Art Department Artist-in-Residence Marlon F. Hall.

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