Agriculture

Wisconsin Chili school lunch earns $100,000 USDA grant

Published

5 years ago

October 9, 2019

Putting farm-fresh foods in front of kids, the USDA added a scoop of support for a Wisconsin school recipe.

The La Crosse County Health Department launched a Farm-to-School program to shift local fruits and vegetables from side dishes to entrees. The result boiled down to a taste-tested and approved chili recipe. While creating the recipe, the goal was to use locally-sourced ingredients from area farmers. It had to be approved by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

The health department did a soft, statewide launch last year and had 75,000 participants in the Wisconsin Chili Lunch.

Maggie Smith, health educator, said the USDA rewarded these efforts with a $100,000 grant.

“What that will do is it will really put legs under the project and give us the ability to work with different growers,” Smith said. “We are looking at some dried beans that are grown locally. We are looking to grow those supply-chains among frozen food products and make them more accessible statewide.”

The Wisconsin Chili recipe can be found online.

Related Topics:fruits school lunch

Kaitlyn Riley

Kaitlyn Riley’s passion for communications started on her family’s dairy farm in Gays Mills, Wis. Wanting to share agriculture’s story, she studied strategic communications and broadcast journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In college, she held officer positions with the Association of Women in Agriculture and Badger Dairy Club while volunteering as a news reporter for the college radio station. She also founded the university’s first agricultural radio talk show, AgChat. In her professional career, Kaitlyn has worked in radio, print and television news doing everything from covering local events to interviewing presidential candidates, and putting back on her barn boots to chat with farmers in the field. Today, Kaitlyn can be seen covering local stories that matter to you in the La Crosse area.