Food in the News by Shelley Lance, Blog Editor
In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, there’s an article called “Street Farmer,” by Elizabeth Royte, that anyone interested in the politics of food will want to read. The article is about Will Allen, an athletic, 60-year old African-American who is the creator and founder of Growing Power farm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Allen produces a quarter of a million dollars of food in “14 greenhouses crammed onto two acres in a working-class neighborhood on Milwaukee’s northwest side, less than half a mile from the city’s largest public-housing project.” Allen claims that “we need 50 million more people growing food… on porches, in pots, in side yards.”
Will Allen’s life story is truly fascinating. He’s a powerhouse of a man who works 16 hour days, and a master salesman who won marketing awards when he was employed by Procter & Gamble. (“The job was so easy I could do it in half a day,” he says.) He was, briefly, in his 20′s, a professional basketball player who learned about composting from Belgian farmers while playing for the America Basketball Association for a few seasons in Belgium. Allen’s father, a share-cropper from South Carolina who became a construction laborer in Maryland, insisted that all his children do farm chores on the family’s small farm plot. Years later, Allen, married and retired from basketball, discovered he “had the bug to grow food.”
The article deals with important, thorny issues such as whether or not the inner city can be the next front in the “good-food movement,” and how to involve African Americans in learning or caring about organic agriculture when their family history may include slavery or the back-breaking work of share-cropping.
It’s an important article, because the so-called “good-food movement” doesn’t much matter if it’s perceived as an amusement for those lucky enough to have plenty of time and money on their hands. Considering this country’s alarming problem wih obesity, diabetes and heart disease, everyone in America would benefit by eating healthy food. Remarkable individuals like Will Allen may show us the way to accomplish this everywhere, including our inner cities.
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July 6th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
What an inspiring article bringing Will Allen to our attention. Thanks.
Some of the happiest times (think bonding) come about when family members and/or friends cultivate the earth.
When healthy food is then produced, cooked and eaten together, a kind of hmmmm, energy? is created that obviously I can’t quite put into words. It’s what I feel when gifts of Christmas cookies sent out are made with raspberry jam that grew in my garden and cooked on my stove the Summer before. At Thanksgiving I like to serve the grape juice I make from the October crop I harvest and the applesauce from the 5 variety tree growing outside my kitchen window. Oh boy, I just thought of the word that expresses what I feel. Love.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
We under value food and farmers in this country, and continually demand cheap food from our marketplace and grocers. Organic food is not just for those of us with time and money. Will Allen represents this, as do urban farmers across America. It’s time to make a change.