Natural Collaboration: Organic Valley's George Siemon

An unconventional business, Organic Valley Family of Farms has grown into a national leader in the organic movement.

By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach

In Corporate Report Wisconsin, October 2003
Profile: George Siemon, Organic Valley's CEO

Needle-tart, refreshing, sweet: a delicate, complex play of juicy flavors bursts onto my tongue with startling directness, as if I’d pierced the skin of a just-picked fruit. My eyes widen. It’s organic grapefruit juice, freshly squeezed and packed into 1/2 gallon paperboard cartons, then shipped, carefully chilled, thousands of miles to Wisconsin.

Across a polished wooden conference table sits George Siemon, the CEO of Organic Valley, the fourth biggest organics brand in America. “Isn’t that stuff just incredible?” says the lanky 50-year-old, his gleaming blond hair draping to his shoulders. “We just started making juice two years ago. I drink the grapefruit juice myself.”

The juice comes from a farmer-owned cooperative of 14 members, all organic growers of citrus in Florida. That co-op is, in turn, a member of CROPP Cooperative, whose 550 farmer-members make it the largest organic farmer-owned cooperative in North America. The La Farge, Wis.-based CROPP (Cooperative Regions of Organic Producer Pools) is better known by its brand name, Organic Valley Family of Farms.

A producer of organic dairy and eggs, produce, meats, and, lately, juice, it’s also known in the natural foods world as one of the remaining independent holdouts in a growth industry in which many of the successful pioneers have been bought up by giant corporations in recent years. At Organic Valley, where each of the seven directors on the board is a farmer-member who is elected by the other farmer-members, where members own the company directly and each member gets precisely one vote, selling out is not on the agenda.

Siemon arrived at work today dressed in jeans, sandals, and a blue denim shirt embroidered above the breast pocket with the Organic Valley logo: a gambrel-roofed, red barn amid a green field of crops. He’s usually less formal, he explains, but today he’s gussied up for the CRW photo shoot.

The photos, by the way, had been delayed for a bit while Siemon pushed a dollyful of Cryovac packaging wrap through the grounds of Organic Valley’s full-to-bursting headquarters, to the cheese-packing facility somehow jammed among the offices stuffed inside the main building, an old, converted dairy. Office space spills over into a row of trailers out back.

After the photos, Siemon headed upstairs and into his office and immediately slipped out of the sandals. That’s where I am now, sipping grapefruit juice and talking with a barefooted, nature-loving, vegetable farmer who, despite having no formal business education, shepherded the rise of an association of seven Wisconsin farmers into a national company with 2003 sales expected to top $150 million.

Siemon is doubtless one of the most important figures in organics today, and not just because of his work at Organic Valley. He’s also serving the first of five years on U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Standards Board.

He’s also, arguably, one of the most important figures for the future of rural America. For decades, small farms across the nation have been going out of business, thousands and sometimes tens of thousands each year. Organics, the fastest-growing agricultural sector, is seen as a rare ray of hope for farming families. In 2002 alone, Organic Valley brought 94 farmers – 44 in Wis. – into its fold, saving many from extinction.

Siemon, who also serves on the USDA’s Small Farm Advisory Committee, uses all of his muscle to advocate for rural communities and small-scale family farming, defend the environment, and champion the ethical, humane treatment of farm animals – which generally requires practices that are possible only on small farms.

Note that the championing of small farms is an Organic Valley value, not necessarily an organic one. Half of California’s $400 million organic produce market comes from just five big farms. Washington’s Cascadian Farms, the ninth biggest organics brand in the U.S., buys the ingredients for its organic microwavable dinners, frozen veggies, jams, and more from large farms in California and abroad. Colorado-based Horizon Organic, Organic Valley’s most formidable dairy competitor, fences thousands of cows inside grassless lots. Organic to the letter of federal law, these mega-farms use no pesticides and the cows are fed grain grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides or fungicides. (Horizon was purchased by Dean Foods, America’s largest dairy concern, in August, 2003.) Organic Valley, on the other hand, requires its livestock farmers to provide access to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, direct sunlight and natural pasture. Herds of 70-80 cows are ideal for such treatment.

