Post on 07-Apr-2018
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The Pst Carbn Reader Series: Fd
Grwing Cmmunity Fd Systems
By Erika Allen
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Abut the Authr
Erika Allen is Chicago projects manager or Growing
Power, a nationally acclaimed nonproft organizationand land trust providing equal access to healthy and
aordable ood, especially in disadvantaged communi-
ties. She is co-chair o the Chicago Food Policy Advisory
Council and was appointed in 2008 to the Illinois
Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force. In 2009
she and her ather, Growing Power ounder Will Allen,
were eatured in the New York Times Magazine. She
has a bachelor o fne arts rom the School o the Art
Institute o Chicago and a master o arts in art therapy
rom the University o Illinois at Chicago. Allen is aFellow o Post Carbon Institute.
Post Carbon Institute
2010
613 4th Street, Suite 208
Santa Rosa, Caliornia 95404 USA
This publication is an excerpted chapter rom The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st CenturysSustainability Crises, Richard Heinberg and DanielLerch, eds. (Healdsburg, CA: Watershed Media, 2010).For other book excerpts, permission to reprint, and
purchasing visit http://www.postcarbonreader.com.
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This chapter is adapted from an interview with Erika
Allen by Daniel Lerch on January 24, 2010.
Cmmunity Fd Systems
The idea o a community ood system is much larger
than just urban arming. It deals with everything, all
the components that are needed to establish, maintain,
and perpetually sustain a civilization.
Urban arming is key in the reclamation o an Earth-and ecology-based value system, and it plays an impor-
tant role: We need urban ood production, communities
growing ood in an urban environment. But with a com-
munity food system, neighborhood stakeholders are the
ones growing that ood, moving it around, and in con-
trol o land tenure or wherever soil-, ood-, and Earth-
based materials are being grown. Basically we are talking
about sovereignty, about having land and water rights.
This is not a new concept; indigenous communities
globally struggle with powerul external entities thatattempt to extract raw and reined resources rom
land that has traditionally been stewarded by ami-
lies who understand the natural laws o replenishment
and proper natural-resource management. In a locally-
operated ood system we engage all members o the
community, taking special care to engage the most mar-
ginalized members and those most impacted by ood
and land degradation. We begin with simple questions:
Where are you going to get water rom, and how are
you getting the water? Who makes the decision about
how landopen space and commercial spaceis being
used?
These simple questions activate civic and civil rights
and accountability with government, because there are
always regulatory issues and agendas that (as is oten
revealed) community members are unaware o and have
not been included in the conversations. So true sustain-
ability in terms o community ood systems meansthat disenranchised people, especially youth and their
amilies, are involved in the process not only as ben-
eiciaries o good (and carbon-neutral) ood but as
central participants in the planning, development, and
execution o the ood system, including its interlocking
parts: energy, housing, public transportation, economic
development, and so on. Youre building a whole inra-
structure that supports local ood systems.
This is how we dierentiate it in our thinking at
Growing Power, because we dont just do urban arm-ing. We work with youth, go to markets, do advocacy
work around policy, write grants, give talksand all
those things are connected and part o reestablishing
unctional communities and ood systems. We have a
ood security program where people pay a basic weekly
ee or year-round ood security, and in return they
get a bag o ood with resh ruits and vegetables both
rom local wholesalers and rom stu that we produce
In a community oodsystem, neighborhood
stakeholders are theones growing anddistributing the ood.
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ourselves. This is the baseline and it orms the inra-
structure or more sophisticated elements o the ood
system to grow into an inrastructure that supports
community ownership and control o its own ood sys-
tem. We cannot stress enough that community ood
systems development and implementation are so much
more than just urban arming, and its important
because people dont typically think o ood in that
way. They think its something that armers do: Lets
support the armers! Oh, theyve got the arm bill; its
taken care o. Or worse, Lets go buy 200 million
acres and allow machines to grow commodities on it
that indirectly may or may not be suitable or direct
human consumption!
