Environment

Will Allen, Pioneering Urban Farmer

Published

9 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.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

GlobeImmune Hep B Drug Fails Mid-Stage Study, Shares Plunge

Don't Miss

Study Peeks Into Healthy Brains to Hunt Alzheimer’s Culprit

Oakland Post

Click to comment

Community

Advanced Conductors Provide Path for Grid Expansion

Utility companies in the United States could double electric transmission capacity by 2035 by replacing existing transmission lines with those made from advanced materials, according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Published

4 days ago

October 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy UC Berkeley News.

By Matthew Burciaga

UC Berkeley News

Led by Duncan Callaway, professor and chair of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG), and Amol Phadke, an affiliate and senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy, the first-of-its-kind study details a faster and more cost-effective way to expand the grid and connect the more than 1,200 gigawatts of renewable energy projects awaiting approval. The analysis was first published last December as a working paper by the Energy Institute at Haas and has been covered by the New York Times, the Washington Post, Heatmap News, and other news outlets.

“Expanding transmission capacity is critical to decarbonization, and we sought to study ways to build it faster and cheaper,” said Callaway.

It currently takes 10 to 15 years to build a new power line and the U.S. is building transmission lines at a lower rate than it was in the past decade. Without sufficient capacity, renewable energy projects often sit in limbo for years as transmission operators study what upgrades—if any—are needed to accommodate the increased loads.

The authors modeled various scenarios to determine if replacing existing transmission conductors with those made with advanced composite-core materials—a process known as reconductoring—could provide a pathway to faster grid expansion.

Several reconductoring projects have been initiated in Belgium and the Netherlands, and utility companies in the U.S. have used the material to string transmission lines across wide spans like river crossings. That technology, however, has not made its way to the majority of overhead power lines that feed residential and commercial customers.

“As we learned more about the technology, we realized that no one had done the detailed modeling needed to understand the technology’s potential for large-scale transmission capacity increases,” said Phadke.

Based on the authors’ projections, it is cheaper—and quicker—for utility companies to replace the 53,000 existing transmission lines with advanced composite-core materials than it is to build entirely new transmission lines.

They assert that doing so would reduce wholesale electricity costs by 3% to 4% on average—translating to $85 billion in system cost savings by 2035 and $180 billion by 2050.

“The level of interest we’ve received from federal and state agencies, transmission companies and utilities is extremely encouraging, and since our initial report, the Department of Energy has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to reconductoring projects,” said co-author Emilia Chojkiewicz, a PhD student in ERG and an affiliate of the Goldman School of Public Policy. “We are looking forward to learning about these projects as they unfold.”

Additional co-authors include Nikit Abhyankar and Umed Paliwal, affiliates at the Goldman School of Public Policy; and Casey Baker and Ric O’Connell of GridLab, a nonprofit that provides comprehensive technical grid expertise to policy makers and advocates.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Business

Chevron Reports Progress in Flaring, Emissions at Community Town Hall

At the first in a series of community town halls on Oct. 16, Chevron Richmond reported a reduction in year-over-year flaring incidents, both in number and duration, and detailed new technologies and processes that will further drive down emissions and heighten community awareness about operations. Chevron employees also answered questions from the community and listened to concerns at the town hall, which was hosted by Ceres Policy Research and held at CoBiz in downtown Richmond.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Community member Kathleen Sullivan speaks at the Chevron town hall. Photo courtesy Richmond Standard.

By Mike Aldax

The Richmond Standard

Chevron employees also answered questions from the community and listened to concerns at the town hall, which was hosted by Ceres Policy Research and held at CoBiz in downtown Richmond.

Similar town halls will be held twice per year over the next five years as part of a settlement agreement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD).

The goal is to increase transparency about flaring and increase opportunities for the community to get answers to their questions about potential impacts to the community.

A key output is the creation of a Community Action Plan, or CAP. The CAP aims to create a two-way dialogue between Chevron and neighbors around flaring and environmental compliance.

“Chevron’s focus in this process is one of learning and engagement,” said Brian Hubinger, public affairs manager at Chevron Richmond. “We felt the most efficient way was to bring together a broad selection of community members rather than just think about what it would take to comply with the settlement agreement.”

The first town hall drew a few dozen members of the community, including Chevron employees, representatives of fence-line neighborhoods and members of local environmental organizations.

During the event, Chevron employees reported that 19 BAAQMD-reportable flaring incidents occurred at the refinery from October 2022 to September 2023 with a total duration of 270 hours. During the same period this year, 18 flaring incidents occurred with a total duration of 159 hours, marking a 41% decrease in duration.

Further gains are expected with the implementation of Flare IQ, set to be installed this year and next on all of the refinery’s flaring systems. Flare IQ is described as a supercomputer with an algorithm that gathers data from operations and enables employees to address potential issues before they occur.

Chevron also reported a 40% decrease in particulate matter emissions since the completion of the refinery modernization project in 2018.

In addition, flare gas volume related to Chevron’s new hydrogen plant project, built as part of the modernization project, decreased by 85% since 2019. The hydrogen plant has also reportedly made the refinery 20% more efficient.

“We’re really proud about that,” said Kris Battleson, manager of health, safety and environment at Chevon Richmond.

Neighborhood council leaders joined the president of the local NAACP in lauding the effort toward transparency and accountability. Among them was Vernon Whitmore, president of the Sante Fe Neighborhood Council and member of the 15-person CAP committee.

“The way we were able to talk openly and freely with Chevron – honestly, bluntly and frankly – while developing this program was very good,” Whitmore said. “And it was something that was well-needed at this time.”

Still, residents are skeptical, including Kathleen Sullivan, a longtime community advocate who also serves on the CAP committee. But she added, “you can’t complain about something and not be involved in the solution.”

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

California Black Media

Drop, Cover & Hold On: Get 7 Tips to Prepare You and Your Family for an Earthquake

This year’s International ShakeOut Day was Oct. 17. Millions of people worldwide participated in earthquake drills at work, school, or home. October also marks the 35th anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which devastated the Bay Area. That 6.9 magnitude shock was responsible for 63 deaths and nearly 4,000 injuries. Recently, Listos California, the state’s disaster preparedness program, partnered with Ethnic Media Services and California Black Media to provide vital information to help Californians be prepared in the event of an earthquake.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Image Courtesy of Listos California.

By Edward Henderson, California Black Media

This year’s International ShakeOut Day was Oct. 17. Millions of people worldwide participated in earthquake drills at work, school, or home. October also marks the 35^th anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which devastated the Bay Area. That 6.9 magnitude shock was responsible for 63 deaths and nearly 4,000 injuries.

Recently, