University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
The Center for Food in Community and Culture logo by Donna Mleziva Green Lantern Co-op, Madison, Wisconsin 1970, photo by Jerry Lasky

On the Front Burner:

Poster by Kristi Edminister and Jenna Dunnick 
On Thursday, Nov. 19, 5-6 pm in MAC 208, the Center for Food in Community and Culture will be sponsoring a panel discussion entitled: “Are We Restoring or Destroying Health? Exploring Agriculture from the Ground Up.” The panel of scientists will consist of Angie Bauer-Dantoin, Human Biology; Joanne Gardner and Debra Pearson, Nutritional Sciences; and Vicki Medland, Biology and Cofrin Center for Biodiversity. They will discuss the health impacts of contemporary agricultural and food production practices and address questions from the audience. 

After the panel discussion everyone is welcome to a reception, with refreshments, 6-7 in the MAC Wintergarden, in honor of the publication of Critical Food Issues by Center faculty.  The contributors will be recognized, and there will be a brief presentation by the editors about Critical Food Issues and the work of the Center.

The Downtown Food Project planning committee invites you to provide input on a potential downtown food cooperative, commercial kitchen and education complex. Please click the link to take the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=GePeZ3lccf50asWVNywdZw_3d_3d

Get the 2009 Farm Fresh Atlas of Eastern Wisconsin and Discover what regional farmers and artisans are producing this year and support sustainable agriculture.

The 4th Annual Wisconsin local foods summit will be held Jan. 21-22, 2010 at the ramada convention center in eau claire, wi. It will be held jointly with the 12th annual midwest value added agriculture conference. will allen of milwaukee's growing power urban agricultural organization will be a featured speaker. Check the website www.rivercountryrcd.org/valad.html for details.

Features Cover of Volume 1 of Critical Food Issues
Table of Contents for Critical Food Issues

Poster for Center Opening, created by Lisa Pollesch
Poster for Center Opening

Barth Anderson
Barth Anderson of Wedge Community Co-op in Minneapolis lectured on "The Omnivore's Solution: How to Find Food that Sustains" on Thursday, Oct. 25. Read more...
Denise Sweet
Dee Sweet, Wisconsin Poet Laureate and UW-Green Bay professor, shares a poem "In September: Ode to Tomatoes"
nutritional label
Zero trans fats labeling is misleading; and tropical oil substitutes for trans fats may be not be better.
Center News

Center Faculty publish on Critical Food Issues

Laurel E. Phoenix and Lynn Walter have edited a two volume collection on Critical Food Issues: Problems and State of the Art Solutions Worldwide, which will be published by Praeger Publishing in September of 2009. Among the contributors are Center faculty members--Joanne Gardner, Regan Gurung, Aeron Haynie, Vicki L. Medland, Debra Pearson, Larry Smith, and Sandra M. Stokes. The authors take an interdisciplinary approach to the examination of problems ranging from food insecurity and natural resource depletion to disordered eating and declines in food quality. The main focus of each of the 31 chapters is on strategies devised by farmers, scientists, artists, and citizens from around the world to address these problems.
It's Time to Harvest Art at the Potato Patch

See snapshots of Chris Style’s potato print project created from potatoes grown in the potato patch planted by Larry Smith outside of the University Union East Entrance.  Students in Style’s Intro., Intermediate, and Adv. Printmaking courses took part in a potato print workshop.  Potatoes were harvested, cut using various tools, rolled up with ink, and stamped onto cotton towels, pillow shams, and paper. Besides printing from the carved potatoes, they also printed the potato plant and roots, by rolling it up in ink and putting it through the printing press.  The potato prints on paper will be scanned and used by Style in the Potato Project Zine. Potato’s are inspiration as well as sustenance.

The entire potato patch will be harvested on October 24 at 1:00. Larry Smith and Chris Style are working with the University Union kitchen staff to cook up potato soup to share with the campus community.  Look for updates.  Just how many potato’s will be harvested on October 24?  