Protecting rural communities and the environment is written into Organic Valley’s mission statement, and it shows in the company’s actions. Consider the site of the $4 million headquarters now under construction: a couple of hillsides away from its present Main Street address in La Farge (pop. 775), about two-thirds of the way from Madison to La Crosse. The nearest Interstate is 20 twisting miles north; the closest U.S. Highway several miles south along steep terrain.

“The expectation was that we’d move to be near a big city. Probably Chicago,” Siemon says. “We looked into it. But we decided it was right to stay in La Farge. This is where we grew up. It’s where we bank.” So instead of pulling 206 jobs out of the rural area, Organic Valley is staying put, with plans to add another 105 jobs. Local workers and, as much as possible, local contractors and locally sourced materials are being used to build the structure.

The facility will boast green goodies including cotton insulation, recycled steel siding, sheet rock made from recycled coke-ash, sustainable water-free plumbing and solar-powered parking lot lights. Windows will be specially glazed to let in a maximum of light with little glare, saving energy and providing workers with beautiful views.

“We wanted to build a green building. To provide a healthy environment for the employees, plus keep the electric bill down,” says Siemon. He firmly believes it’s good business to do good for everyone involved. “I think there’s a real positive value to creating a work environment that’s healthy and pleasant to be in. Employees react to that, don’t they? They feel, ‘Somebody cares for me.’ They’re going to work a little harder.”

He believes his approach to be the wave of the future in business: “The penny-pinching school of thought that says that all that counts is my profits, being greedy, taking advantage of your position to further yourself – it’s an attitude that’s short lived. Good business is sustainable and environmental. Really, it’s the golden rule. You can’t have a sustainable business based on another’s unsustainability.”

If this sounds like a hippie-era flower child at heart, that’s not too far off. Being a business executive was never his intention.

Growing up, Siemon yearned to get as far from his family’s office supply business as possible. “I swore I’d never be a business person,” he recalls. “I wanted to work outdoors in nature. I did outdoor bird photography when I was a kid, joined the Audubon Society. I spent my summers at farms, with family in Alabama. I was Nature Boy.”

In 1970, Siemon fled his West Palm Beach upbringing for the free-spirited atmosphere of Colorado State University. He worked his way through college as a hired hand at local farms. At first he majored in forestry, planning to become a naturalist, but he switched to animal science. “I got disillusioned with forestry,” he says. “I used to say, ‘I’m just going to count picnic tables for the government for the rest of my life.’”

After graduating in 1974, Siemon moved to Iowa with his wife, Jane, for her graduate work. Later they migrated east of the Mississippi and began farming vegetables in the rugged Kickapoo Valley region of southwest Wisconsin. (Jane continues to run the farm today.)

In 1988, they banded together with a few other farm families to form a cooperative to sell their produce. Siemon was tapped to run the business end of things. “I was the only one in the group who wasn’t raised on a farm,” he says. He was surprised to find how much useful knowledge he’d gleaned from his business family background: “You learn more sitting around the family table than you realize.”

The business gig was supposed to be temporary, Siemon says. “I kept saying, ‘I’ll get this thing going, and then I’ll quit. One more year, and then I’ll quit.” But the growth of CROPP led to an unexpected personal transformation.

“I resisted who I am today,” he says. “For the first half of this, I thought I would be quitting any time. My objective was to work my way out of a job. Then I realized that was self-centered. My whole mission in life had been to sit at home and watch the birds fly by. But it became obvious that CROPP has an important role as a farmer leader in the nation, and that I was part of that. And that I should accept that. Around 1995, we started hiring professional people. They were helpful in mentoring me and encouraging me. They said, ‘We need you.’”

“Becoming a boss was my biggest challenge,” he remembers. “You’re no longer one of the gang. You don’t know how friendly to be. How much conversation to have in the hall. You make a comment in the break room and it turns into some weird mandate.” Siemon had to accept that his former peers were no longer peers, exactly. “I had to learn how to fire friends. It’s just part of growing up. You can be mission oriented, but in order to have the luxury to serve your mission, you have to have good business.

