Growing Power on Milwaukee Renaissance

Official Growing Power Web Site…

This is a new site filled with inspiring images and information.

http://www.growingpower.org/bloom.htm

The latest Michael Pollan article

is, as you would expect, excellent and particularly timely. It addresses itself to the new president -- "Farmer in Chief" -- in a very concrete way. And there are several other articles in this special Food Issue of Sunday’s (10/12) NY Times magazine that will be of interest. Check it the magazine section at www.nytimes.com.

Farmer in Chief
Michael Pollan
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
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Political Organizing Around Food

I’ve gotten into a few conversations at the CFSC conference that I’d like to share with the group.

One was about the next farm bill and the need to start organizing now. The Rodale Institute gave our field trip group such a clear vision of how agriculture can really play a significant role in sequestering carbon to roll back global warming (I plan to write this up on my blog at some point, although I’m sure the Rodale site covers the topic quite well, and I encourage everyone to read what they have to say.). But what are the chances we’ve got to get a good bill through with the current ag committee, particularly in the House - and particularly with the chair Collin Peterson. Can we start a movement to oust Peterson? Let’s find a primary challenger for him in the 2010 or 2012 elections and start a national movement to give him the boot. Same goes for any other toxic ag committee members.

Second, Peter Mann from World Hunger Year suggested to me that we use Barack Obama’s powerful organizing infrastructure to grow our movement. Here’s what I’ve done - and I encourage everyone else to do the same locally (I don’t mean to assume everyone is a Dem… if the Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc, provide a means of organizing, please do whichever fits your beliefs, and I apologize that I am not familiar with how other parties organize). You can sign up at http://my.barackobama.com and then click “Host an Event” once you’re in. I set up a meeting in a park near my home and named it “World Food Crisis and the Election.” As an event description, I laid out a few issues that will be important for the next president and suggested we start a dialogue about food now. I offered to start the meeting with a quick briefing about food issues, and then run the rest as a conversation among everyone.

I think it’s probably best to do this after the election because right now all Obama partisans are probably focused mostly on getting out the vote, but I don’t know what will come of the Obama site after the election. I set up my meeting for Oct 18. If anyone else wants to host an event, contact me so we can strategize and coordinate.

Jill
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Response by Kurt

We need to do more than oust Patterson. We should make it our goal to have the Ag Committees in both the House and the Senate made up of majority urban legislators before the next Food Bill comes up. We need to get the committees out of Big Ag’s pocket. We do this by convincing urban legislators that the Ag Committee IS an important post to their constituents, at least to those of them who eat.

And oh by the way, we need everyone, especially legislators, to stop calling it the “Farm Bill” and start calling it the “Food Bill.” This will frame the debate in a truer context, and one that is more urgent to urban voters.

My two cents.

Peace,
kmf

___________________
See my new book here
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NY Times Article:United Around Food to Save an Ailing Town

Hi, everyone. for your info. I really think that this is a great article and one of the solutions to our ailing economy, fostering a sense of community, creating green jobs locally (who says jobs in healthy food system are not green?), and helping to curtail climate crisis. I think that this is happening everywhere around the country, and here at home.

I especially like the statement at the end:

“Things that seemed totally impossible not so long ago are now going to happen,” said Mr. Kehler. “In the next few years a new wave of businesses will come in behind us. So many things are possible with collaboration.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao Tzu
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October 8, 2008
Uniting Around Food to Save an Ailing Town
By MARIAN BURROS
HARDWICK, Vt.

THIS town’s granite companies shut down years ago and even the rowdy bars and porno theater that once inspired the nickname “Little Chicago” have gone.
Facing a Main Street dotted with vacant stores, residents of this hardscrabble community of 3,000 are reaching into its past to secure its future, betting on farming to make Hardwick the town that was saved by food.

With the fervor of Internet pioneers, young artisans and agricultural entrepreneurs are expanding aggressively, reaching out to investors and working together to create a collective strength never before seen in this seedbed of Yankee individualism.
Rob Lewis, the town manager, said these enterprises have added 75 to 100 jobs to the area in the past few years.

Rian Fried, an owner of Clean Yield Asset Management in nearby Greensboro, which has invested with local agricultural entrepreneurs, said he’s never seen such cooperative effort.
“Across the country a lot of people are doing it individually but it’s rare when you see the kind of collective they are pursuing,” said Mr. Fried, whose firm considers social and environmental issues when investing. “The bottom line is they are providing jobs and making it possible for others to have their own business.”

In January, Andrew Meyer’s company, Vermont Soy, was selling tofu from locally grown beans to five customers; today he has 350. Jasper Hill Farm has built a $3.2-million aging cave to finish not only its own cheeses but also those from other cheesemakers.
Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens, is working with 30 local farmers to market their goods in an evolving community supported agriculture program.
“We have something unique here: a strong sense of community, connections to the working landscape and a great work ethic,” said Mr. Meyer, who was instrumental in moving many of these efforts forward.

