‘Farm to institution’ is the practice of purchasing locally grown foods for food service settings like schools, hospitals, colleges, and business campuses. This growing movement supports agricultural producers, increases meal quality and transparency, and provides opportunities for connection between rural and urban communities.
While institutions already purchase grain in many forms, they often lack the knowledge, relationships, skills, or culinary capacity to incorporate local grains. Identifying a need for network building and resource development to increase the use of grains, beans, and oilseeds in Midwest institutional culinary programs, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) and Artisan Grain Collaborative (AGC) established the Grains to Trays initiative. This initiative represents a long-term vision to simultaneously grow staple crop value chains and farm to institution efforts in the region, focusing on strategies to increase the use of regionally produced and processed grains in Upper Midwest institutions.
This webpage acts as a clearinghouse for research, farmer support resources, and practitioner tools developed as part of these efforts.