It goes beyond community-supported agriculture
(CSA), but CSA is important too. People think CSA
is cute; well, its a little beyond cuteit transorms
communities. And it secures the community, because
i something happens so that ood cannot move rom
Caliornia to the Midwest or to the East Coast, what
are people going to do? Its not going to be so cute
anymore. Lets look at the basic ood-desert neigh-
borhoodits usually a low-income neighborhood or
ghetto. I live in a ood desert; I chose to live there, but
it is also what I could aord at the time I was purchas-
ing my irst home. I look around me every day and I
think, What would happen? I am the only one whos
got ood growing in my yard. And I have the privilege
to know why its important, and the capability to do
something about it.
So yes, Growing Power does oodbut its ood plus.
Yes, I am an urban armer, but I am also a community
ood systems planner. Many o us doing the hands-on implementationarmers in the rural and urban
environmentshave always planned or the land, or
the beneit o their amily, community, and Earth.
Community ood systems provide a much needed rec-
lamation o this tradition at a time in history where we
are at a technological tipping point.
Cmmunity evelpment
We also work with healing, community reormation,
and civic engagement. We work with people to develop,
irst, a vision o what they want their community to
look like. This is not traditionally how community
engagement happens; typically the community is the
last to know what is being planned on its behal. Thisis a backwards process. We advocate irst identiying
who needs to be involved: Who is not at the table, and
needs to be? Who are the stakeholders most impacted?
Who is going to operate this system? What are the ways
that you can create ood security within the city, and
also create an opportunity or armers? How do you
connect the rural and the urban? We go through that
process and start to orm relationships. So it is a com-
munity-scale eort, and it dovetails with other eorts
to build community resilience.
It is really about getting people in power to understand
whats going on in the communitywhat is work-
ing, and how people are fnding ways to survive under
extraordinarily challenging conditions both here in the
United States and abroad. Its about recognizing that its
going to be a long road or transormation and keeping
the community connected to the resources and to the
n fd deserts, peple lack pprtunities fr buyin g ardable, nutritius
fd.
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people who are doing the work, the visionary doers. Its
about making sure all communities have equal access
to culturally appropriate, environmentally responsible,
aordable, nutritionally dense oodand to do that
you have to address everything: housing, land, educa-
tion, how you prevent and punish crime. So we are see-
ing that ood systems can be a very powerul tool or
resilience. In a revolutionary way, you can completely
transorm things without people realizing whats hap-
peningthey are aware, but it just makes intuitive sense
this way. Its also not about just going out and fghtingthe proverbial man, or continuing an academic dia-
logue about what could happen or should happen; you
dont have time or this because youve got a lot to do.
So instead o having people just being oppositional and
trying to get someone else to make the changes, you
have people who are assets to their community, who
are making the transormation happen themselves (but
being oppositional when they need to be).
Transfrmatin
This movementthe good ood/community ood
systems reclamation movementis so transorma-
tive because people have to go through a whole pro-
cess within themselves and in partnership with others,
because so ew people have conidence in this area; so
ew o us have retained our agricultural legacies and
knowledge. You can have ten Ph.D. degrees, but when
you get a pitchork in your hands you have to under-
stand the undamental principles o decomposition
youre dealing with basic concepts o lie and death. Its
actually really simple earth science; its simple technol-
ogy that many try to make overly complicated and end
up conusing themselves and others in the process. But
i you dont understand the basic principles o nature
and dont have some degree o patience, you cant do
anything to be truly sel-suicient without exploiting
other people or the environment.
This is why armers are geniusesthey do everything.
They predict the weather, and they have to plan; its
a huge undertaking. Even a so-called dirt armer, a
poverty-stricken armer, has to know so much just to
survive. These armers might not be literate in the
Western-world sense, but they know everything and
have humility and respect or Earth and her resources.
Reclaiming that heritage and connecting people to that
understanding, whatever that may be or them, are
very important.