“This place is very uncorporate, but not everyone sees that. ‘Oh, back in the old days,’ they say. Yeah, in the old days it was very tough and stressful. CROPP is changing. It’s got it’s own life. We can’t hold it back.”

That growth has not been without controversy. Over the past few years, Organic Valley squeaked by with a 1.5% profit margin, despite rocketing growth. Facing criticism from all around, not least from the bank, the co-op stubbornly refused to lower the price it paid farmers for their milk.

“Lowering the milk price would have been as easy as falling off a log,” says Siemon. “But one of our objectives is to pay farmers a good price. It’s an easy, easy path that, every time we hit a bump, oh, we’ll just lower the farmers’ pay price. That’s what happens in America. But we have a pay program the farmers expect us to deliver on. These relationships are the most important thing.”

He admits, “Quite honestly, we did take the co-op to the point of risk by growing so fast. That was the time when the mass market started to explode in organic milk. We went for that market. We grew fast, so we weren’t able to make money. The other side of it is, now we’re much bigger, serving more farmers, with a national brand well placed in the mass market. Sixty percent of our business is in the mainstream supermarkets now. We’re in chains with 900 stores. We couldn’t get in like that today. Do I regret taking that risk? No. We had to go into that world or we wouldn’t be in the position we are now: strong enough to influence the overall pricing structure.”

Ultimately, he says, he protected organic dairy’s price premium nationwide – the very thing that makes organic the hope for the future of family farming.

“My biggest dream,” says Siemon, “is that the organic marketplace will grow, that it will just explode, as individual people start taking responsibility as consumers.”
If that happens, Organic Valley farmers will be well placed, thanks to Siemon’s deft steering through the recent organic dairy boom. “We are a market leader in the industry now,” he says. “We are the number one dairy brand in natural foods markets, and number two in the mass market. We’re growing up to twice as fast as our competitor. We’re on the fast track. It’s incredibly exciting.”

George Siemon: An Inside Look
Favorite Musician:
John Trudell, known as much for his fusion of political poetry and rock and roll with Indian tribal chants and drums as for his chairmanship of the controversial American Indian Movement (AIM) through much of the 1970s.

On His Magazine Rack:
CEO
Harvard Business Review
Meat and Poultry
Rural Cooperatives
Smithsonian

Favorite Vacation:
Tent camping, horse packing or car camping in the Kickapoo Valley. “I like to hike. I like to use my feet.”

Best Way to Zone Out:
Western novels.

Fresh Twist on Fast Food

Master of hospitality Craig Culver serves up the scoop on his dining niche and growing franchise chain
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Corporate Report Wisconsin, June 2001

All is gold shovels, plaques and photographers at the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Culver’s restaurant in Winona, Minnesota, a town wedged on the narrow plain between the west bank of the Mississippi River and a set of craggy peaks still swathed in snow this sunny March day. A matched set of Chamber of Commerce members in bright green jackets and blue ties, along with a mayor in baggy brown corduroys, felt hat and puffy down vest, pose with Culver’s president and co-founder, Craig Culver—he’s flown in from the company’s Prairie du Sac headquarters, 30 minutes away by private plane—and with new franchisees Ellen and Mike Minter. “I’m so glad Culver’s is coming here.” a onlooker says happily, “Now I won’t have to drive half an hour to the one in La Crosse anymore.”

Newspaper and radio reporters cluster around the 51-year-old Culver, white-haired and hale, comfortably dressed in a dark blue sports jacket, light-colored slacks, and brown loafers. With round face and ready smile, he talks about signature menu items. What is a ButterBurger, anyway? “It’s a good old fresh tavern burger, that’s what it is.” Culver’s burgers are made of lean, never-frozen beef, each one cooked to order on a searing-hot grill. “A friend and I were reminiscing over a glass of beer one day, about the old drive-ins of Milwaukee. He told me about one, the Milky Way, that had ‘butter burgers.’ That sounded so great—I never forgot it. When we opened the first Culver’s, I thought, ‘The butter burger has to be there.” Culver’s ButterBurgers are served on buns that are lightly buttered, then grilled.

