On September 1, 2021, Todd Rothe ’10 and Jamie Tucker ’16 pulled on leather gloves, hooked up a trailer to a truck, and began collecting garbage bins of food scraps, coffee grounds, and paper products to haul to a farm field to begin the composting process. “We’re turning organic waste into soil, and we can…
Dill grows like a weed in the garden hidden on the outskirts of Northland College’s campus. It grows like a weed because I put it there. As I settled into my first summer working in the campus gardens and living along the south shore of Lake Superior, I was comforted by the discovery of a…
Hulings Rice Food Center Assistant Manager Danny Simpson led Governor Tony Evers on a tour of the processing center, compost, and high tunnel garden this afternoon. This was the Governor’s first visit to Northland College. Simpson, who is a passionate advocate for local foods, talked about the College’s efforts in creating a sustainable campus food…
The Northland College Hulings Rice Food Center has been awarded $49,300 from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to work on product development for hazelnuts. The Food Center has been collaborating for years on hazelnuts as a farming solution to climate change. Last year, business students tackled hazelnut product development and marketing…
The Impossible Burger, a non-animal burger gaining popularity, is being marketed as the solution to saving the planet. How? Persuade people to stop eating beef, double production annually, win over consumers with an ‘equivalent’ and cheaper product, and eliminate animal agriculture by 2035. Despite this lofty goal, Impossible is on track—Impossible Whoppers are available at…
When I hear people start to despair about the state of the world, I tell them to come and meet my students. I teach in a block called Growing Connections that blends science, literature, and field experiences around the themes of food and agriculture. One of the goals of this course is to get students…
This weekend I picked up environmental journalist Amanda Little’s new book, The Fate of Food: What We’ll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World. She details the difficult decisions we in the food world are grappling with regarding food access and sustainability in the face of climate change. Little traveled the world meeting people at…
Some nuts might be tough to crack, but Ariadna Chediack has the right tools at her disposal. Chediack, an agricultural research assistant with the University of Wisconsin-Extension, pours a container full of hazelnuts into a machine called “the cracker.” The nuts fall through a funnel from above down to a drill Chediack uses to crack…
Northland College is experiencing a hazelnut invasion. There are three-hundred seedlings in the CSE Greenhouse, a hazelnut processor and cracker in the Hulings Rice Food Center, and last semester business students tackled hazelnut product development and marketing in the classroom and in the Larson Food Lab. What gives? “Hazelnuts are the next cranberry,” said Jason…
Todd Rothe ’10 is the food systems manager of the Hulings Rice Food Center and will be teaching Sustainable Food Production in the fall as part of the newly-created sustainable agriculture… Read More →