He helped start the Center for an Agricultural Economy, a nonprofit operation that is planning an industrial park for agricultural businesses.

Next year the Vermont Food Venture Center, where producers can rent kitchen space and get business advice for adding value to raw ingredients, is moving to Hardwick from Fairfax, 40 miles west, because, Mr. Meyer said, “it sees the benefit of being part of the healthy food system.” He expects it to assist 15 to 20 entrepreneurs next year.

“All of us have realized that by working together we will be more successful as businesses,” said Tom Stearns, owner of High Mowing Organic Seeds. “At the same time we will advance our mission to help rebuild the food system, conserve farmland and make it economically viable to farm in a sustainable way.”

Cooperation takes many forms. Vermont Soy stores and cleans its beans at High Mowing, which also lends tractors to High Fields, a local compositing company. Byproducts of High Mowing’s operation — pumpkins and squash that have been smashed to extract seeds — are now being purchased by Pete’s Greens and turned into soup. Along with 40,000 pounds of squash and pumpkin, Pete’s bought 2,000 pounds of High Mowing’s cucumbers this year and turned them into pickles

For the past two years, many of these farmers and businessmen have met informally once a month to share experiences for business planning and marketing or pass on information about, say, a graphic designer who did good work on promotional materials or government officials who’ve been particularly helpful. They promote one another’s products at trade fairs and buy equipment at auctions that they know their colleagues need.

More important, they share capital. They’ve lent each other about $300,000 in short-term loans. When investors visited Mr. Stearns over the summer, he took them on a tour of his neighbors’ farms and businesses.

To expand these enterprises further, the Center for an Agricultural Economy recently bought a 15-acre property to start a center for agricultural education. There will also be a year-round farmers’ market (from what began about 20 years ago as one farmer selling from the trunk of his car on Main Street) and a community garden, which started with one plot and now has 22, with a greenhouse and a paid gardening specialist.

Last month the center signed an agreement with the University of Vermont for faculty and students to work with farmers and food producers on marketing, research, even transportation problems. Already, Mr. Meyer has licensed a university patent to make his Vermont Natural Coatings, an environmentally friendly wood finish, from whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking.

These entrepreneurs, mostly well educated children of baby boomers who have added business acumen to the idealism of the area’s long established hippies and homesteaders, are in the right place at the right time. The growing local-food movement, with its concerns about energy usage, food safety and support for neighbors, was already strong in Vermont, a state that the National Organic Farmers’ Association said had more certified organic acreage per capita than any other.

Mr. Meyer grew up on a dairy farm in Hardwick and worked in Washington as an agricultural aide to former Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont. “From my time in Washington,” Mr. Meyer said, “I recognize that if Vermont is going to have a future in agriculture we need to look at what works in Vermont, and that is not commodity agriculture.”

The brothers Mateo and Andy Kehler have found something that works quite well at their Jasper Hill Farm in nearby Greensboro. At first they aged their award-winning cheeses in a basement. Then they began aging for other cheesemakers. Earlier this month they opened their new caves, with space for 2 million pounds of cheese, which they buy young from other producers.

The Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont is helping producers develop safety and quality programs, with costs split by Jasper Hill and the producers. “Suddenly being a cheesemaker in Vermont becomes viable,” Mateo Kehler said.
Pete Johnson began a garden when he was a boy on his family’s land. Now his company, Pete’s Greens, grows organic crops on 50 acres in Craftsbury, about 10 miles north of here. He has four moveable greenhouses, extending the growing season to nine months, and he has installed a commercial kitchen that can make everything from frozen prepared foods and soup stocks to baked goods and sausages. In addition he has enlarged the concept of the C.S.A. by including 30 farmers and food producers rather than just a single farm.

“We have 200 C.S.A. participants so we’ve become a fairly substantial customer of some of these businesses,” he said. “The local beef supplier got an order for $700 this week; that’s pretty significant around here. We’ve encouraged the apple producer who makes apple pies to use local flour, local butter, local eggs, maple sugar as well as the apples so now we have a locavore apple pie.”

“Twelve years ago the market for local food was lukewarm,” Mr. Johnson added. “Now this state is primed for anything that is local. It’s a way to preserve our villages and rebuild them.”

Like Mr. Johnson, Mr. Stearns of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Wolcott, who is president of the Center, knew he wanted to get into agriculture when he was a boy. His company, which grew from his hobby of collecting seeds, began in 2000 with a two-page catalog that generated $36,000 in sales. Today he has a million-dollar business, selling seeds all over the United States.

Woody Tasch, chairman of Investors Circle, a nonprofit network of investors and foundations dedicated to sustainability, said: “What the Hardwick guys are doing is the first wave of what could be a major social transformation, the swinging back of the pendulum from industrialization and globalization.”