We have our heritage as a amily, Al len-Raiord-Bussler,
and I have an unbroken line o agriculture people in my
own lineage. I almost didnt carry on the tradition
Im an artist. But I was always kind o a unky artist. I
didnt want to be in galleriesinstead I wanted to be a
community-based artist. I wanted to do art in commu-
nities and work with communities and help others have
a voice through art. And that led me all the way back
So ew people haveconfdence in this
area; so ew o us haveretained our agriculturallegacies and knowledge.
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to ood. I became an art therapist because I was doing
that kind o work already as a community-based artist.
I had kids who could not even do art; they were out o
their minds. I was thin king it was a psychiatric issue at
the time. Then one day I realized that they didnt have
any real oodthey werent eating oods with nutri-
tional content, the ood many o us rom vegetable-
arm backgrounds take or granted. With this epiphany
I began to ask, How can I solve that? Well, artists are
essentially problem solvers. So you have arming on
one hand, which is essentially al l about understanding
natural systems, and artist problem solvers on the other
handyou put those two together, and all kinds o
amazing solutions can happen. And you build on thatprinciple. You bring these groups together, you start a
acility where people can see natural systems working,
and then they can learn those practical skills: Theyre
learning how to arm and how to take care o them-
selves and others.
And then we see that the people we think dont know
very much are really the ones who do. People come to
our weekend-long rom-the-ground-up workshops
and are transormedtheyre going to do something,
even i theyre just putting in a compost bin or a back-
yard garden so their kids have that exposure. That
makes a dierence. It may not save the world, but its
going to save that microcosm o a amily unit. Theyre
going to have a dierent experience with the land.
Maybe that will lead them to supporting a local armer,
or maybe that child wil l end up going into agricultural
science or another meaningul proession.
Theres no certainty about the uture; things can
change, and we can change. Ive watched my dad work with some very scary people, some overtly bigoted,
KKK-type people. He gets them on his side and they
become his biggest ans and bring him arm imple-
ments, donate supplies and services; its amazing. That
ability to transorm people by your own kindness or
by your own ability to be who you are, thats some-
thing that you can learn how to do, but you have to be
exposed to it and see it as a possibility. We are growing
more o these possibilities.
Scalability
Scalability is dependent on the community; we dont
just go in and make something happen with a wave
o a wand. Were scaling within our organization. Westarted o with 2.1 acres or our original acility in
Milwaukee; Dad has acquired a couple o other proper-
ties, and its spawning within the city o Milwaukee a
bunch o other neighborhood projects, and those will
spawn yet other neighborhood projects. The water
and waste department has provided a long-term lease
or ity acres or us to be able to compost and build
greenhouses. We also received a stimulus unding pack-
age or ity youthyoung adults who are going to be
building greenhouses in Milwaukee and Chicagoandsupport or six ull-time positions over two years. So by
next year we will have a substantial year-round ood-
production operation underway thats low tech and
community operated. In Milwaukee public schools we
have a contract with their massive ood provider; were
growing a sunlower-sprout snack that the ourth-grad-
ers have once a week.
Grwing Pwer funder ill Allen leads a wrm cmpsting wrksh p.
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People bring stu to usideas, methods, tools, and
technologiesand teach us how to use it, and then we
ampliy it and we pass along the knowledge to others.
Heier Project brought us worms and got us started
with a little vermicompost bin. Weve ampliied it to
where we now have depositories ive eet tall, millions
o wormsand its literally a depository rom which we
extract worms when we start a new project to distribute
ree o charge to anyone who takes the training.
Knwledge and Resurce Exchanges
In addition to everything were doing with our own
inrastructure, a big part o our work is with other
communities who are trying to replicate what we
have. Weve worked with communities in Arica and
Eastern Europeone had a Civil Society grant rom
the United Nations and in the last phases o it I went to
project-plan or three days in Macedonia. Its very prac-
tical and grounded, and at the same time were actu-
ally growing ood and arming and developing thosetechnologies. Were learning new things, and were also
helping communities do the same thingand theyre
helping us because its a reciprocal relationship. These
kinds o knowledge and resource exchanges are natural
or people who are connected to the earth.
