FAQ's
What is the Healthy Grown® vision?
Wisconsin Healthy Grown® farms are working toward becoming more sustainable. Healthy Grown® supports benchmarking and making continual improvements on the farm and throughout the entire food chain. Using science-based information and taking action to improve sustainability, Healthy Grown® farms improve upon their vision of finding new and closer-to-perfection farming methods.
What does the Healthy Grown® label represent?
The Healthy Grown® label offers environmentally-conscious consumers a high quality, competitively-priced product that is approved by Protected Harvest certification. By putting World Wildlife Fund's logo on the bag of potatoes, WWF is testifying to stringent environmental-production standards set by Protected Harvest certification.
What is the Healthy Grown® program doing for food safety?
Consumers should be concerned and informed about how their food is being produced and about the level of pesticides used in the growing process. The Protected Harvest and Healthy Grown® programs have given farmers the incentive to grow crops with minimal plant protectants and at competitive prices – to provide immediate value to consumers and long-term value for protecting the environment.
How are these potatoes priced compared to other potatoes?
Healthy Grown® Potatoes certified by Protected Harvest cost more than a conventional 5-pound bag but less than a 5-pound bag of organic potatoes. These potatoes are marketed to return a fair premium to farmers for producing high-quality potatoes in a healthy environment.
How are Healthy Grown® and Protected Harvest connected?
Healthy Grown® is a new brand of potatoes, with other crops on the horizon. The brand is separate from Protected Harvest, the independent nonprofit organization that oversees and certifies the stringent growing standards under which all Healthy Grown® potatoes are produced. World Wildlife Fund's logo is included on bags of Protected Harvest certified Wisconsin potatoes to testify to their stringent environmental and production standards.
How are economic and social interests factored into the Healthy Grown® model that often has a focus of environmental sustainability?
Once a current field-to-fork, science-based environmental boundary has been determined and a footprint established, the proposed changes are filtered through economic and social norms to determine if the changes are functional, measurable, and verifiable. A balanced approach is fundamental for lasting improvements, which is a main goal for the Healthy Grown® model.
What actions has Healthy Grown® taken for ecosystem management?
A full-time restoration ecologist works to aid farmers in the desire to manage the whole farm – not just cropland. Growers’ grasslands, woodlands, adjacent lands, and natural vegetative history of the area is used to generate an individualized plan for each Healthy Grown® farm. Over 800 hours of work has been invested in ecosystem management. Each year hundreds of acres of farmland undergo a restoration process.
What has enabled Healthy Grown® to move from good intentions to measurable, verifiable, and functional results?
Healthy Grown® has had over a decade of experience in nurturing a collaboration of production growers, environmental groups, the University of Wisconsin, and trade associations. These groups have remained focused on improving eco-friendly methods of farming that yield transparent and traceable results in every potato produced.
How does Healthy Grown® deal with conservation versus preservation?
Through years of collaboration with UW researchers and consultation with ecologists, Healthy Grown® has strived to maintain and enhance conservation efforts beyond the tilled acre to include the total landscape. Restoring prairies as well as studying birds, insects, and plant interactions in the farm landscape are all included in the research process. Spending dollars to preserve selected land and then suggesting food production from other states or nations is not being done by Healthy Grown®, but could possibly occur in special situations. Healthy Grown® farmers want to work within the ecosystem of our farmlands, rather than diminish available crop acres by moving the food production elsewhere. Working to enhance native biodiversity while maintaining a high per acre food activity is a goal that has been achieved for Healthy Grown® Potato growers.
Protected Harvest is considered an “eco-label.” What is an eco-label?
“Eco-label” is a broad term that means “a seal or logo indicating that a product has met a set of environmental or social standards.” A key component to a good eco-label is that the claims are measurable, verifiable, free of conflict-of-interest, and available to the public. Protected Harvest meets and exceeds all of these core elements, but most importantly, Protected Harvest has been aggressive in setting very challenging goals. These goals include the adoption of Bio-intensive IPM practices, the reduction of pesticide use, and the development of performance measures for soil and water quality, wildlife habitat, and ecosystem health. The Protected Harvest label makes it easier for consumers to identify and support farmers and food companies that are truly making a difference.
Is the Healthy Grown® goal to become or compete with organically-grown produce?
No. Healthy Grown® farmers respect organic food efforts and realize that they are a consumer choice for many. Healthy Grown®, like other similar programs, has a goal of sustainability. The goals include looking at the food supply chain in a new way – to provide consumers with reasonably-priced, safe, and nutritious produce by practicing environmentally-sound and highly-productive farming methods.
Most American consumers care deeply about the environment and sustainability, but caring is not a substitute for action. Buying Healthy Grown® Potatoes is a start towards greater and more effective solutions to protecting our environment.
