An Urban Farmer Dreams Big

Photo by Darren Hauck/New York Times/Redux

On a wintry Midwestern day, a class of freshmen from the local Montessori high school is crowding into a sun-warmed greenhouse in Milwaukee to learn how to raise vegetables. For six weeks, the students have been focused on growing organic salad greens, herbs, pea shoots and sunflower sprouts. One day soon, they may be selling them to local residents and businesses. Their mentor and teacher, a man who towers over them, is Will Allen, a 6’7” former basketball player and the creator of Growing Power an organization that’s building on a trend flourishing across America: urban farming.

Allen’s organization not only is producing a bounty of healthy sustainable foods from fish to vegetables to eggs, but also is creating a generation of farmers and entrepreneurs. “Traditional farm families just don’t exist anymore,” Allen points out. “We’ve got to start encouraging people from urban areas to take up farming, too.”

Allen couldn’t have wished for a better proponent of his ideals than the first lady of the United States.

Urban Farming Goes to Washington … Again

Today, the trend reaches all the way to the White House. Michelle Obama is breaking ground for a kitchen garden on the South Lawn, delighting a whole host of advocates who’ve been calling for an effort exactly like this. Last fall, the Brockmans, an Illinois farm family, decided to promote farming among city dwellers with a petition for a “White House Farmer.” The idea came originally from Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. And it has had fans from Alice Waters of Chez Panisse to Ruth Reichl of Gourmet Magazine.

The Brockmans set up a website asking readers to nominate candidates for the hypothetical position. One hundred and eleven suggestions came zipping back over the Internet, highlighting agri-talent from Arizona to Utah to Wisconsin. The nation embraced the idea by casting some 60,000 votes. Among the front-runners was Will Allen, who’d been demonstrating the value of growing your own food and eating locally to urbanites for more than three decades. Allen says he wouldn’t have time to be a designated farmer, but he loves the idea of the White House setting the gardening example. And if they ever need his advice, he’s there.

A White House garden certainly has strong precedent. Eleanor Roosevelt created a victory garden on the White House lawn in 1943, a time when the nation was at war and the economy was suffering. The victory garden example showed people how to provide for themselves and conserve resources during challenging times. As Michelle Obama puts a shovel into soil on the first day of spring, the example moves forward to encourage new generations to do the same.

An Idea Blooms

Allen understands that benefit well. His father had been a sharecropper in South Carolina, and the son worked along with his father. Growing up, Allen figured the first chance he got he’d get himself into another profession. “Never again was I going to work as hard as that,” he said. But after graduating from the University of Miami (Allen was the first African American to play basketball there), then spending nearly a decade on professional courts in Florida and in Europe, he realized that the feeling for “shoveling up a garden” had come back and wouldn’t let go.

Allen returned to Milwaukee in 1976, took over some vacant land his wife’s family owned within the city limits and began to farm. He started working with kids at the YMCA and at the local schools, teaching them what he knew. Growing Power began sprouting up like a row of pole beans on a warm spring day. Inundated with requests to work with more and more schools, Allen found himself in the business of developing new ways to make urban farming work.

His vacant land in Milwaukee evolved into six farms: three in Wisconsin, and three in Illinois with 35 employees, and a budget that’s grown from zero to more than $2 million. As a result of Allen’s efforts, 60 locations in Chicago now use compost, turning 6 million pounds of food waste from the city into soil. In addition to vegetables, Growing Power produces worms for richer soil, organically grown tilapia, and free-range eggs. In fact, Growing Power has made Milwaukee what the locals call the number one Urban Egg City in the country.

Allen’s volunteer base is strong: He works with “farmers” as young as 4 to folks as old as 90. The food they grow is delivered to restaurants, schools, senior centers—basically anyone who needs a hand. Their Market Baskets contain 20 to 25 pounds of food, including 14 varieties of vegetables and fruit, which will feed a family of two to four for a week. Lower-income consumers can buy one for $16 a week; seniors pay half price. Into the baskets go potatoes, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, sunflower sprouts, salad mix, fruit (whatever is freshest), maybe a head of garlic—to Allen, it’s all about nutrition. The fresh-picked vegetables typically go from the field to the table within a day and a half. For his creativity and hard work, Allen received the Genius Award from the MacArthur Foundation—a monetary prize of $500,000.

Big Dreams

But Allen isn’t content to rest easy. “We’re losing farmland as we speak,” he says. “We need to salvage vacant lots in cities. And we need to figure out how to grow food closer to where people live.” Allen has already salvaged an abandoned basketball court in Chicago’s Cabrini-Green neighborhood by covering it with rich layers of compost and planting a thriving crop of tomatoes, peppers and corn. Another idea he’s contemplating: a five-story vertical farm, with a fish farm on the ground level and vegetables on ascending floors.

“We need to get a lot more people involved,” says Allen. “Fundamentally we need 50 million people growing food in backyards, side yards, on rooftops. That would finally transform high food prices, and change poor and unhealthy diets into healthy ones. “

Allen believes there can be no better example than an organic garden at the White House will show the way to feeding a lot of people and creating jobs.

The Obamas, along with their White House chef, Cristeta Comerford, have been making this point in a myriad ways, and Allen is delighted. At Miriam’s Kitchen, a nonprofit drop-in center serving the homeless, Michelle Obama served fresh locally grown foods: mushroom risotto, steamed broccoli and apple carrot muffins. And in a speech at the USDA, last week, she emphasized how pleased she was that Agricultural Secretary Tom Vilsack had launched a People’s Garden Project to develop gardens at all USDA facilities here and around the world. “I’m a big fan of community gardens,” she said, “both for their beauty and for the fresh food they produce.” Allen’s goal for 2009 is to have Michelle and President Barack Obama come to Milwaukee to visit his farm, an idea that doesn’t seem terribly far-fetched.

Now 60, Allen says he hasn’t played basketball in quite awhile. There’s the reality of arthritis, and besides that, he says he can’t afford to get injured while working as a farmer. But looking at Will Allen, one sees a very tall, very fit man. Now that the Obamas have broken ground for the White House Garden Project, might there be reason for a celebratory game? “Well, that would be a reason to come out of basketball retirement,” Allen laughs. “That’s the one game I’d like to play.”

Marcia Rockwood is a writer and editor based in New York.