Margaret Loomis Krome was born in 1956. She graduated in 1979 from the University of Virginia with a B.A. in English literature and studies in botany and biological sciences. From 1979 to 1983, she worked for the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in Washington, D.C., as an administrative assistant and lobbyist with the Access to Justice Project and Office of Congressional Relations. From 1983-1985, she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in agroforestry for the Cameroonian Reforestation Service in Cameroon, West Africa. In 1989, she graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with an M.S. from the Land Resources program of the Institute for Environmental Studies.
From 1986 to 1995, Krome served as Project Associate, Agricultural Policy Coordinator, and then Director of Sustainable Agriculture at the Wisconsin Rural Development Center (WRDC). She worked to establish a $2 million, 4-year farmer demonstration program at the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) that began in 1986. In 1987-1989 she was involved in establishing the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to foster sustainable agriculture research programs that would be driven by farmer, academic, and citizen input. Other activities at WRDC included a multi-year, on-farm economic analysis project (1988-1992) and a statewide high school sustainable agriculture curriculum project (1988-1995). In 1988-1990, she served as an Advisory Council member for the Wisconsin Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Program. She also conducted a pesticide reduction survey of Wisconsin farmers (1988-1990), and mobilized a farm coalition to gather funding for the Wisconsin Pesticide Risk Reduction Project (1997). She has held listening sessions for farm bills since the late 1980s, and since 1992 she has coordinated grassroots advocacy in support of sustainable agriculture appropriations for various sustainable agriculture organizations, including the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
Since 1995 Krome has served as Policy Program Director at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute (MFAI), where she oversees programs supporting sustainable agriculture, including farmer education and assistance programs and sustainable agriculture policy internships. On the state level, she works to ensure long term funding for sustainable agriculture initiatives. From 1995 to 1996, she also served on a DATCP advisory committee for the sustainable agriculture program. In 1999 the School of Natural Resources of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison awarded Krome the Wisconsin Idea award for Natural Resource Policy development. Other activities at the state level include service on the Governor's Livestock Siting Task Force (2003-2005), the Governor's Working Lands Initiative (2005-2006), Wisconsin's Green Tier Advisory Council (2005-2012), Wisconsin Integrated Pest and Crop Management group (2004-present), and UW-Madison's Wisconsin Institute for Sustainable Agriculture Advisory Committee (2009-present).
At the local level, Krome was involved in the establishment of the community-supported agriculture organization, Madison Area Community Supported Agriculture Coalition (MACSAC, currently known as FairShare CSA Coalition) in 1992. She initiated a consumer education and outreach program called Healthy Meats! that promoted purchases of locally raised, sustainably produced meat, and served as its steering committee chair and project supervisor in her role at MFAI in 1998-1999. From 2000 to 2002, she collaborated on Wisconsin Pasturelands, a local meat marketing initiative. Krome also served as co-chair of a Subcommittee on Sustainable Agriculture of the Environment, Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee of the Dane County Board, in 2009-2010. Four workgroups (Farm Profitability, Farmland Preservation, Beginning Farmers, and Urban Agriculture and Food Security) made policy recommendations for local initiatives for education and technical assistance in support of sustainable agriculture.
Krome has served on a number of boards, including Wisconsin Citizen Action (1995-1999), Wisconsin's Environmental Decade (1991-2004; chair, 1993-1995), the Wisconsin Board of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (2003-2013), the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT, 2004-present), and the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters' Board for the Future of Farming and Rural Life in Wisconsin project (2005-2007). She was a founding member of the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group/Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and a member of its first Coordinating Council (1988-present). Krome also gives presentations on farm bill issues, federal support programs available to farmers, and food system education for consumers. She has served as a grants program reviewer (1988-present) and has led grant writing workshops across the state (2002-present). She has also written several publications and, since 1995, contributes a regular editorial column on agriculture and other issues for the Capital Times newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.