Mr. Tasch is having a meeting in nearby Grafton next month with investors, entrepreneurs, nonprofit groups, philanthropists and officials to discuss investing in Vermont agriculture. Here in Hardwick, Claire’s restaurant, sort of a clubhouse for farmers, began with investments from its neighbors. It is a Community Supported Restaurant. Fifty investors who put in $1,000 each will have the money repaid through discounted meals at the restaurant over four years.

“Local ingredients, open to the world,” is the motto on restaurant’s floor-to-ceiling windows. “There’s Charlie who made the bread tonight,” Kristina Michelsen, one of four partners, said in a running commentary one night, identifying farmers and producers at various tables. “That’s Pete from Pete’s Greens. You’re eating his tomatoes.”

Rosy as it all seems, some worry that as businesses grow larger the owners will be tempted to sell out to companies that would not have Hardwick’s best interests at heart. But the participants have reason to be optimistic: Mr. Stearns said that within one week six businesses wanted to meet with him to talk about moving to the Hardwick area. “Things that seemed totally impossible not so long ago are now going to happen,” said Mr. Kehler. “In the next few years a new wave of businesses will come in behind us. So many things are possible with collaboration.”
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Milwaukee’s Will Allen of Growing Power Wins MacArthur “Genius” Award!

‘2008 MacArthur Fellows’
Will Allen

Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization Growing Power, which he directs and co-founded. Guiding all is his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting. Through a novel synthesis of a variety of low-cost farming technologies – including use of raised beds, aquaculture, vermiculture, and heating greenhouses through composting – Growing Power produces vast amounts of food year-round at its main farming site, two acres of land located within Milwaukee’s city limits. Recently, cultivation of produce and livestock has begun at other urban and rural sites in and around Milwaukee and Chicago. Over the last decade, Allen has expanded Growing Power’s initiatives through partnerships with local organizations and activities such as the Farm-City Market Basket Program, which provides a weekly basket of fresh produce grown by members of the Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative to low-income urban residents at a reduced cost. The internships and workshops hosted by Growing Power engage teenagers and young adults, often minorities and immigrants, in producing healthy foods for their communities and provide intensive, hands-on training to those interested in establishing similar farming initiatives in other urban settings. Through these and other programs still in development, Allen is experimenting with new and creative ways to improve the diet and health of the urban poor.

Will Allen received a B.A. (1971) from the University of Miami. After a brief career in professional basketball and a number of years in corporate marketing at Procter and Gamble, he returned to his roots as a farmer. He has served as the founder and CEO of Growing Power, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, since 1995 and has taught workshops to aspiring urban farmers across the United States and abroad.

Information as of September 2008.

Nice picture and video of Will discussing his work at…

http://www.macfound.org/site/pp.aspx?c=lkLXJ8MQKrH&b=4537249&printmode=1

Also, Journal Sentinel Story:

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=797769

Urban farmer’s work honored
Growing Power’s Allen gets MacArthur ‘genius grant’
By LEE BERGQUIST
lbergquist@journalsentinel.com

Journal Sentinel Editor Praises Gentle Green Giant Will Allen

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=798346

Editorial: Urban plowing
A MacArthur Foundation grant to Will Allen, former pro basketball player, is well-deserved.
From the Journal Sentinel Posted: Sept. 23, 2008

Urban farming often is characterized as fertile territory only for earth mother, New Age acolytes. It is, in fact, part of an important movement that aims to diminish, if not eliminate, hunger and to increase the self-sufficiency of those battered by poverty.

New Age? Think World War II and Victory Gardens.

Urban farmer Will Allen, co-founder and chief executive officer of Growing Power in Milwaukee, has been a force in this movement for at least 15 years. A MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” of $500,000 for Allen on Monday just puts an exclamation point behind that assertion.

Congratulations to Allen for the well-deserved grant. Founded in 1993, Growing Power is all about honing urban farming methods and teaching the underserved how to eat healthy. And it does a lot of the feeding itself - selling $14 bags of fruit and vegetables, enough to feed a family of four for a week.

This grant, we’re certain, will not just help Allen in his good work but will further the lofty cause of urban farming.
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Inspire Thomas Friedman to Awaken to Urban Agriculture

Dear All,

There is probably no journalist in the U.S.A. with the clout and single-minded focus on “energy technology”(ET) as Thomas Friedman. His books are always best sellers and his columns are probably read by more people than anyone else.

Why is it that he has yet to make one mention of the good food, grow local, urban agriculture movement?

I thought that Will Allen’s genius award might find him awakened, but so far he still remains asleep in this regard.

Please consider sending him an e-mail that introduces our movement to him. Here’s the link. If you cc me, I’ll create a web platform on the subject of inspiring people like Friedman, Bill Moyers, and others to learn about us.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html
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Wall Street Journal Discovers Urban Agriculture in Oakland!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121926371492857735.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

A Garden Grows in Oakland
West Oakland, a historically industrial and impoverished neighborhood, has become an unlikely host to the eco-foods movement

By BOBBY WHITE
August 26, 2008; Page A15

OAKLAND, Calif. — Since the end of World War II, the west side of this city has struggled to break away from its industrial roots. Sandwiched between the city’s downtown corridor and the busy Port of Oakland, West Oakland is overwrought with old railways and abandoned warehouses. Not one supermarket can be found in the eight-square-mile area, and 60% of the neighborhood’s 20,000 residents live below the poverty line.

