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Allen said he learned it all from his parents. “We’re having to go back
to when people shared things and started taking care of each other,” he
said. “That’s the only way we will survive.”
WILL ALLEN already had the makings of an agricultural dream packed
into two scruffy acres in one of Milwaukee’s most economically
distressed neighborhoods.
An Urban Farmer Is Rewarded for His Dream
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EpTWQWx1MQ)
His Growing Power organization has six
greenhouses and eight hoophouses for greens, herbs and vegetables; pens
for goats, ducks and turkeys; a chicken coop and beehives; and a system
for raising tilapia and perch. There’s an advanced composting operation
— a virtual worm farm — and a lab that is working on ways to turn food
waste into fertilizer and methane gas for energy.
With a staff
of about three dozen full-time workers and 2,000 residents pitching in
as volunteers, his operation raises about $500,000 worth of affordable
produce, meat and fish for one of what he calls the “food deserts” of
American cities, where the only access to food is corner grocery
stories filled with beer, cigarettes and processed foods.
Now, with a $500,000 “genius grant” that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation awarded him last week, Mr. Allen is dreaming bigger.
"I’d
like to see Growing Power transform itself into a five-story vertical
building being totally off the grid with renewable energy, where people
can come and learn, so they can go back to their communities around the
world and grow healthy food,” Mr. Allen, 59, said in an interview at
the farm.
For Mr. Allen, only the second working farmer to win
the award, according to the foundation, his efforts are not meant
simply to keep people well fed. He sees Growing Power as a way to
organize people whose voices are rarely heard and to fight racism.
“I am a farmer first, and I love to grow food for people,” Mr. Allen said. “But it’s also about growing power.”
For
16 years, through sales, and proceeds from grants, he has extended
Growing Power’s operations in Milwaukee and Chicago, spreading the
gospel of urban farming around the world and training fellow
agricultural dreamers.
An imposing 6 feet 7 inches tall, Mr.
Allen, who grew up on a farm outside Washington, D.C., played
professional basketball for a time after college, mostly in Europe. In
1993, he left a job with Procter & Gamble and bought a roadside
farm in Milwaukee’s economically depressed north side — the last
remaining registered farm in the city — and got local teenagers
involved.
Now, along with its main farm in Milwaukee, Growing
Power, a nonprofit group, has a 40-acre farm in a nearby town, and
gardens throughout the city. The group also has operations in Chicago,
including a garden at the Cabrini-Green housing project and urban farms
in Grant and Jackson Parks.
In addition to retail sales at the
Milwaukee headquarters, Growing Power sells to food co-ops, other
retail stores and about 30 restaurants in the Milwaukee and Chicago
areas.
The Growing Powers headquarters looks like a farm stand
in need of a paint job and feels like a 1960s community center. Young
and old mill about, shopping and waiting for a tour or a training
session or a conference.
There is constant activity, with
projects at various stages of completion. Mud-encrusted boots share
space with pick-axes and pots of salad greens.
“It’s a crazy place,” Mr. Allen said.
As
with any top-notch farmer, Mr. Allen takes special care with his soil.
Using millions of pounds of food waste, his farm produces endless
compost piles, which are then enriched by thousands of pounds of worms,
essential to producing what he calls the highest quality fertilizer in
the world.
“There are worms in every pot of soil and every tray of vegetables in this greenhouse,” Mr. Allen said.
His food, free of chemicals, tastes better, Mr. Allen said. “And that’s what the really good chefs understand.”
Paul
Kahan, the chef and managing partner of the award-winning Chicago
restaurants Blackbird and Avec, is one of the chefs who has been
working with Mr. Allen’s organization.
“They are wonderful
people and do some interesting things that fit in with what we are
trying to do,” Mr. Kahan said. “We buy regular produce, such as tomatoes, but they do some things in particular that we really love: pea tendrils, baby beet greens, nasturtiums, baby mustard greens.”
Mr.
Allen said he learned it all from his parents. “We’re having to go back
to when people shared things and started taking care of each other,” he
said. “That’s the only way we will survive.”
“What better way,” he mused, “than to do it with food?”
