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REAP promotes governmental policies at the local, county, state, and national level that support and enhance the creation of more sustainable, regionally-based food systems.  We network with public officials and community leaders on local food system activities, foster open dialogue between our diverse membership and policymakers, and identify key local food related issues that demand action.  

Through education and advocacy we strive for governmental policies that will ensure a food system that is healthful, sustainable, and just.

Mark Miller
State Representative

"Sustainable"-that's a word that's been used a lot, and what does it mean? It goes beyond just food production. It relates to the whole way that we live together because we're not the only generation that will occupy this earth…There are a lot of aspects to creating a sustainable food system. Besides food, there are issues of fair wages for people that work. There's also a requirement to be able to keep a local economy operating.

Our economy is expanding to a global economy, and we need to keep the focus on the importance of a local economy. A local food economy is particularly important…in order to be able to sustain a local food economy, or operate a sustainable food economy, there has to be a market. The decisions that you make every day about how you buy food and how you consume food will go a long way towards determining whether or not this kind of sustainable food production will operate locally-because it has to operate locally." 

 

Kathleen Falk
Dane County Executive

"I know that in this day and age it's easy for you to feel really impotent about making a difference… but we can do a lot about what we put in our mouths each day in food. And we can buy our food from a farm that's only a few miles from where we live in the city here.

We can do that. You can buy your produce at Magic Mill or Willy Street or all the wonderful places that we have immediate access to farmers who are literally our next door neighbors. It's something we actually can do.

On a broader level, my job [involves]…figuring out how we're going to grow and develop and keep this quality of life [in Dane County] which includes having farmers next to cities, and all of them surviving and sustaining. It means the package of reforms that we put out over a year ago-we have been slowing working through the system, working through the county board-to get these pieces in place, knowing that it takes strong farmer communes, strong cities and villages both, to do this." 
Odessa Piper
 Chef and Proprietor of L'Etoile Resturant

"We sort of lost our food wisdom some time after World War II, and we've really been gradually coming back to our senses, I think. What a wonderful way to do that-with food-because it's a way that we can honor the earth and support our communities and do it in a way that feels really good too. Ultimately this is a culmination at the table. At L'Etoile we… try very hard to do what we can to make…the whole food system as sustainable as we can… We don't have to just be financing high-tech agriculture, which is really, in a way, taking the means for farming out of the hands of…small farmers and small producers and small chefs like me." 

 

 

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