Since 2001, more than 80 urban farms have been quietly cultivated in Oakland, Calif., amid dilapidated buildings, railways and trucking depots. WSJ’s Bobby White reports.

Yet, amidst the snaking freeways and dilapidated buildings, a bit of green is growing. Since 2001, more than 80 urban farms have been cultivated in the backyards and vacant lots of West Oakland. Produce from zucchini to watermelon is grown for consumption by local residents; goats and chickens are raised on some farms. Last year, more than 10,000 pounds of produce was harvested, according to Oakland’s City Slicker Farms, which is at the epicenter of the neighborhood’s urban-farm push.

“We’re about feeding the community and teaching it to feed and sustain itself,” says Barbara Finnin, executive director of City Slicker Farms.

The neighborhood’s efforts mirror a larger eco-gastronomy initiative, the Slow Food movement, started in Italy in 1986 by food writer Carlo Petrini, and championed in the U.S. by the likes of Berkeley-based chef Alice Waters. Typically popular among those wealthy enough to afford price premiums, it promotes the consumption of organic, unprocessed and local foods, rather than factory-made fast foods. Slow Food has mainly been seen in the rise of farmers markets and eco-friendly restaurants.

Over Labor Day weekend, and just across the Bay from Oakland, San Francisco will play host to the first Slow Food U.S.A. festival, which will bring together chefs, food critics, non-profit organizations and healthy-living enthusiasts to promote sustainable eating. Festival officials (Ms. Waters is the founder) expect about 50,000 attendees to partake in wine tastings, food samples and lectures on the social and political change that Slow Food advocates call for.

But the Slow-Food movement has been criticized for being elitist and unrealistic for those who can’t afford pricey farmers markets and artisanal foods. The majority of Slow Food’s 80,000-strong membership comes from a wealthier demographic than that of West Oakland’s. Though community gardens have popped up in gentrified districts in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Berkeley, Calif., inner-city locales have largely remained on the fringe of Slow Food, even though they may be more in need of it.

Courtesy City Slicker Farms

City Slicker participant Lutricia Whitehead works in her backyard garden as her son, Jacobi Chambers, looks on.

Officials hope the West Oakland gardens will serve as an example of how the movement can be embraced by a range of income levels. They also hope the effort will help solve pressing health problems.

The farms, spearheaded by a collective of volunteers and non-profits, are meant to help combat the dearth of healthy-food outlets in the neighborhood. Until their creation, residents had to mostly rely on the more than 50 liquor and corner stores for groceries in the immediate area. The sale of fresh foods was a scarcity, and West Oakland has struggled with high rates of obesity. A 2007 report by the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative found that West Oakland residents can expect to live on average 10 years less than their counterparts living in neighboring Berkeley, and attributed the lack of sufficient food resources as a significant factor in this disparity.

“The demographic in West Oakland is different than our membership base, but the values they are pushing is well in line with our effort,” says Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation, a local subsidiary of Slow Food U.S.A. “If the movement should focus anywhere, it should be West Oakland. With no access to food, residents there are in need of healthy alternatives.”

Ms. Fernald says widening the movement has been difficult, partly because the message appeals to an affluent crowd that has the luxury of being more discretionary in their food choices.

West Oakland’s City Slicker Farms, a non-profit organization, was founded in 2001 by a local community activist to help combat blight in the neighborhood. Operated by about 200 volunteers and five full-time employees, the group bought a half-acre lot at a tax sale with the intention of planting produce and selling it to local residents at a discount. The outfit has now grown to five community farms throughout West Oakland, collectively churning out some 6,000 pounds of produce a year, it says.

Courtesy City Slicker Farms

A West Oakland resident buys produce at the community market.

City Slicker organizes community markets four times a week, where produce grown is sold on a three-tier scale according to income. Low-income residents pay what they can for their produce, while those who make more, pay near full price. A pound of beets costs $.50 for middle-tier residents, for instance, while it costs $1 for the wealthier. The market only caters to West Oakland residents. Nearly 300 people buy from the markets each week.

In 2005, the organization also started a backyard-garden program to teach residents how to set up their own farms and maintain them. Volunteers go to residencies that apply for the program, test soil and build two planter boxes, accompanied with trellises, soil, seedlings and mulch. Thus far, the organization says it has helped create 83 residential gardens, and last year, participants grew over 10,000 pounds of produce. When residents have an overabundance of a certain crop, they can barter for other produce at the weekly markets.

Ms. Finnin says the organization’s goal is to cultivate about 77 acres of land in Oakland. As of last year, the group has accomplished about 2% or 1.28 acres of its objective. Most of the organization’s funding comes from donations and individual contributions; the non-profit’s 2008 budget is about $150,000.