Potato Patch Art Project Begins with Planting
University of Wisconsin – Green Bay Potato Patch Art Project 2008 C. Style and L. Smith Location: Outside UWGB Student Union near Little Campus Store window. This project originated as collaboration between Professors Chris Style (Arts & Visual Design) and Larry Smith (Social Change & Development). Both are members of the Center for Food in Community & Culture. Larry Smith planted the potatoes on June 17, 2008 with support and cooperation from UWGB Dean of Liberal Arts & Sciences Scott Furlong, Facilities Manager Paul Pinkston, Director of University Union Rick Warpinski, Student Government Association representative Brad Fischer and the Center for Food in Community & Culture while Professor Sarah Detweiler (Arts & Visual Design) photographed the planting process.
Larry Smith selecting potatoes for planting, photo by Sarah Detweiler
The project celebrates the United Nations’ declaration of 2008 as The International Year of the Potato http://www.potato2008.org/ for its extraordinary role in supporting human welfare since it was exported to the world from its roots in Peru in the sixteenth-century. The Potato Patch calls attention to issues of nutrition and sustainability as it demonstrates how easily potato power can turn lawn to garden. The potatoes will provide creative sustenance for Prof. Style and her students as they make potato prints, and feed the creative soul through photographic and drawn documentation of the potato patch to create a zine that will be placed in the new Cofrin Library Zine Collection (started by Sarah Detweiler and Stephan Perkins in spring 2008 and located on the 3rd floor). The potatoes may also be eaten. . . during a potato soup feast – a frugal repast sometime after harvest with the public invited.
Center Opening Features Lecture by Jack Kloppenburg on "Resolving the Omnivore's Dilemma: Eating Pleasurably and Sustainably in the 21st Century."

Jack Koppenburg lecture, photo by Christine Style

On Thursday, March 27 at 5:00 pm in Mary Ann Cofrin Hall 208, an overflow crowd heard Dr. Kloppenburg, Professor of Rural Sociology at University of Wisconsin-Madison, describe his work promoting local and regional food production. His lecture was followed by a reception and brief presentation by Lynn Walter on why we developed the Center for Food in Community and Culture at the University of Wisconsin. >p. 2

At the opening reception, Christine Style presented a slide show of images of food and agriculture. You can see her work as a rather large pdf, by clicking here.


Anne Kok of the Center for Food in Community and Culture was suddenly taken from us in a car accident on Monday, February 4 on her way home to Sturgeon Bay. Anne's interest in food and community focused on food security issues in Brown County. Anne was Associate Professor and Chair of Social Work. Anne and her students conducted a food security survey of vulnerable populations in Brown County, Wisconsin in 1998, 1999, and again in 2004. Karen Early, Nutrition Educator at Brown County Cooperative Extension was her collaborator in these surveys, which were done under the auspices of the Brown County Food and Hunger Network. She will be missed by her family, many students, friends, and colleagues.


Aeron Haynie Develops New "Culture of Food" Courses Dr. Aeron Haynie was the first recipient of the Instructional Development Council's new Advanced Course Development Grant to develop a food studies course for the humanities. The course, "The Culture of Food," is being offered for the first time this fall. It will show how the humanities can be used to examine contemporary debates about scarcity, cultural difference, gender, ethnic identity... making important intellectual issues concrete and real to students, to "connect learning to life" in a very visceral way. The course is likely to include a service-learning component (a trip to a food pantry, for example). She is also offering a new freshman seminar on this same theme.
Peterson Thesis on Traditional Oneida Food Systems Last spring term, Diana L. Peterson completed her thesis, entitled "Three Sisters Gardening: Rejuvenating a Traditional Food System with the Oneida Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin." Dr. Laurel Phoenix, a faculty associate of the Center, served as Peterson's major professor. This case study of ten community gardeners who raised a traditional Three Sisters garden for two growing seasons analyzes the sustainability of individual traditional community gardens. She concludes that this part of the Tsyunhehkw^ program, focusing on rejuvenating and preserving traditional agricultural practices, has been helpful in that regard.