Frozen custard? It’s not egg pudding, says Culver; it’s a super-rich, dense, ice cream fortified with egg yolk. “The ripples you see when ice cream is being scooped, that’s the air that’s been mixed into it. You won’t see that in ours. There’s no better ice cream in the world than frozen custard.”

Culver is the star of this show, a visiting Wisconsin celebrity. But he persists in shifting the focus to the Minters, who will own and operate this, the 140th Culver’s restaurant. When someone asks, “What’s your favorite flavor?” Culver answers, “Vanilla,” then calls over the reporters’ heads, “Ellen, what’s yours?” “Snicker Swirl,” she responds. “Snicker Swirl!” Culver smiles and shakes his head. “These young people.”

Eight years ago, when she couldn’t find work with her brand new teaching degree from UW-Platteville, Ellen Minter took what she thought would be just a summer job at a Culver’s, the popular family eatery which has single-handedly revived Midwestern road food traditions like frozen custard and malteds. Now she’s building, marketing and staffing her own restaurant. “The success of our organization has been because of people like Ellen and Mike,” Culver declares.

Franchisees like the Minters pay Culver’s Franchising System, Inc. an initial $45,000 fee, plus 4% of net sales thereafter. Average gross revenue for a Culver’s restaurant is $1.5 million per store, much higher than the average for quick service hamburger chains ($1.15 million) or ice cream chains like Dairy Queen ($550,000). In the year 2000, Culver’s saw bottom line margins increase to 7 percent. Since its first successful franchise in 1990, the restaurant has spread to eleven states, from the Dakotas to Michigan, and as far south as Texas.

Though Craig Culver, this year’s recipient of Wisconsin’s SBA award for Small Business Person of the Year, is the president and co-founder of a growing company which expects to open its 150th location by the end of the year, he doesn’t have a formal business education. His 1973 undergraduate degree from UW-Oshkosh is in biology, and he’s kept up an interest in botany: at home, he grows native prairie plants like purple coneflower and big and little bluestem. He has a nostalgic passion for the classic American Graffiti-style 1950’s drive-ins. And right now, he’s busy filling the Midwest with restaurants that fit into a new niche. In the previously unnoticed gap between quick service (think Burger King) and casual dining (think Applebee’s and Denny’s), Culver has created a new category: “We’ve coined a term—quasual,” he says.

The restaurant model Culver and his wife, Lea, founded in 1984 serves up a unique blend of affordably-priced, service-oriented dining. You order and pay at a counter, fast-food style. But your meal is brought to your table restaurant-style, by a smiling team worker. The dining room is carpeted; the seats are comfortably padded. Coffee is served in real, solid, mugs, not disposable cups. Custard is made fresh several times a day. All food is cooked to order, not made ahead. Even the custard flavor of the day is mixed especially for your cone.

Craig Culver’s carefully worked out philosophy of quality plus committed citizenship underlies the restaurant’s special character. It’s central, he believes, to the success of the entire enterprise. “We’re in the quality and hospitality business,” he says, “not the price point business.” In the quality business, he says, “you can raise the prices when you need to. People are willing to pay for clean restrooms, for customer service.” Culver decries the “minimum wage” mentality in parts of the restaurant industry. “The best, brightest, smartest people—that’s what we want at Culver’s,” he says.

Good deeds get recognized, he says—“people want to support the good citizen”—but must also be done for their own sake. Culver’s public-interest activities over the years have been as diverse as helping establish a bald eagle reserve across the Wisconsin River from the company headquarters (“How can anyone say no to those beautiful eagles?”), promoting Wisconsin farmers, giving college scholarships for student employees, and contributing to the Hunger Task Force.

Within the company, education is promoted strongly. Management skills are honed at three-day managers’ workshops held at company headquarters every other month. Nearly one thousand Culver’s workers have completed the National Restaurant Association’s ServSafe food safety training program. Culver’s maintains four certified staff members on each shift—even though state and federal standards mandate only one certified person on staff.

