To the casual observer, the potential impact of a nondescript warehouse on Madison’s eastside isn’t obvious. But for those who have dedicated the last several years and more to transforming the building into a storage and processing hub for area farmers, the possibilities are abundant. Madison’s new multimillion-dollar, 10,000-square-foot Foodshed Partnership facility is capable of funneling several hundred thousand pounds of local produce each year into Dane, Jefferson and Waukesha county restaurants, food pantries and cafeterias at hospitals, schools and business campuses. “It’s about giving farmers a lot more room to scale and grow,” says Rachael Maysels, executive director of Madison’s FairShare CSA Coalition.
The organization is one of three nonprofit partners operating the space, in addition to REAP Food Group and Community Action Coalition for South Central Wisconsin (CAC). REAP and FairShare will connect small-scale and underserved growers to the Foodshed Partnership and provide ongoing training, and CAC will help steer the Foodshed’s mission. A series of community input meetings, led by CAC’s executive director, Meghan Mietchen, initially identified a key issue the facility could help address: bridging the gap between local farmers and wholesale markets.
So how will it do that? The process begins with the work of local growers who prepare the soil, plant seeds and nurture crops to maturity. This produce, once harvested, is transported to the Foodshed Partnership facility, where it’s stashed in cold or dry storage. From here, there are a few paths it might follow. On path A, the produce — let’s say tomatoes — spends a few days in storage before it’s delivered to a local restaurant. On path B, the tomatoes are run through a large-scale industrial processing line to be washed and diced, then packaged, frozen and sent off to a hospital cafeteria kitchen. Alternatively, path C transfers those chopped tomatoes from the processing line into the adjacent production kitchen, where they’re made into pasta sauce for food pantry distribution and spaghetti lunch at a nearby elementary school…