Origin Story

About the Alliance

Established in 2022, SCVFA is a grassroots initiative formed out of the Polk/Burnett Chapter of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. Our membership consists of 27 farmers and our programming has been accessed by over 500 community and business members. Our mission is to strengthen and promote a thriving, resilient, and equitable local food economy in the St. Croix River Valley. We believe that a positive future for the St. Croix River Valley Region will rely on a strong and engaged consortium of food producers, providers, and eaters. 

In 2019, an enormous hog factory proposed a facility in Burnett County. It quickly became apparent that it would accelerate a detrimental shift towards factory farming in Northwestern WI. Many in our community stood up in strong opposition by attending countless county and township meetings, running for office, staging rallies and writing policies to protect us. 

At the same time this crisis was unfolding in our community, a global crisis exposed the fragility of food supply chains that are built for an industrialized food system. It also revealed that as small-scale, direct market farmers, we were more equipt, resilient and able to feed our local community in the wake of system failure. 

To address these urgent problems, farmers from our chapter created a collective advocacy and marketing alliance. We envisioned expanding markets for small, climate-conscious farmers in our region while at the same time providing a positive vision for the future of agriculture.

The Saint Croix Valley Food Alliance is a group of 27 and counting sustainable farmers from the St. Croix Valley watershed of Wisconsin. We believe that a positive future for the St. Croix River Valley Region will rely on a strong and engaged consortium of food producers, providers, and eaters. For this we need thriving and independent producers, healthy and engaged citizens, and a focus on creating a place where people can lead healthy lives, regardless of income or identity. We believe that the cycle of a healthy culture begins and ends with food, what we eat, how it is grown, prepared and shared.