These are market outlets for farmers to sell their produce directly to wholesale buyers. The auctions are usually owned and controlled by the farmers that participate.

Also called Food Business Incubators, community kitchens provide aspiring specialty food processors with access to certified kitchen facilities and often technical support.

This refers to farmers partnering voluntarily to promote their independent farms via multi-farm promotional strategies.

With five of these now developed in Wisconsin, this particular collaborative promotions effort deserves its own category.

Our definition of a Local Food Initiative is limited to effort involving "groups" of farmers. However, given the community emphasis of CSAs, we do include some reference points below. For more about CSAs...

Nearly 200 farmers markets are located across Wisconsin. To avoid duplication, we highlight a few markets below and direct you to the SavorWisconsin website.

Programs to connect schools to local farms are in place across the country.

This category includes farmer co-ops that focus primarily on local markets.

A new model for reaching consumers directly with local farm products. The ones presented here involve participation by multiple farms, though not necessarily farmer ownership.

This category includes local efforts with the specific goal of increasing purchase and consumption of local foods, but they employ a wide variety of strategies, including combinations of those described above.

This catch-all category includes statewide and national efforts to support local food initiatives, as well as local programs in which "farms and food" may be part of but not central to their mission.