Fertile Ground: Reflections on the Impacts and Implications of an Early University Food System Plan

Since the mid-1990s, food systems planning has gone from virtually nonexistent as a concept in the field to an accepted component of the planning field. The third-ever community food systems plan done by a university was conducted in 1997 by graduate students in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, under the direction of professors Jerry Kaufman and Kami Pothukuchi. This chapter, written by the three compiling editors/writers of the final document, Fertile Ground: Planning for the Madison/Dane County Food System (1997), is a deliberation on the history and creation of the document, and offers personal reflections on the impact of an early food systems planning class. Using a semi-structured interview as a tool to elicit both memories and current personal and professional impacts, the authors look backward and forward to contextualize the relevance and importance of the class and final report almost 25 years after it was written.