“They’ve not only saved me money,” says one participant, Lyzz Parker, “they’ve really improved my health.”

“What [City Slicker is] doing is a huge deal,” says Malo Hutson, an assistant professor of urban planning at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you don’t have access to fresh food and produce — just processed food — there are big health implications. Obesity, diabetes all stem from lack of the right foods.”

West Oakland resident Althea Reynolds now relies on the produce she grows in her backyard as the staples in her meals — and so do her eight elderly neighbors. Ms. Reynolds joined City Slicker’s backyard program in May, citing her diabetes as part of the impetus. She now harvests such produce as string beans, celery, okra, tomatoes, beets, spinach and squash. Many of her older neighbors have a hard time getting to the grocery store, she says, so she often cooks meals from the garden for them, too.

“Rarely do some of my neighbors get something as fresh as what comes out of my backyard,” says Ms. Reynolds. “It’s a welcome change. Whenever they see me they want to know when I’m cooking another batch of collard greens or spinach.”

• Go to WSJ.com/Food Aug. 29 – Sept. 1 to read dispatches from San Francisco’s Slow Food festival.

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”Isthmus” of Madison on Mayors Innovation Project

Farm talk with the Mayors Innovation Project
The urban agenda now includes local agriculture
Marc Eisen on Friday 08/15/2008

When Mayor Dave Cieslewicz convened a meeting of the Mayors Innovation Project recently in Madison, the topic of local food was high on the agenda for the gathering of progressive-minded city officials from across the country.
Even Cieslewicz, who served on the steering committee that put together the program for the two-day meeting at the Pyle Center on campus, was surprised at how often his fellow mayors told him they wanted to discuss local food systems.

“Urban local agriculture and the food movement have gone from a boutique Whole Foods experience to something that’s become integrated into the mainstream,” Cieslewicz observes. “It’s really become something almost everyone is into.”

Still, it seems funny to talk about America’s cities having farm policies. Almost a joke. But the mayors have good reasons for seeing farming as an urban issue.

Visiting officials got Saturday tours of two of Madison’s “best practices” efforts — the always impressive Dane County Farmers’ Market and Troy Gardens, the jewel of Madison’s extensive neighborhood garden offerings.

At the Pyle Center, they heard Stella Chao, from Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods, talk about her city’s greening efforts and Joan Reilly of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society discuss Philadelphia’s well-developed efforts to bring gardening programs to the central city.

But most impressive was Will Allen, the former professional basketball player who runs a mix of urban agriculture programs in the Milwaukee area and, increasingly, in other American cities.

Allen, whose parents were African American farmers outside of Washington, D.C., has done eye-opening work in bringing fresh food to inner-city neighborhoods and involving kids in urban agriculture. In 2005, Allen won a Leadership for a Changing World award from the Ford Foundation.

His nonprofit, called Growing Power, operates urban farms in Milwaukee and Chicago, including beekeeping, chicken raising and fish farming. It also sponsors the Rainbow Farmers Cooperative for 300 small family farmers, many of whom are Hmong, Latino, Amish or African American.

Hearing Allen speak of Growing Power, I thought of how similar it was to Madison’s Operation Fresh Start, which also builds community as it helps at-risk kids. Fresh Start teaches teenagers construction skills as they refurbish older homes in challenged neighborhoods. Allen works the same double-play. He brings good, locally grown food into impoverished neighborhoods where fast food and poor nutrition dominate the landscape. His kids, meanwhile, learn about gardening, nutrition, sustainable agriculture and commerce.

I think Allen understands one of the essential pleasures of gardening: It subtly changes your relationship to the world. Suddenly you have a tiny degree of food self-sufficiency.

Satya Rhodes-Conway, a senior associate with the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, which does policy work for the mayors group, had her own doubts about local food as an urban issue when she began research for the conference.

“The biggest thing for me was learning about the multiple benefits of urban agriculture,” she says. “I had just thought about it from the food production angle, but urban agriculture also is about greening neighborhoods, building community, providing job training and working with vulnerable populations.”

Madison has been early adopter in this effort. The city has an extensive network of 33 community gardens, serving more than 1,700 families, according to Chris Brockel of the Community Action Coalition.

The commission, which is largely federally funded, has its roots in the long-ago (and much derided) War on Poverty. It runs 18 of the gardens, leasing 20-by-20-foot plots and providing the infrastructure — plowing and water primarily — for the neighborhood-run gardens.

“Community development is the number-one reason we offer the gardens,” says Brockel. “The fact that people can grow their own food is wonderful, but it’s secondary for us.”

The same big-picture thinking is at work at the 31-acre Troy Gardens on the city’s north side. It mixes 184 community gardeners with a small farm and 30 units of co-housing sponsored by the Madison Area Land Trust. Sustainable living and environmental preservation are at the heart of the enterprise.

Part and parcel are the leadership programs offered in gardening and environmental work for teenagers and an award-winning garden for younger children. Will Allen would approve.

