Environment

Will Allen, Pioneering Urban Farmer

Published

8 years ago

May 27, 2015

By Paul Rockwell

“My return to farming was a kind of homecoming,” writes Will Allen in his riveting autobiography, “The Good Food Revolution”.

His parents were sharecroppers who fled North in the Great Migration, and it was hardly easy for Allen to return to the soil.

The history of agriculture in the U.S. is largely the history of racial oppression, and farming, his friends said, is “slave’s work.”

But for Allen, the great tragedy of African-Americans today is that, in losing touch with the land, they lose valuable skills: how to grow and prepare decent food.

Heart disease, diabetes, obesity—diet-related disease—is reaching epidemic proportions in low -income communities.

As CEO of Growing Power, Allen is widely recognized as the preeminent practitioner of urban agriculture in America. He was a basketball star, then a corporate executive, before he founded Growing Power in a food desert, on a two-acre lot less than half a mile from Milwaukee’s largest housing project.

He first sold food out of the back of a truck, then set up a farm stand, and soon his store became the only place for miles around to carry free-range eggs, home grown honey, and grass-fed beef.

He purchased a few rundown greenhouses, where he transformed city waste and food scraps into rich compost, life-giving soil. His innovative methods, vermicomposting (using worms to fertilize soil) and aquaponics (a closed system of growing plants and fish), yielded remarkable amounts of food in small spaces.

Through trial and error, Allen’s staff developed models for growing food intensively and vertically in a world of asphalt.

“We found ways to make fresh fruits and vegetables available to people with little income. We created full-time agricultural jobs for inner-city youth,” he said. “We began to teach people to grow vegetables in small spaces and reclaim some small control over their food choices.”

Allen’s energetic daughter, Erika, runs Growing Power at the Cabrini-Green-Public Housing project in Chicago, where the Fourth Presbyterian Church transformed an old basketball court into a verdant community garden.

Allen is extremely popular with kids. He works alongside students, teaching them the basics of soil cultivation.

“Most young people from the inner city have never had a face-to-face encounter with a vegetable that has been plucked from the earth…Children come to my facility for the first time with their pockets filled with candy, acting wild. Something changes in them when they walk up to my worm systems and put their hands in the soil for the first time. They mellow. It can be a spiritual thing to touch the earth if you have been disconnected from it for so long,” Allen said.

Growing Power includes an agricultural program for youth offenders who are transitioned out of the detention system through Farm-City Link.

A hopeful revolution is changing America’s food system. The Allen story demonstrates that growing your own food locally under conditions of self-determination is transformative. Karen Parker, the dynamic African-American co-director of Growing Power, says, “It’s a wonderful thing to change people’s lives through changing the way they’re eating.”

Her own parents, she adds, would have lived much longer with a healthier diet.

Farming, Allen insists, is not a fad. It’s hard, physical labor, but it’s not “slave’s work.”

The past has no power over Will Allen.

Paul Rockwell is a columnist for In Motion Magazine and lives in Oakland.

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Community

As Rising Seas Disrupt Toxic Sites, Communities of Color Are at Most Risk

As rising seas threaten to flood hundreds of toxic sites along the California coast, the risk of flood-related contamination will fall disproportionately on the state’s most marginalized communities, finds a new study published Tuesday by researchers at UC Berkeley, UCLA and Climate Central. San Mateo and Alameda counties are projected to host the most at-risk hazardous sites by 2050, but by 2100, Orange County is projected to surpass both as oil and gas wells there and in Los Angeles County face rising coastal flood risks.

Published

4 weeks ago

May 12, 2023

Oakland Post

By the end of the century, coastal flooding threatens to inundate hundreds of toxic sites in California, including oil refineries, industrial facilities, sewage treatment plants and cleanup sites, putting communities like Richmond, Calif., at greater risk of hazardous exposure. (Flickr photo by Scott Hess)

By Kara Manke
UC Berkeley News

San Mateo and Alameda counties are projected to host the most at-risk hazardous sites by 2050, but by 2100, Orange County is projected to surpass both as oil and gas wells there and in Los Angeles County face rising coastal flood risks.

Under California’s high-risk aversion scenario, which projects that sea levels could rise by more than 6 feet by the end of the century, the study identified 736 facilities at risk of coastal flooding and an additional 173 with projected groundwater encroachment.

Residents living within 1 kilometer of at-risk sites were more likely than others to be people of color, to be living below the poverty line, to be unemployed or to experience another form of social disadvantage such as linguistic isolation.

As part of the study, the researchers also released a new interactive online tool in English and Spanish that allows users to map toxic sites that are at risk of coastal flooding, either by county or by individual facility.

A map of hazardous sites at risk of coastal flooding in the San Francisco Bay Area, generated by the new coastal risk screening tool available on the Climate Central website. The colored overlay indicates the poverty level of nearby communities. (Image courtesy Climate Central)

Users can also overlay indicators of nearby residents’ social vulnerability, including the percentage of people who are living below the poverty line, who are experiencing unemployment, or who don’t have a high school degree.

