.png)
Forward Garden – A Case Study on Community Supported Agriculture in the Food Is Medicine Era
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
Written by Alex Nelson, Medical Student
Nutritious food is nourishment and lives at the crux of human health and resilience. Food is Medicine is the ethos unifying this connection and recognizing that access to high-quality nourishment is essential for well being and must be delivered through sustainable, equitable means, with deep respect for natural ecosystems as complex entities which influence diets, through the vitality of regional food cycles, human health, though safe, clean water and air, and reverberate through the strata of social justice and cultural sovereignty that breathes life into our neighborhoods.
The United States has arrived at a critical juncture for Food is Medicine, characterized in equal parts by scientific promise, a public health crisis, and the urgent need to advance equity throughout the food and health care systems nationwide. Principally, healthcare providers are uniquely placed to mediate the relationship between a sustainable, equitable food cycle and the whole health of their patient and community.
The late 1990s ushered in the collaboration of several Dane County service clubs and church groups under a unifying purpose: collect and redistribute surplus produce from infamous Saturday Farmer's Market on the Capitol Square; the initiative built momentum, gleaned over 2,000 pounds of produce each week; however, once tapped, this vessel continued to throb, and soon, the weekly yields could no longer satisfy the needs of the low-income housing units, meal programs, and the now 32 food pantries across Dane County relying on consistent, first-choice produce. In 2000, three 1-acre garden plots were then established, under the auspices of the “Madison Area Food Pantry Gardens” or MAFPGs, which yielded an estimated 60,000 pounds of produce throughout the summer and early fall to offset the exponentially growing demand.
“MAFPG aims to provide Madison area food pantries with high-quality, responsibly grown produce. We focus on growing culturally-relevant crops so that community members have agency in how they feed themselves and their families. I am particularly driven by increasing accessibility to nutritionally dense food for underserved communities, while mitigating damage to the landscape and our shared natural resources. I believe sharing food brings people together, and I love getting to do it every day. MAFPG is made up of community-minded, intelligent, and compassionate people who want to help their neighbors, and I am proud to work with this team,” says Kaila Topping, Associate Farm Manager at Forward Garden. Kaila, a six-year veteran of organic and bio-intensive farming practices and graduate of University of Wisconsin’s Master’s of Science in Agroecology, is motivated by the prospect of ensuring fresh, culturally relevant food remains available to all who call Madison home.
“We drilled a well to bring a groundwater source to the land, we added irrigation to the fields to control our water use, we compost preconsumer food waste from local businesses to amend our soil, we added pollinator gardens to support the vitality of our crops, erected a greenhouse on the property to prolong our growing season, and continue to respond to the needs of those we serve by planting perennial crops – raspberries and strawberries – per client requests.”
Since its inception, over two decades after that first growing season, the Madison Area Food Pantry Gardens (MAFPGs) grows over 100,000 pounds of fresh produce, and continues gleaning an additional 50,000 pounds annually, with an estimated two million pounds of produce donated since its inaugural year. 2020 marked the first growing season at Forward Garden, the 12-acre flagship of the MAFPGs located on the Pope Farm Conservancy in Middleton, and just four short years later, Forward Garden lives up to its namesake, with over 110,000 pounds of produce grown for over 30 local pantries in 2024, with the 2025 season set to eclipse these figures.
“When I first discovered the MAFPGs, what struck me was the use of the term 'first choice produce' in the mission statement. That phrase told me something important about the organization and the people behind it. To make it its mission to provide only the best food for those who cannot afford to purchase it, and to do so sustainably, shows respect for all people and the land. It drew me in,” says Jane Mount, Forward Garden volunteer and founding MAFPG Board Member.
Jane goes on to state, “I have seen all ages and people of all abilities come to help in the gardens… There's a sense of camaraderie, of working toward the greater good… children on school field trips continue to drag their parents to Open Volunteering Sessions because the work inspired them. Parents bring their children to volunteer, teaching them the value of giving back to the community. Organizations supporting those with disabilities bring clients to the Garden for purposeful work and contributions… and in this work, relationships flourish under the realization that individuals can make a difference, no matter their age or ability.”