Programs like these have been quietly operating for years in Madison. What’s interesting now is how increasingly they are seen as part of a larger movement embracing organic farming, family farmers, local food systems, neighborhood enhancement and food security. The mayors conference helped strengthen those links.

_______________________________________________
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http://lists.wiscnet.net/mailman/listinfo/foodcouncil
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Eat Local Challenge Kick Off and Fundraiser to Support Growing Power

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What’s growing at the White House?

By Ellen Goodman: July 4, 2008
SCARBOROUGH, Maine

IT HAS BEEN decades since that famous forager Euell Gibbons reached through the White House fence and picked four edible weeds out of the president’s garden. This is not something that the Secret Service would recommend you try today.

But Roger Doiron has a better plan for eating the view of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. He’s started a campaign to get a kitchen garden growing on the White House lawn.

Doiron works out of his small Cape house in Maine, where I find him one summer day. A wasp-thin 41-year-old, he’s part of the fastest-growing - I used the word literally - movement in the country. His organization, Kitchen Gardeners International, is one link in a loose chain of partisans who are neither conservatives nor liberals but locavores. They want to think global, eat local. Very local. As in their front and backyard.

He shows me the lawn sign that expresses his politics: “1,500 Miles, 400 Gallons, Say What?” It’s a reference to the average miles food travels to your plate and the gallons of fuel used in its migration. It’s not the sexiest slogan, but kitchen gardeners are probably as passionate about vegetables as Republicans are about tax cuts.

Doiron spent a decade with a grass-roots environmental group in Europe. After returning to his hometown in 2001, he became a lettuce-roots environmentalist. As head of Kitchen Gardeners International, he also walks the walk, showing me 50 varieties of vegetables he grows for his family of five on about a sixth of an acre. Memo to other amateurs: You will be pleased to know that Doiron’s garden also has weeds.

The appeal of kitchen gardens - food you grow for the table - has been increasing pretty steadily. Taste bud by taste bud. But this year, a harmonic or maybe disharmonic convergence of factors led to a giant leap in the number of grow-it-yourselfers.

For one thing, there’s the rising cost of food - 45 percent worldwide in two years. There’s also the rising consciousness about the carbon footprint on your dinner plate. There is, as well, recognition of an international food shortage and moral queasiness about biofuels, growing corn to feed cars while people are going hungry. Meanwhile, we’ve had more uncertainty about food safety, whether it was spinach in 2006 or this year’s tomatoes. And the floods that ruined millions of acres in the Midwest have undermined our easy sense of plenty.

“When people feel they are living in uncertain times, they turn to things that give them a sense of security,” says Doiron. “There are not many sure things but if you put a few seeds in the ground and you don’t muck it up too much you’ll get a crop.” As proof he stands beside a neat patch of potatoes.

He adds, “Don’t do it because it’s the cheap thing to do or because Al Gore said it’s the right thing to do. Do it to make a small yet concrete step. You may not be able to single-handedly take on Exxon and Chevron but you can take on your backyard.”

In that spirit, Doiron is pushing for edible landscapes everywhere from schoolyards to governor’s mansions to empty urban plots. But Doiron set his eyes on everybody’s house, the White House.

He wants the candidates to pledge they’ll turn a piece of the 18-acre White House terrain into an edible garden. Or rather, return it into an edible garden.

After all, John Adams, the first president to ever live in the White House, had a garden to feed his family. Woodrow Wilson had a Liberty Garden and sheep grazing during the First World War. And, of course, the Roosevelts famously had their Victory Garden during World War II, a time when 40 percent of the nation’s produce came from citizen gardeners.

It’s too late for a Bush harvest, but the campaign to get the next president to model a bit of homeland food security has sprouted on Doiron’s website called EatTheView.org.

Eat the View doesn’t have the marching sound of John Philip Sousa. It doesn’t have the patriotic salience of a flag. But in dicey times, the idea of growing just a bit of your own food carries the real flavor of July Fourth. It smacks a lot of independence.

Ellen Goodman’s e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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Farmers on YouTube

Philanthromedia, a group that produces interactive content for donors and foundations, created a short and insightful piece about the benefits of farmers’ markets. The video is available on YouTube or on Philanthromedia’s own site.

If neither of the embedded links above work with your browser, you can copy and paste the following URL to view the video. http://www.philanthromedia.org/archives/2008/06/videofarmers_markets_build_com.html.

The piece addresses how farmers’ markets improve communities, support farmers and increase access to fresh, nutritious food in cities.

Enjoy!
David

David Adler
The Food Trust
One Penn Center
1617 John F. Kennedy Blvd., Suite 900
Philadelphia, PA 19103
P(215)575–0444×120
F(215)575–0466
www.TheFoodTrust.org
Headhouse Farmers’ Market opens on May 4, 2008. More information at www.headhousemarket.org
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From State Department Cultural Attache Michael Macy…

Check out the Food For London blurb, inspired by their trip to Growing Power

The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
Shortcut to: http://www.usembassy.org.uk/

30 June 2008 “Food for London” : Embassy Cultivates Growing Business of Urban farming… They went to the U.S. to learn more about agriculture in America’s cities, and now they’re back and helping London boost its own farming capacity.

