• Conference & Expo
• Register
• Keynote Speakers
• Sponsors
• Highlights
• Expo & Exhibitors
• Schedule at a Glance
• Workshops
• Farm Tours
• Educational Sessions
• Farm to School Summit
• Camp "GO" for Kids
• Accommodations
• Scholarships
• Volunteer 
• Special Sessions
• Columbus Activities 
• Past Conferences

• For Farmers
• For Eaters
• For Schools
• For Gardeners

Get to Know Keynote Speaker Will Allen

 
Allen is founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc., a farm and community food center in Milwaukee. Son of a sharecropper, former professional basketball player, ex-corporate sales leader, and now farmer, Allen promotes the belief that all people, regardless of their economic circumstances, should have access to fresh, safe, affordable, and nutritious foods at all times. He is a philosopher farmer, and upholds the powers of compost and community. 
 
In 2008, Will was named a John D. and Katherine T. McArthur Foundation Fellow and was awarded a prestigious foundation “genius grant” for his work  and is only the second farmer ever to be so honored. In May 2010, Time magazine named Will to the Time 100 World’s Most Influential People.
 
Georgia Organics: The acceptance and support of urban agriculture has made major leaps forward in the past few years. To what do you owe this urban ag renaissance? 
 
Well I think there are a number of reasons. One of the major, major reasons, started with a survey a few years ago and [reported that] 68 percent of folks wanted locally grown food if they had a choice versus stuff that was being shipped in.
 
And the food scares. You might say the government oversight over food wasn’t that great in terms of having enough inspectors to inspect these mega-farms and mega-production facilities. It got out of hand and a lot of people got sick and a lot of people died. So I think a lot of folks were afraid to eat food if they didn’t know where it came from.
 
Then there was kind of the perfect storm of all the shows on TV about healthy eating and chefs.
When the First Lady put the garden at the White House, people started to identify with somebody like the First Lady and the first family. I think that had a lot to do with over 10 million new people growing food for the first time. I would say all the small non-profits around the country really helped as well because they’ve been at this work and it just seemed to explode over the past 10 years. The number of communities that have youth organizations and community gardens and famers markets started to explode. I also think that maybe some of our work that we do at Growing Power, we got a lot of publicity, about urban agriculture.
 
Growing Power has been at the epicenter of it. What role do you think your work has played?
 
We have created a model that inspires people. They come take classes or get trained to set up businesses through our different training programs. When people come to visit from all over the country and all over the world, they can identify with something that is a culturally appropriate. It’s not a fancy brand new farm kind of thing; it’s a historic 19th century farm with buildings that were built in the late 1920s. It’s something people can identify with. People get inspired and when they walk out of Growing Power they say, “I can do that.”
 
Having this concrete model this concrete example is really important versus just a bunch of talk.
 
Some people may hear the term urban agriculture and think “gardening,” they’ll think “hobby.” What do you say to people when you’re talking to them face to face to convince them that this is a viable industry, that there are careers here and it’s here to stay?
 
Well, they look at our organization. We’ve gone from me volunteering years ago. to the fact that we have over 100 employees and we have 20 farms, some urban, fewer of them are rural. We operate in multiple cities, in Chicago, Madison and Milwaukee, so people can see this is something that can generate cash flow, because that’s what we do. We make money with our farm operations; we have over 40 income streams coming in to Growing Power. We’re not dependent on writing grants. The only way you can survive today is to create an entrepreneur model.
 
Where do you see urban agriculture and rural agriculture intersecting, and do you think they are working towards the same common goal or are they working independently?
 
These young farmers are actually starting in urban agriculture with the goal of moving from the urban area out to the rural area, or having both urban farms as well as getting rural farms, like we do.
 
We not only have our urban farm we have rural farms as well. So that model really works, the fact that you’re linking urban with rural. People in rural communities are just as much stressed and have just as many because the industrial agriculture has taken over the land. On a lot of the land there is a land lock down
 
So I think there is definitely the ability for us to develop this sustainable food system that everybody talks about. To do that I think we need a combination of rural farmers and urban farmers, and we need to support those rural farmers who are just hanging on. We need to help them. The urban community needs to help them in terms of getting their products, because you can’t grow everything in the city. Certain crops just don’t make sense [to grow in an urban area.]
 
It’s about taking out that middle man and giving more of the profits to the farmer, and that can happen with these connections and partnerships between the rural and the urban community.