“Sea level rise is like a slow-moving storm that we can anticipate and prepare for,” said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a professor of public health and of environmental science, policy and management at UC Berkeley and senior author of the paper. “As California invests in community resilience to climate change, it is essential that considerations of environmental justice are at the fore.”

Low-income communities and communities of color already face disproportionate exposure to myriad environmental pollutants, and the threat of additional exposures from sea-level rise will only exacerbate these inequities.

Compared to their neighbors, socially vulnerable residents can also face more challenges to evacuate during a flood and often experience social stressors that can make them more susceptible to the health impacts of pollutant exposures.

“Again, climate change amplifies inequality,” said lead author Lara Cushing, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “Sea level rise will present additional risks of contaminant releases to communities already living with pollution sources in their backyards.”

The study was conducted as part of the Toxic Tides project, which brought together a multidisciplinary research team with community advocacy organizations to understand how rising seas would impact hazardous sites, including refineries, industrial facilities, sewage treatment plants and cleanup sites.

The team released a preliminary set of data and an earlier version of the online mapping tool in November 2021; the new, peer-reviewed study, which appears in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, includes additional analysis about the environmental justice implications of the findings.

BayCityNews

Latest Statewide Snow Survey Shows Plenty of Snow Still in Sierra Nevada

The state’s latest snowpack measurements are in and the results won’t shock anyone who spent the winter in storm-wracked California this year — there’s still a huge amount of snow in the Sierra Nevada. The California Department of Water Resources released its snow survey data Monday after conducting a manual measurement at Phillips Station in El Dorado County and compiling information from its network of 130 snow sensors throughout the state.

Published

1 month ago

May 10, 2023

Oakland Post

Sean de Guzman, Manager of the California Department of Water Resources Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit, and Anthony Burdock, Department of Water Resources engineer in the Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting Unit, examine the aluminum survey pole during the final snow survey of the 2023 season on May 1, 2023 at Phillips Station in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in El Dorado County, Calif. (Ken James/California Department of Water Resources via Bay City News)

By Bay City News

The California Department of Water Resources released its snow survey data Monday after conducting a manual measurement at Phillips Station in El Dorado County and compiling information from its network of 130 snow sensors throughout the state.

The manual measurement shows 59 inches of snow with a snow-water equivalent of 30 inches, which is 241 percent of average for Phillips Station on May 1, according to DWR.

The sensors show the statewide snowpack’s snow-water equivalent at 49.2 inches, or 254 percent of average for this date.

“The snow water equivalent measures the amount of water still contained in the snowpack and is a key component of DWR’s water supply run-off forecast,” DWR officials said in a news release Monday.

According to DWR, only three other times in history have the survey results eclipsed 200 percent, in 1952, 1969 and 1983, although data from those years isn’t as comprehensive as the current numbers.

The statewide number released Monday reflects an average snow melt of about 12 inches over the past month, which is a slower pace than normal for April and is attributable to below average temperatures earlier in the month as well as increased cloud cover during that period, according to DWR.

The data will help water managers and reservoir operators anticipate the amount of spring and summer runoff they can expect to move through the state’s massive water storage and delivery systems as temperatures warm and cloudy skies give way to sunshine.

The information is vital to drinking water districts, farmers, cities and flood control systems, especially in vulnerable and already flooded regions like the San Joaquin Valley and communities along the Central Coast like Pajaro.

“The snowpack will not disappear in one week or one month but will lead to sustained high flows across the San Joaquin and Tulare Basins over the next several months and this data will help us inform water managers and ultimately help protect communities in these regions,” said DWR Director Karla Nemeth.

Community

April 22, 2023 is Earth Day – AND It is also Beautify Vallejo Day!

The Vallejo Beautification Commission is teaming up with the Vallejo Watershed Alliance to help celebrate Earth Day. Celebrate Earth Day and enhance one of Vallejo’s most beautiful waterways! Join us at Blue Rock Springs Creek for a cleanup throughout the creek corridor.

Published

1 month ago

April 27, 2023

Oakland Post

Park for free at the Wardlaw Dog Park lot, then follow the path behind the dog park and cross the bridge. Wear comfortable clothes, sturdy shoes, hat, sunscreen, and gloves.

The Vallejo Beautification Commission is teaming up with the Vallejo Watershed Alliance to help celebrate Earth Day.

Celebrate Earth Day and enhance one of Vallejo’s most beautiful waterways! Join us at Blue Rock Springs Creek for a cleanup throughout the creek corridor.

Park for free at the Wardlaw Dog Park lot, then follow the path behind the dog park and cross the bridge. Wear comfortable clothes, sturdy shoes, hat, sunscreen, and gloves. It’s a family- friendly event (if you are under 18, you must be accompanied by an adult).

We’ll provide tools, buckets, water and refreshments. RSVP to Info@

VallejoWatershedAlliance.org or call (707) 373- 1766 with your questions. See you there!