Food for London - Urban Farming
The four members of the UK Delegation Team to America show their recent report. The team includes (from left to right): Catherine Miller; Tony Leach; Colin Buttery; and Ben Reynolds; (back) Embassy London Assistant Cultural Attaché, Mark Lanning … more
(Embassy photo by S-J Mayhew)

Embassy News & Events
30 June 2008
“Food for London” : Embassy Cultivates Growing Business of Urban Farming

Tony Leach (left, London Parks and Green Spaces Forum) chatting with American artist/writer Fritz Haeg, whose recent book, “Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn,” describes turning barren lawns into food-bearing gardens. (Embassy photo by S-J Mayhew)

They went to the U.S. to learn more about agriculture in America’s cities, and now they’re back and helping London boost its own farming capacity. Four Britons traveled on an Embassy-sponsored small grant last year, and this year they organized a conference at City Hall focusing on agriculture policies in London.

Farming in London? Well, the city is home to more than 400 farmers, and has the potential to help feed the millions of visitors to the 2012 Olympics.

Some 200 people attended the “Food for London” conference on June 30, which attracted even Mayor Boris Johnson. Mayor Johnson bolstered the spirit of the event, saying, “I want you to know that I support you.”

Urban agriculture promotes the growing of plants and animals within city limits to provide local, organic food supplies in an era of high oil prices and rising food costs.

“Food for London” was sponsored as part of the London Festival of Architecture and was hosted by Sustain, a non-governmental organization focused on healthy food and agricultural policies.

The four members of the British team (photo) that visited the U.S.: Colin Buttery (Royal Parks, London); Tony Leach (London Parks and Green Spaces Forum); Catherine Miller (Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens) and Ben Reynolds (London Food Link Project/Sustain).

The group has compiled their research into a 42-page report, which can be found at http://www.sustainweb.org/page.php?id=432 .

For more information about the U.S. Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Small Grants Program, please visit http://london.usembassy.gov/ukpa_cultural_grants.html .

The conference was held at City Hall. The chair of the event, Kath Dalmeny from Sustain, is seen here presenting.
(Embassy photo by S-J Mayhew)
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A New City of New Orleans

Good morning, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your favorite child.
I’m the people of the city of New Orleans,
I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.

I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.

There’s a train they call
The City of New Orleans
Stops at cities great along the way…

Detroit, Old Milwaukee, and Chicago,
St. Louie is the last stop of the day.

And on that train a rainbow throng is gathering,
With eyes fixed on the prize of freedom,
And on that train a global village’s bloooming,
Visions of the new dawn that we’re growing,
Knowing, the human race is one.

Good morning, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your favorite child.
I’m the people of the city of New Orleans,
I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.

I was down but now I’m back
Let’s move it on.
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Growing Round the Houses Paper From London International Urban Agriculture Conference

I thought you may be interested in the briefing paper that we’re launching on Monday at the ‘Growing Food for London’ conference. If you’re too eager to see it to read through the following(!), just follow this link to find the briefing paper: http://www.sustainweb.org/pdf/food_growing_&_social_housing.pdf

News Release
New food around the block
26/06/2008

Rising food prices and increased interest in healthy food, means more people are looking to grow their own. Growing Round the Houses1, a new briefing paper by Ben Reynolds of Sustain2 and Christine Haigh of Women’s Environmental Network3 (WEN), explains how social housing providers and their tenants can work together on their estates to grow food. As well giving advice on how to set up a food growing project on their estate, it describes examples such as the Spitalfields Estate Community Garden, where residents worked together to build themselves a food growing space for vegetables and herbs popular with the local ethnic minority community.

With urban allotments like gold dust, housing estates, with wide, underused green spaces are coming into their own, turning over their lawns to food growing plots. Ben Reynolds said “There’s incredible interest in growing your own food. Vegetable seed is overtaking flower seed sales for the first time. We hope this work will be the catalyst for a new dawn for urban agriculture.”

Christine Haigh, who works on WEN’s Local Food programme with women’s groups in East London, says “This paper provides inspiration and useful guidance for residents and social landlords looking to set up similar projects.”

Simon Donovan, community development manager at Tower Hamlets Community Housing4 comments, “The food growing project on the Spitalfields estate is an inspiration. Residents are talking to their neighbours, taking charge of their own space and having a pride in it. As well as cheap healthy food, there are physical and mental health benefits from the outdoor activity involved.”

The document will be launched on 30th June at the Growing Food for London conference in London[#rth5 | 5], the first time that the diverse urban agriculture communities – such as food growers, park keepers, architects and others - have been brought together in London.
ENDS

Press contact: Ben Reynolds, London Food Link project officer at Sustain, tel (work): 020 7837 1228, (mobile): 07939 202711, Ben@sustainweb.org
or Christine Haigh Local Food Project Officer at Women’s Environmental Network, tel (work): 020 7481 9004, (mobile): 07870 577934, food@wen.org.uk.