But Culver’s, for all its successes, faces a serious challenge “There’s an old-fashioned family feel to our business,” says Culver. “Warmth, honesty, and loyalty. That’s what’s at greatest risk as we develop further. How am I going to protect this culture we started in 1984?” The answer, he believes, is in the Ellen and Mike Minters of the world. “It’s going to be by selecting the right operators to run our business,” he says. “I believe in the franchise system of owner-operators, who run the restaurants day in and day out. The Moms and Pops. I believe in those people, I really do.” Every Culver’s store has at least one operating partner who works in store fulltime, and who has at least 50 percent ownership.

To open your own Culver’s, you must first go through a six day, 60 hour in-store evaluation and orientation. That means long days of work, making custard, serving customers, cleaning up. It means classes and lectures, too. “We’ve had people drop out after a day or two,” Culver says. “That’s fine. Better they find out sooner, rather than later, that this isn’t what they want.” If your background check, application, and evaluation all pass muster, you move on to a twelve-week in-store training program, and your $5,000 application fee is applied to your franchise fee. If not, your money is refunded. By design, the orientation program only has space for 30 people per year, to control the rate of Culver’s growth.

There’s one other franchise requirement on which Culver is standing firm: any new restaurant must be somewhere near an existing one. “I won’t add any new markets,” he says. “We’re saying no to places like Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Carolina, California. I get calls every day that I turn down.” Why turn down opportunities for growth? “We’d be going crazy, and we’d wind up losing,” he says. “I don’t want to do that.” Each new market demands its own set of logistics, like developing affordable networks of quality food suppliers and building contractors. And a TV spot costs the same whether its broadcast area covers one Culver’s or ten. Plus, every new population that encounters a Culver’s has to learn what frozen custard is, what a ButterBurger is.

“The restaurants must be run to our standards,” Culver says. “That’s the one thing we can’t lose our grip on. It’s hard to say no. But we don’t have the infrastructure to grow like McDonald’s, adding 500 restaurants a year.”

Craig Culver learned the importance of careful growth the hard way back in 1987, with his first attempt at a franchise, in Richland Center. “They found out that they hated the restaurant business,” he remembers. “They couldn’t keep employees, because of their hate for what they were doing.” Every Culver’s restaurant since then has succeeded.

There was a time when Culver himself wanted out of the restaurant business—in 1973, just after graduating college. He’d grown up working in his family’s restaurants. “I just wanted to get as far away from restaurants as possible,” he says. When his father became ill and asked him to take over the family business, but Culver refused, so his family sold the 40-acre resort near Devil’s Lake, with its 24 cabins and 350-seat restaurant. But Culver couldn’t escape his fate; he soon found himself working at, then managing, a Madison McDonald’s. By 1976, he’d gained invaluable experience and training—and he’d forgotten about wanting to leave the hospitality industry.

“From my family, I learned about quality and hospitality. But from McDonald’s, I learned the systems approach to restaurant management—waste management, inventory control, training manuals, things like that.” Culver asked his parents to buy back the Sauk City A&W they’d owned in the 1960s. “I wanted to be my own businessman. I wanted to open my own restaurant.” He and Lea operated the A&W until 1982, then sold it, moving on to the Ritz supper club in Baraboo. But the new owners of the A&W ran into trouble, and, says Culver, “They begged me to buy it back, take it off their hands.”

Now Craig and Lea had an idea: ditch the Ritz, move back to Sauk City, and remake the A&W into an entirely new thing: a modern version of the old-fashioned custard stand. “We said “Hey, let’s do this under our own terms!” The couple developed a fresh foods menu including fish—“A real Wisconsin fish fry, like in my family’s supper club, with my parents’ tartar sauce recipe—but why not serve it every night of the week?”—hamburgers made with fresh beef, frozen custard, malted shakes. “We remodeled the whole building. We made it blue and white, as different from orange and brown as we could. I suppose we could have chosen green and white, or purple and white. But blue just felt like ice cream to me. Clean and wholesome, like what we were trying to do.” The classic Culver’s oval logo came about simply because something had to fit into the knocked-out A&W sign in front of the restaurant. Today, the flagship Culver’s restaurant stands on the site of that remodeled A&W.

What’s next for these restaurant innovators? The Blue Spoon Creamery Café. Conceived as a lower-cost franchise that can be fitted into existing buildings, Prairie du Sac’s casually elegant Blue Spoon serves upscale dishes like smoked salmon Caesar salad and artichoke focaccia. Coffee beverages include imaginative hybrids like steamed custard cappuccino and espresso malted. “Where our destiny lies with the Blue Spoon, I’m not sure,” says Culver. We’ll probably open another restaurant or two and then decide its fate.”

Whatever the restaurant format, Craig Culver has mastered hospitality: the kind of personal attention that’s as much about making each employee and franchisee feel welcome and valued as it is about engaging customers. The future of Culver’s, though, depends on being able to transmit this skill to every new person who joins the organization. Ken Dickinson, a 27-year-old franchisee about to open a restaurant just outside St. Louis, has noticed this about Culver: “He doesn’t forget a name. He remembers the names of fry guys he sees once a year. I’m trying to get like that.”

Homegrown Food for Thought

Could alternative agriculture be Dane County's antidote for sprawl?

Through site selection and product placement, Dane County businesses support responsible growth and local agriculture.
By Vesna Vuynovich Kovach
In Corporate Report Wisconsin
May 2001

On the Capitol Square in downtown Madison, dollar bills and jars of jam flash across a vendor table in brisk trade. The woman busy behind the table grew the fruit for the jam on her own land, according to the strict requirements of what well may be America’s largest open-air farmers’ market, where an approximate quarter-million dollars is generated each of 28 Saturdays in the year. The waiting list for an open stall is three to five years long.

And it’s not just the market that’s been a huge success. Over the last 20 years, Wisconsin’s capital city has become a mecca for locally produced agricultural wares. Dane County restaurants, grocery stores and other businesses are leading the Midwest in a national movement toward regional and sustainable agriculture. Whether featuring regional products on the day’s menu, giving locally grown produce prime shelf space, or making siting decisions that protect farmland, businesses are fighting to keep the county’s agricultural heritage alive.

But urban sprawl, spurred by a growing economy and population, threatens the very source of the bounty: the open, pastoral landscape of Dane County. According to the June 2000 “Farms and Neighborhoods” report from the county executive’s office, at the current rate of development, the farmlands will be virtually gone by the century’s end — and with them, a defining feature of the county.

Visually, agriculture is the area’s most striking element, far more prevalent than parkland. Southcentral Wisconsin’s farm vistas, with sweeping fields punctuated by stands of trees and grassy ice age hillscapes — gentle oval drumlins, winding eskers — beckon tourists from Wisconsin cities and neighboring states. And this natural beauty is easily accessible to everyone living in Dane County: Even from the center of Madison, bucolic scenery is as near as a 15- or 20-minute drive in any direction. It’s a treasure, and not just when compared to strip mall suburbia. Some rural landscapes may be flat and featureless; Wisconsin’s is exquisite and endlessly diverse.

A few years back, Money magazine rated Madison the country’s most livable city, and population trends indicate that many people agree. In the 1990s, the county’s population rose an estimated 16.7 percent — an additional 61,500 people bringing the total close to 430,000. But as businesses and new residents race to take advantage of the area’s amenities, development patterns have been less than ideal. In February, USA Today ranked Madison one of the most sprawling of all midsized cities — the 65th worst out of all metropolitan areas. The American Farmland Trust has labeled the high-quality farmland in southern Wisconsin the third most threatened in the nation; Dane County lost 48,000 farm acres over the last decade.

So, how important is agriculture here? Dane County’s revenue from agricultural products, nearly $285 million per year, is by far the highest in the state, according to the most recent U.S. Agricultural Census. With more than 2,500 farms, Dane County leads the state in production of corn for grain, and is high on the list when it comes to soybeans, fresh market vegetables, fruit and flowers. An expanding part of this industry is “alternative” agriculture in its various forms: farmers’ markets, U-pick orchards and vegetable patches, and environmentally sensitive farming methods like organic and sustainable agriculture.

