Urban farming pioneer Will Allen visits Detroit

Members of Detroit's fast-rising urban farm movement view Will Allen as a top mentor. They will have a chance to spend an entire weekend with a man recently recognized among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.

Allen will discuss sustainable agriculture during a lecture on Friday evening, June 4. He then will help guide a two-day workshop on Saturday and Sunday, hosted by the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.

Milwaukee-based Growing Power Inc., Allen's project to promote urban farming, has helped Detroit's 4-year-old Black Community Food Security Network become a major participant in what advocates describe as a food revolution. The city of Detroit now has more than 700 urban farms and gardens, roughly a tenfold increase since the middle of the past decade. The Food Security Network's focal point is the 2-acre D-Town Farm in northwest Detroit's Rouge Park.

Allen has visited Detroit in the past, but this is the first time he has personally offered a full-scale workshop, says Malik K. Yakini, the Food Security Network's chairman.

"This helps to secure our partnership with Growing Power," Yakini says. "We hope they will transfer some of the knowledge they have developed to help us ramp up the urban agriculture movement in Detroit."

From rural sharecropping to modern urban farming

Today's urban farms involve more than just planting crops, Allen and his supporters have noted. The green environmental movement receives high emphasis. For example, one of the Detroit weekend topics will involve vermiculture, which uses worms to decompose organic food waste into soil nutrients. Another workshop highlight is construction of hoop houses, which are affordable and portable offshoots of greenhouses.

Allen, 62, started Growing Power in 1993 with the purchase of a set of greenhouses in ramshackle condition on a neglected 2-acre farm within Milwaukee's city limits. He was a former 6-foot-7 college basketball star from the University of Miami who had played a few seasons in the pros, and then entered a corporate career that left him unfulfilled. As the son of parents who had sharecropped in South Carolina and then ran their own small family farm in Maryland, he made a midlife change and enlisted in the cutting edge of the urban farm movement.

Allen started Growing Power with an agricultural youth education program. As the first years passed during the middle 1990s, he saw potential to provide what he describes as "healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food" to residents of impoverished neighborhoods that lack access to fresh fruits, vegetables and meats.

Growing Power indeed grew, to the point of obtaining a 40-acre suburban farm. Educational training programs were developed for residents not only in Milwaukee, but in partner cities such as Detroit, with eco-friendly methods as advanced as "bio-phyto remediation" and "aquaculture closed-loop systems." At the same time, his basic slogan is far simpler: "Grow. Bloom. Thrive."

In addition to his Time Magazine accolade, Allen was recruited by former President Bill Clinton for the Clinton Global Initiative. First Lady Michelle Obama invited him to the White House for the launch of "Let's Move!" - her initiative to combat childhood obesity.

Urban farming: Teaching and learning

Yakini is the executive director of the Nsoroma Institute, a 20-year-old public school academy rooted in Afrocentric principles that teaches students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

A decade ago, the school incorporated urban organic agriculture into the curriculum. Yakini says his eyes were opened to the importance and value of urban gardening, which led him to become a part of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network.

"Always, a good teacher is a student also," he says of his learning experience.

Network organizers have faced start-up challenges similar to those encountered by Growing Power during the middle 1990s. They found a donated plot of land in 2006 for their first garden, but developers put the property to other use in 2007. They found another site, and the same thing happened. They now are in their third year at Rouge Park.

People of all ages are involved in the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, the same as with Growing Power. Farm products are sold at Eastern Market and other locations. Cooperative buying is also promoted.

Furthermore, the Food Security Network strives to play a major role in public policy. The website is filled with detailed policy statements. Leaders of the coalition advocated that Detroit adopt a food security policy and were placed in charge of a task force. Detroit's City Council has adopted a food security policy and has established a permanent community board for public participation, known as the Detroit Food Policy Council.

Allen's Friday talk starts at 7 p.m. at the Nsoroma Institute, 240045 Joann St. Admission is $20, payable in advance or at the door.

Cost for the two-day weekend workshop is $100, with activities from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days at D-Town Farm at Rouge Park. Registrations can be made at the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network website or by calling 313-345-3663.

Sources:

http://www.growingpower.org/
http://detroitblackfoodsecurity.org/
http://www.nsoroma.org/nsoroma/
http://www.fastcompany.com/100/2009/will-allen
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1984685_1984949_1985243,00.html#ixzz0pFObCnRt
http://organic-gardening-online.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-is-vermiculture.html