Citations
1) Growing Round the Houses: Food production on housing estate land is a joint briefing by Sustain and Women’s Environmental Network launched on 30th June 2008. Copies are available from http://www.wen.org.uk/local_food/resources.htm and here. The paper makes recommendations to social landlords, planners and developers, and residents to facilitate new food growing projects on housing estates across the country.

2) Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming represents around 100 national public-interest organisations. Sustain (a not-for-profit organisation) advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, promote equity and enrich society and culture. www.sustainweb.org

3) Women’s Environmental Network is the only organisation in the UK working consistently for women and the environment. WEN’s local food project provides training and support to groups of women growing food in urban areas. http://www.wen.org.uk/

4) Tower Hamlets Community Housing (THCH) is a Registered Social Landlord (RSL) and a Registered Charity that owns over 2,800 homes in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. http://www.thch.org/

5) The Growing Food for London conference is an all day event at City Hall, on Monday 30th June. Booking is necessary. Speakers include Tim Lang (City University), Joe Nasr (author of Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities), Fritz Haeg, (author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn) and Ian Collingwood (Middlesborough Council regeneration, and lead on the Middlesborough Urban Farming project). The event, which is jointly organised with the London Parks and Green Spaces Forum, is part of the London Festival Architecture.
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21st Century Milwaukee Helps the World Feed Itself

Not Vast Wheat Farms But Square Foot Backyard/Rooftop Worm Depositories & Food Gardens

19th century Milwaukee may have been the port
From which went forth more wheat to the wider world
From the Great Plains and Great Midwest
Than from any port heretofore in the history of humanity.

There is a lovely poster with a beautiful women
Casting wheat to the world entitled…
“Milwaukee Feeds the World.”

Perhaps the image for the 21st Century
Which may find Milwaukee helping the world’s cities
And their immediate water basins and bio-regions
Re-learning how to feed themselves…

With the help of worms and radiant waste,
Growing the finest soil for the healthiest plants,
Animals, and Humans,
Growing backyard mini-farms, community gardens,
City farmers, and liberating convivial communities.
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The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart

of the City, Reviewed and discussed here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/23/the-urban-homestead.html

“a delightfully readable and very useful guide to front- and back-yard
vegetable gardening, food foraging, food preserving, chicken keeping,
and other useful skills for anyone interested in taking a more active
role in growing and preparing the food they eat. I learned a great
deal about composting, self-watering containers, mulching, raised bed
gardens, vermiculture (worm composting), and raising chickens by
reading this info-dense book.”
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Food Policy Councils for Cities *updated*

CFSC’s website on food policy councils: http://www.foodsecurity.org/FPC/.
San Francisco Food Systems group: http://www.sffoodsystems.org/
Oakland’s Food System Assessment: http://oaklandfoodsystem.pbwiki.com/
Oakland’s Food Policy Council: http://www.edibleeastbay.com/pages/articles/spring2007/pdfs/oakland.pdf
Emory University Sustainable Food Initiative: http://www.emory.edu/sustainability.cfm.
Sustainable Food Policy Project: http://www.sustainablefoodpolicy.org/
Community Farm Alliance in Kentucky: http://www.communityfarmalliance.org/
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Compost Tea Eliminates Need for Pesticides or Commecial Fertilizer

Thank you so much for your article “Genetic engineering – a crop of hyperbole” on June 18! I attended the biotech convention as I am working on a book about the food crises of the 21st century. I found the presenters of sessions on genetically modified crops mostly well-meaning but extremely short-sighted. As the article pointed out, they failed to consider the other tools we have to solve the problems farmers face (such as pests or drought) - tools that are time-tested, free, and already legal. For example, a farmer can use compost tea to protect crops from extreme temperatures, drought, pests, and disease while also enhancing a crop’s ability to obtain nutrients from the soil. By using compost tea, the farmer would not need to apply pesticide or commercial fertilizer, two major sources of pollution. This is no rejection of technology as it makes use of the most advanced microbiology available.

Jill Richardson
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Agroecological Strategies for Food Security

Folks – Agroecological strategies are extremely important for reducing poverty, eliminating food insecurity, and enhancing rural livelihoods – according to the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology, available at www.agassessment.org. This was a report by 400 scientists from around the world. Mary

Mary Hendrickson, Ph.D.

Extension Associate Professor

Department of Rural Sociology

Director, Food Circles Networking Project

Associate Director, Community Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture Program

200 Gentry Hall

University of Missouri

Columbia, MO 65211

Tele: 573–882–7463

Fax: 573–882–5127

Web: www.foodcircles.missouri.edu and www.foodandsocietyfellows.org
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pre-harvest Growing Power site

Bios of Growing Power Team

Growing Power Archives