There’s a great deal at stake in the survival of agricultural Dane County, and much depends on the area’s business leaders — even those not in the habit of thinking about farms. Jim Arts, Dane County’s director of Policy and Program Development, is concerned that businesses may inadvertently “kill the goose that laid the golden egg” unless they act in ways that protect farms. “Businesses have a powerful impact on the future of the county in making siting decisions, and in the ways they support or don’t support public initiatives of land-use issues,” he says. “I would argue that they have a strong motive to work for maintaining a high quality of life here.”

Phil Lewis, a noted landscape architect (he was the driving force behind Madison’s 21-mile E-way system of greenway and trails), agrees. “High-quality personnel are seeking a high-quality environment — one with beautiful scenery and recreation that produces the clean food and fiber and farmers’ markets that they can enjoy throughout a lifetime, for generations.”

Businesses who value Dane County’s special character can help by putting their considerable muscle into supporting land-use policies that help farms stay in business, says Lewis. Making siting decisions that are friendly to farms and natural resources is another powerful tool, with an even more immediate impact. Once a siting decision is made, landscape architects and building architects can work together to ensure that the new facility will have a low — or even beneficial — impact on natural resources, through canny positioning of buildings on the lot, plantings and more. Also, businesses can get involved in local efforts to take advantage of the state’s new Smart Growth Initiative. Smart Growth rewards municipalities that comply with state guidelines for growth. Lewis encourages business leaders who are planning new construction to talk to county and municipal officers, and find siting solutions that are good for everyone concerned.

To Lewis, the countryside is a mosaic of interdependent elements, each reinforcing the other. He’s identified “corridors of exceptional natural diversity,” including farms as well as parks and historical attractions, which support the tourist industry. Wetlands, water systems and steep topography — where terrain is at a 12.5 percent slope or greater — are also key features. Says Lewis, “We’ve inventoried key patterns of natural diversity. Anybody can call them up and interact with them on the county’s Web site.” But neither wetlands nor steep topography, for instance, are protected by law. So it’s up to individual decision makers to make each choice a conscientious one.

Part of the problem, says Arts, comes when decisions are made piecemeal, instead of as part of an overarching plan. Individual exceptions to municipal planning policies add up to a general pattern of sprawl — residential, commercial and industrial. However, Lewis says “there’s ample room for building without encroaching on or destroying resources.” “Farms and Neighborhoods,” to which Arts contributed, supports that: the report says there’s plenty of developable land within Dane County’s existing city and town borders — enough to fit the expected growth for decades to come.

Odessa Piper is one local entrepreneur who’s earned national acclaim by directly — and vocally — supporting local agriculture, and encouraging more businesses to do the same. Her restaurant, L’Etoile, serves upscale cuisine based on locally produced foods. For more than 25 years, Piper has built tight relationships with more than 100 Wisconsin farmers and producers, who supply everything from strawberries and spinach to bison and veal.
“We put the customers and the dining room in touch with the local farmers by creating the synthesis from the field to the table,” she says. “People are delighted by it. Customers love to be part of the solution.” Piper is an activist as well as a restaurateur, writing and speaking around the nation about the importance of supporting local agriculture. She’s been featured in national magazines like Bon Appetit, Sierra and Wine Spectator, and she’s had a tremendous influence on the growing number of restaurants in Madison and in the rest of the Midwest who now purchase directly from nearby farmers.

But she’s concerned that many businesspeople don’t recognize how much Madison’s high quality of life depends on maintaining farmland close by. “I’ve sat down with people who have made absolutely no connection between their wealth and the way that they’ve developed land. No connection that they’ve had an impact on the availability of fresh, seasonal, locally available food,” Piper says. “But then they ask how is this so delicious? How is this food so good? I tell them, it’s because it’s from a farmer who’s local.”

In a country where food travels an average distance of 1,300 miles from farm to table, restaurants and food service are just beginning to take advantage of the premium merchandise offered by local farmers. A few years ago, Home Grown Wisconsin, a 20-farmer cooperative, broke into a new restaurant market: Chicago. There they were welcomed by chefs starving for locally grown food. Even the UW dining service is beginning to look into local connections, testing the waters with annual organic, regionally grown dinners. The UW’s Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems, a research facility within the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, points out that if UW dining bought just 10 percent of its food from Dane County farmers, it would keep an extra $1 million within the local economy.

