[M II A II R II K]

The urban farming explosion


March 24, 2010

By Peter Ladner



Read More: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/urb...736/story.html

Will Allen, 60, is a 6-foot 7-inch former professional basketball player and sales executive for Procter and Gamble and KFC, who can't keep his hands out of the dirt. "I'm a farmer first," he tells his weekend class of 80 people who are crammed into one of his 14 greenhouses in a working class neighbourhood of Milwaukee. They're paying $150 a day for a weekend course at the at the epicentre of the North American urban agriculture explosion. Biceps the size of tree trunks hanging out of his cut-off hoody, he strokes and pokes the moist black soil swarming with red wriggler worms as he repeats his lessons.

- Will Allen is not easily forgettable. His 17-year-old Growing Power Community Food Center employs 39 people, engages 2,000 volunteers, and cranks out 2,000 trays of sprouts a week. He figures he's getting $30 for every square foot of sprouts. The centre has a 33,000-square-foot warehouse down the road that helps feed low-income people, with production boosted by a nearby farm and community gardens in Chicago. Between the low-income food boxes and the sales to local chefs, Growing Power produces enough food for 10,000 people a year.

- His success in mixing local food production, low-income-job creation and business skills earned him a $500,000 MacArthur Genius award in 2008 and a $400,000 grant from the Kellogg Foundation. In our January class, huddled around warm water in the tilapia fish tanks while the frigid Wisconsin winds chills the composting class outside, an executive from JP Morgan Chase watches over the fruits of his company's $150,000 donation to Growing Power.

- Here in Vancouver, urban farming is moving beyond the high-profile community and allotment gardens at places such as Burrard and Davie. Building Opportunities for Business, the economic development agency in the Downtown Eastside, is anticipating 11 part-time jobs will come out of United We Can's conversion of a parking lot at Hastings and Hawke into a commercial community garden.