Rebuilding isadvantaged
Cmmunities
One o the things that we try to do is demystiy ood
systems and what ood security truly is, empower-
ing the powerless through sovereignty and an under-
standing o the importance o engaging everyone in
the community in a responsible, equitable manner.
But its a challenge; many people are averse to the idea
o arming. For people o color, especially, its a huge
taboo. Immigrantsreally anyone who has been dis-criminated againstthey dont want to do this work;
they want to assimilate and reap the rewards that come
rom becoming a member o white society. There was
a time when Jews, the Irish, Italians, and Poles were
not considered white by the dominant culture when
they immigrated to the United States. This continues
todaywe want to be proessionals; lose our accents,
cultures, and ood traditions; be on Wall Street; and
make cash. Why would you want to be poor? We
let wherever we came rom to come here or a betterliewhy would you go back? We were slaves; we were
migrant workers; we were landless peoples. Why would
we go back to that?
A lot o people look rom the outside at what were
doing at Growing Power and see it as a way o empow-
ering disadvantaged people: teaching them how to
garden, teaching them job skills, giving that kind o
uplit and inspiration through hands-on skill sets.
Were not just teachingpeople how to grow
oodwere rebuildingcommunity ood systems.
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We do that, but its also bigger than that. Were not
just teaching people how to grow ood and how to
make soilwere rebuilding community ood systems.
Were creating space or a whole conluence o small to
mighty things to happen. Its a big puzzle, and there are
constantly new pieces being inserted. For example, the
energy piece: That wasnt where we started because we
just needed to get going, to get good ood growing and
into the community, but now that piece gets plugged in.
The peak-oil, community-resilience piece: We didnt
start with microgreens right away, but now we do them
because i you have the soil ertility (like a high-ertility
vermicompost mix) you can grow sunlower seeds and
have sprouts that are ready to harvest in seven to tendays. I there was some catastrophe but you had those
materials at your disposal you could have sunlower
sprouts growing in seven to ten days, and theres 39 per-
cent protein. Sunlowers have more protein as a green
than they do as a seed, and ewer calories.
eighbrs
I do not have a traditional yard; its al l gardenwood-chip-
raised living-biological-worm-system beds growinggreens, okra, tomatoes, legumes, callaloo, culinary
and medicinal herbs, and Arican bowl gourds. My
neighbors are down with it, and they know me.
Historically, a lot more people used to grow ood in
my neighborhood. But theyre older now and theyre
retired, or they are people who are completely discon-
nected rom lie, on crack and other abusively con-
sumed drugs. As I work in my ront yard garden I hear
comments that range rom Go, girl! to No, no, Im
not going to grow a garden. I mean, in some ways, itsa privileged kind o thing to grow ood; you need time,
space, soil ertility, and water. People are trying to sur-
vive in my community and they dont see it as essential
to survival. But this summer I am going to have a lot
more people growing ood.
Part o enabling those things to happen is having plants
to distribute and having compost available. Another
piece o it is that there is so much work to be done
around regulatory issues. To do compost in Chicago
there had to be a regulatory separation made at the
state level between trash and ood waste just to make it
legal to dispose o ood waste dierently than trash
all waste was considered to be trash. Then we had to get
a grant rom the Department o Environment to set upa composter, get transer stations, and get zoning per-
mits. So I have to do all that and then work with the
Illinois EPA just so I can legally compost at a scale that
provides jobs or people?
The Fd Security vement
My introduction to the community ood system move-
ment and the ood security movement was at a national
conerence in Boston. The Community Food SecurityCoalition (CFSC) was ounded in southern Caliornia
by Andy Fisher and others academics, and ood secu-
rity experts. It was groundbreaking workthey basi-
cally started the community ood security movement
nearly iteen years ago. The ounding leaders were able
to motivate the USDA to start the Community Food
Projects Competitive Grant Program. They specii-
cally started talking about addressing ood insecurity
The Grwing Pwer greenhuse cnnects g rwing and cmpsting systems
while maximizing space.