Besides restaurants, grocers are increasingly keen on locally grown produce. It’s easy enough to guess that natural foods stores like Williamson Street Grocery Co-op, Whole Foods Market and Magic Mill Natural Foods Market would support local, smaller-scale agriculture. But big supermarkets are also getting in on the local action, and Dane County is the focal point.

In the mid-’90s, Stevens Point-based Copps Food Center established the Copps Produce Developmental Center and placed it in Madison stores. “Our Madison customers spent more per dollar on produce than at any of our other stores,” says Tom Pozorski, Copps’ category manager for produce. “We look to Madison for what the trends are going to be in the rest of the Midwest.”

What the CPDC discovered was a strong preference for locally produced food; now Copps buys local whenever possible. “The growing season is short here, so that’s the biggest limitation,” Pozorski says. “But in season we sell 100 percent Wisconsin sweet corn, for instance. There’s nothing better than Wisconsin sweet corn when you’re in Wisconsin.” Apples and potatoes are also big crops, and they store well, too. Wisconsin is the third largest potato producer in the U.S. “They’re the best in the world. You can’t beat a Wisconsin spud,” Pozorski says. Locally grown organics and other specialty crops are growing in popularity and availability, too. “We have a lot of new growers approaching us,” Pozorski says.

Star Liquor in Madison finds that locally produced goods are a big draw. “People want to support the local economy,” says manager Mark Mason. “They want to know where their money is going. People want to drink local — I give them what they want.” At least 25 percent of Star’s beer sales are regional brands, says Mason, adding “that doesn’t include Miller, Leinenkugel and Point” — popular Wisconsin-brewed beers with out-of-state ownership. Mason points out that Dane County is the proud home of Capitol Brewery, rated America’s #1 brewery by the Beverage Tasting Institute in 1998. Even wine from Wisconsin sells well, especially at Christmastime for gifts to ex-Wisconsinites. In a refrigerated case next to the champagne, Star also sells specialty cheeses from Bleu Mont Dairy. It’s the only place other than the Farmers’ Market on the Square where this Dane County dairy’s cheese can be purchased.

If healthy, vibrant farms are key to averting sprawl disaster in Dane County, then alternative agricultural methods — and perspectives — will increase in importance. Compared with traditional megacrops like soybeans or corn for grain, which gross about $275 to $375 per acre, grosses for fresh market vegetables can range from $8,000 to $16,000 per acre, with a net of between $4,000 to $9,000. Therefore, to support a family, specialty vegetable farms don’t need to be as big as conventional feed crop farms.

Organic milk, meat, vegetables and fruit are more labor-intensive to produce, but they do command higher prices in an expanding market: the market for organic has been steadily growing by 20 percent yearly since 1989. The Miller Farm in Dane County’s Town of Bristol is Wisconsin’s largest organic dairy farm, with 350 milk cows. Because their milk is organic, the Millers can sell their milk for 50 percent more than the conventional price.

And there’s plenty of room for niche marketing. For direct sales, there’s the 300-vendor Dane County Farmers’ Market on the Square, as well as markets in Middleton, Sun Prairie and Fitchburg, and outside Madison’s Hilldale Shopping Center. There are roadside stands where farmers set up informal shop for the day. U-Pick orchards and berry patches let you walk through the growing fields yourself, and are often touted as an attraction for children.

Despite these opportunities, the future of Dane County’s rich agrarian tradition, and the beautiful landscape that comes with it, is far from certain. From here, Dane County may join the list of America’s lost paradises. Or it may become a great success story, a blueprint for others to follow. How the business community approaches development, how strongly it supports locally produced foods, and the stand it takes on land-use policies — all these will play an incalculable role in the shape the county will take.

But before business is likely to exercise its power to help Dane County farmers, it must first recognize how important Dane County farmers are to business. “We need to raise awareness,” says Jim Arts. “If we want to preserve the character of Dane County, we must keep farmers in business.”