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<div class=Section1>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'>Jennifer Alig<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#943634'>**My email has changed to Jennifer.Alig@deq.ok.gov. Please
update your address book.**</span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:
"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#943634'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'> </span><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
lang=EN style='color:windowtext'>Urban Ag Revolution<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span
lang=EN style='font-size:24.0pt;color:windowtext'>Will Allen talks about
growing the ‘Good Food’ movement <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
style='color:windowtext'><img width=307 height=252 id="Picture_x0020_5"
src="cid:image001.jpg@01CA1C69.3B753000" alt=will></span><span lang=EN
style='color:windowtext'>This weekend I caught up with Will Allen who was
keynoting the always excellent <a href="http://www.nofasummerconference.org/">Northeast
Organic Farming Association’s Annual Conference</a> in Amherst, MA. He’s
founder and CEO of <a href="http://growingpower.org/">Growing Power,</a> the
country’s premier grassroots urban gardening program, and also a MacArthur
Genius Award Winner and former pro-basketball player.<br>
<br>
Growing Power demonstrates growing methods through on-site workshops and
hands-on demonstrations, and has farms in Milwaukee and Merton, Wisconsin, and
Chicago, Illinois, where they grow vegetables, fish, bees, livestock, worms,
and more. They have also established satellite training sites in Arkansas,
Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Mississippi.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span
lang=EN style='color:windowtext'>Erik Hoffner:</span></b><span lang=EN
style='color:windowtext'> What’s the youth component’s importance to Growing
Power?<br>
<br>
<b>Will Allen:</b> We started out as a youth serving organization. If there
wasn’t a youth program from the beginning, I probably wouldn’t be doing this
work now. But I quickly realized that we needed to also get adults involved,
that it had to be a multi-generational effort at engaging the community. The
fastest way to do that, though is through the youth, and they bring in the
adults. A program like ours can then be quickly regarded as an asset by
everybody in a community if it anchors people, and is a preferred place for
their kids to be.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> What’s the gender breakdown of the young people involved in your
programs?<br>
<br>
<b>WA: </b> This new kind of agriculture is a majority women’s movement. I
look around when I’m at events like this one this weekend, and by and large,
it’s women.<br>
<br>
<b>EH: </b>What do the kids go on to do after they work in Growing Power’s
‘youth corps’ apprentice program?<br>
<br>
<b>WA:</b> We work with some of these kids from the ages of 8 until they go to
college, and many do go to college, and part of their success could be because
we focus on academics for 2 hours every day. We require the kids to write and
read about the hands on stuff they’ve done that day. It spurs them on to learn
more, dig deeper. They might get curious about microorganisms, for example, and
go learn about them. They get excited about it. I think that’s what we do best,
both the kids and the adults, we inspire people to want to go do something,
start a project, not just sit on a couch.<br>
<br>
<b>EH: </b>Have Growing Power participants gone on to start gardens of their
own?<br>
<br>
<b>WA: </b>Yes, but better yet, more than half of our employees are former
Youth Corps or Interns. Some others of our staff come from among the 2,000
volunteers we have.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> Where else have Growing Power alums gone to grow?<br>
<br>
<b>WA: </b>We’ve trained thousands of people, and they started hundreds of
programs around the country. Many more are now coming to us 3 days a month for
our <a href="http://growingpower.org/workshops.htm">Commercial Urban Ag
Training program</a>. It’s 5 months, half of it hands-on, the other half’s
classroom on how to start a small scale farming operation.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> On what economic model?<br>
<br>
<b>WA: </b>Non-profits and for-profits both. Since we started this 3 years ago,
we’ve seen a lot of non-profits, in part because today, non-profits need ways
to make money. A program like this earns a lot more revenue than traditional
youth development programs.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> Where are your alums growing, in urban settings only, or are they
going rural too?<br>
<br>
<b>WA:</b> Both. Suburban too. Many African Americans who said they’d never
farm again are going back to the land, even to their ancestral rural lands in
the South. Ten years ago, they would never have come on board with this
revolution. They’d say, “that’s ‘slaves’ work.” So it’s very satisfying, and
it’s important, to see this change because they often represent the most food
insecure communities.<br>
<br>
So we’re starting to see this as a multi-cultural, multi-generational
grassroots ‘revolution’ – even the top-down types, the corporations and
politicians and universities want to get on board, after fighting small scale
farming for so long, and that’s fine, we need everyone. We need millions of new
farmers doing small-scale agriculture.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> What’s the deal with land tenure?<br>
<br>
<b>WA: </b>Tenure is so important. It’s why when we incorporated Growing Power,
we became a land trust, because we wanted long-term tenure. In order to grow
good food we have restore the land, which has been so contaminated. That means
building soil, and it takes time. I wouldn’t start a project on rented land unless
I could get a 10 year lease.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span
lang=EN style='color:windowtext'>But renting is viable. Land is expensive, and
if you wait around to buy land, the community’s going to starve.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> If you could change one thing about how cities are run, what would
it be?<br>
<br>
<b>WA:</b> All city planners should be required to incorporate green space and
food growing into their urban plans. The <a
href="http://www.planning.org/planning/">American Planning Association’s
magazine</a> new issue, it’s all about food. Ten years ago, that topic was
unheard of. So that’s progress.<br>
<br>
<b>EH:</b> How important is networking to Growing Power’s work?<br>
<br>
<b>WA:</b> Very important. We share everything we learn, pass it on, and hope
they’ll pass it on to others. That’s how change happens, and a revolution comes
about. I’m calling it that now, the Good Food revolution, because that’s
exactly what it is.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><i><span
lang=EN style='color:windowtext'>Visit Growing Power <a
href="http://growingpower.org/">here</a>. Also, enjoy an audio interview with
Will Allen from this weekend at <a
href="http://www.cchange.net/2009/08/12/growing-food-growing-community/">Sea
Change Radio</a>.</span></i><span lang=EN style='color:windowtext'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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