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with people o color and disadvantaged communities
nationally, and providing resources or those olks to
transorm their ood systems. But or years, very ew
people o color and people rom low-income commu-
nities directly received grants, and so the whole move-
ment was predominantly led by white olks coming
into communities o color and ixing the issues. Even
though rom the beginning there were people o color
like Hank Herrera who conronted these concerns
about the lack o diversity and outreach to develop
more leaders o color, they were never really addressedas a high priority. It was clear that things had to change.
Then we and others came on board and we began to
compete or those grants and we started getting them,
and we were able to start asking more questions, like:
Why arent more people o color getting these? We were
able to get technical-assistance grants to be able to train
more people o color to be more competitive and get
unding rom a program designed to und them. So
thats an example o how Growing Power works, in a
larger sense. There are certain things in place to help
people transorm their communities, but they are not
able to get to those resources because they dont have
enough privilege to be able to be competitive. We help
communities access those resources.
nsant
In 2009 we had an interesting situation with Monsanto/
Seminis (Monsanto purchased Seminis, a large, regional
ruit-and-vegetable seed company, in 2005). Theyd
hired a communications irm in Chicago to ind an
urban agriculture group so they could und a youth
urban agriculture project. They just wanted to give
us money, just do an urban arm so that youth could
learn about what we do and also be introduced to other
orms o agriculture; Monsantos name wouldnt be onit. These people rom the communications irm said,
This guy that we know at Monsanto, hes really nice,
and there are some really good people within the com-
pany. And I said, I am sure there are. But I and we
had to do some deep soul-searching about what we, as
leaders, should do with this approach rom Seminis
potentially gatekeepers o resources that could mean
employment versus incarceration or some o our youth
corps members. Do I notaccept $200,000 to $500,000,
which would build up inrastructure, provide adult
mentors and social-service support, and supply stipends
or pay or a ew years? Could this be recompense or
the global impacts o this company, but also a boon to
their public relations eorts to spin their methods to
end hunger and to increase production? I had to think
about it. Its a real dilemma: What do you do when
olks approach you and youre representing people who
We have to get peopleinspired, get them
to understand basicprinciples like whyagriculture is important.
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have very limited options and youre being oered all
those resources to develop this inrastructure?
We turned it down because o the kind o work we do,the belie in our vision, and to show our solidarity with
Via Campesina and the Department o Justices anti-
trust hearings. We advocate seed saving and slow ood,
and potentially i we accepted the Monsanto/Seminis
unds we would have legitimized their work.
On top o that, it would have been so hard or us, as
one o the rare organizations led by people o color in
this kind o workwork where were doing something
people can see, not just talking a good game. People,
our youth most importantly, look to us as role models.Youre no better than what you are trying to deeat i
you do the same thing and get sucked into that system.
Fortunately we have reached a critical point in our
development where we do have options.
nspiratin
We have to get people inspired, get them to understand
basic principles like why agriculture is important.
Thats where I diverge somewhat with Wes Jackson, who talks about how the way humans have pursued
agriculture has created so many huge ecological prob-
lems. I dont think agriculture is a bad ideaI think
its a really good idea; it just has to be managed well,
and that is where Wes and I come ull circle in under-
standing the importance o stewardship o the land
and preservation o the soil and all o her inhabitants.
It has to be managed by people who know what theyre
doing or a community, not or some abstract wealth-
building scenario or commodities or craziness. I dontthink agriculture is the end o ecology; I think its the
beginning o people having enough surpluses through
balance and exploitive practices, so they can do the arts
and they can develop to their ull potential.
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Pht CreditsPage 2, Tp Value Certied arketcbna reallybring.
Page 4, Vermiculture Training at Grwing Pwercb
mjmnty.Page 6, rm beds and grw beds at Grwing Pwer cbnd
organicatin.
mages markedc are under a Creative Cmmns license.
See http://creativecmmns.rg.
AcknwledgmentsCver art by ike King. esign by Sean cGuire. Layut by
Clare Rhinelander.
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