Kaila echoes these sentiments, relating them to the deep interconnectedness and moral responsibility shared between the community’s healthcare and agricultural ecosystems, positing that “agriculture, especially conventional agriculture, can be an incredibly extractive practice to our natural resources. Landscapes of the Midwest have been drastically altered to grow food for a large population, and the cost is extensive damage to land, water, and soil. Farming, a practice born from the relationships communities nurture with their soil, has become industrialized and removed from nature. There are similarities with the healthcare system, particularly when relationships that should feel deeply personal, feel rushed, impersonal, and transactional.”
Food systems are complex entities that affect diets, human health, and a range of other outcomes, including economic growth, natural resource and environmental resiliency, and social justice and cultural sovereignty. Nutrition security operationalizes an approach to continuously optimizing food systems by characterizing and assessing the direct relationship between an individual's nutrition and the whole health of the community they represent. Doing so ensures consistent access, availability, and affordability of foods and beverages that promote physical and mental well-being, prevent and treat disease, and foster community and cultural traditions.
“I have limited faith in the healthcare system and feel it is more focused on profit than quality care. The healthcare system, however, is not the doctors, just as the industrial farming complex is not the farmers. I have met many caring and compassionate doctors, just as I have met many large-scale farmers who care deeply about the land but are stuck in a broken system. I don’t think either system has the interest of our communities at its core. The people working within the systems, though, often care a great deal."
Kaila goes on to affirm that “local healthcare providers should not view the poor diets of their patients as individual failures, rather as failures of an unsustainable, unsupportive system. Diets are all-too often a product of circumstance rather than choice… I am uplifted by individuals like Dr. Brian Arndt [MAFPG Board President and family medicine physician-director of the UW Health Verona Family Medicine Clinic] and the medical students he encourages to volunteer their time with MAFPGs, as it demonstrates an awareness of the healthcare system to the needs of its patients by mediating their access to consistently high-quality, culturally responsive food… food that we know promotes health and ensures longstanding community wellbeing.”
This is nutrition, or food that supports whole health and equity, and both are tirelessly fought for on the ivory steps of the Capitol, pale clinic walls, and muddy troughs of this Black Earth.
“Nutritious food is a fundamental human right, and the fact that so many cannot afford nor have access to it is a direct reflection on the priorities of our policies and government. The health of our land directly affects the health of our communities, and we are failing at both. The freezes on USDA grants this spring put significant strain on many farmers, exemplifying how little regard is actually given to the very people feeding our nation.”
Spring 2025 saw the axing of the Agriculture Department’s financial programming for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farms and ranchers, halting more than $1 billion in federal spending. Roughly $660 million earmarked for schools and child care facilities to purchase food through the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program in 2025 was canceled, and as food costs continue to soar, more individuals and families are turning to food banks and other feeding organizations to offset their increasing grocery bills.
Kaila goes on to state, “Multiple Wisconsin representatives also voted in support of legislation that cuts funding for SNAP benefits, a critical resource for financially disadvantaged families… I do not want to focus on the negatives, but our country is failing our land, our farmers, and our families... Wisconsin’s legislature must support science-based policies and prioritize natural resources conservation.”
The language of Food is Medicine is a sovereign dialect uniting individuals with their communities who, historically, have been excluded from equitable treatment at interpersonal, institutional, and systemic levels. The core tenets of Food is Medicine ensure quality, sustainable, socially just, culturally appropriate nourishment and are vibrant, reverberating through the rolling grasslands and oak savannas of the Pope Farm Conservancy, the land borrowed by the MAFPGs to support initiatives like Forward Garden.
Jane concludes our discussion with a note of optimism, hope for the future in the era of community supported agriculture, fully invested in the communities they feed, sharing that "the networking between organizations, the support, and the desire of local people who are willing to give so freely of their expertise never ceases to amaze me… and with the volunteers dedicated to supporting this endeavor, unconditionally, it’s a testament to the good that is happening here. It impacts who we are and how well we live.”
“I had gotten to know Emmett Schulte through the University and at church. On a cold winter day, he called me and asked if I wanted to grow vegetables. That would be interesting, I thought. Let me follow you around. So, I followed him around for a year. He put a lot of miles on that old truck of his.” By 2009, Tom Parslow formalized the MAFPGs, sowing the seeds of one of the nation’s most prolific CSAs, and after his retirement in 2023 as President, he cherishes the time spent alongside the volunteers above all else.
