• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • Policies
  • Contact
  • Reading
  • Community
www.urbantorural.com

www.urbantorural.com

  • DIY
  • Energy
  • Farming
  • Food
  • Gardening
  • General
  • Homes
  • Off grid
Home > Will Allen: spreading the Good Food Revolution

Will Allen: spreading the Good Food Revolution

By Alain Leave a Comment

Urban farmer Will Allen is considered by many to be a thought leader on agriculture and food policy and we were lucky enough to see his speech at last year’s Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup, Washington.

Through his organization, Growing Power, he is helping to transform parts of inner city neighbourhoods in the US from food deserts to urban farms. What he’s doing has a number of benefits for the communities involved, from creating a stronger sense of community to helping feed neighbourhood residents with healthy, nutritious, organic food. A side benefit might be that he may be helping to reduce crime in those neighbourhoods.

will-allen-mother-earth-news-fair-puyallup
Will Allen: “If people can grow safe, healthy, affordable food, if they have access to land and clean water, this is transformative on every level in a community. I believe we cannot have healthy communities without a healthy food system.”
Photo by Crystal Saffel

What’s remarkable about what he is doing is that it is not that hard to do. So why aren’t we doing it? I guess it’s one thing to read about it, if you’re tapped into that resource, but it’s another thing to be able to do it. What he’s doing probably hasn’t occurred to most people.

Will Allen’s organization does a large amount of composting and it’s key to what they do. With that compost they can start a farm anywhere, literally. I guess we’re conditioned to think of a farm as a bucolic country location and not a parking lot in a derelict neighbourhood. Allen turns that stereotype on its head.

Will Allen’s ideas at work in our urban garden

We’re doing some gardening in our urban location and we plan to further expand that this year. Aquaculture is something that hadn’t really occurred to us but it’s something we have been looking into since we’ve become aware of it. We’re not sure if we are going to do it here or maybe just wait until we are actually out in a rural location. We have many competing priorities at this point, not the least of which is finishing our renovations so we can sell!

This spring we are planning to do some strawbale gardening using the same idea of compost on concrete, in this case an unused parking spot. We’re also going to be putting strawbales down on a rather unmanageable section of garden with a very thick layer of sod. It’s been a bit of a pain for us.

We had turned some of it over and planted it, but it was just wasn’t going anywhere quickly. The bale method is something new to us and looks like it should work nicely for what we want to do. Because we’re really expanding our garden space this year, I think we’ll also invest in an automatic watering system as well.

Because our garden patch isn’t that large, we had thought of renting some garden space. I spotted the strawbale method and realized it was very similar to what Will Allen is doing. Problem solved! No need to rent any additional garden space when our unused parking space is perfectly suited!

Spring is just around the corner for us and we can’t wait to get started!

Related posts:

No related posts.

Tagged With: urban farmer, urban farming

Recent Posts

  • Did Canada really ban off-grid living?
  • The Hobbit Hole: Dan Price’s retreat
  • Joel Salatin – Heretics Unite – Mother Earth News Fair Puyallup 2014
  • Will Allen: spreading the Good Food Revolution
  • SolTrekker: living on the road

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

E-mail Newsletter

Sign up for updates, news & tips.

Your email stays with us, always!
We will never sell your data.

  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

More to Read

Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms speaking at the Mother Earth News Fair in Puyallup Washington on June 3, 2012.

Joel Salatin – Heretics Unite – Mother Earth News Fair Puyallup 2014

June 15, 2014 By Alain

Hobbit hole Dan Price

The Hobbit Hole: Dan Price’s retreat

July 2, 2015 By Alain

Archives

  • September 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2014
  • February 2013
  • June 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012

Footer

About

We like to talk about going off-grid, self-sufficiency and independent living, in general. Some of the topics of interest to us are food preservation, organic food, agriculture, alternative energy and DIY.

Recent

  • Did Canada really ban off-grid living?
  • The Hobbit Hole: Dan Price’s retreat
  • Joel Salatin – Heretics Unite – Mother Earth News Fair Puyallup 2014
  • Will Allen: spreading the Good Food Revolution
  • SolTrekker: living on the road

Tags

alternative homes alternative housing canning cattle chickens dairy DIY ecovillage Edmonton farming gardening intentional community Joel Salatin mother earth news fair net zero off-grid offgrid off grid photovoltaic pigs Polyface Farms publications rural RV seed saving solar energy solar hot water solar power sustainability underground house urban urban farmer urban farming yogurt

Copyright © 2022 · www.urbantorural.com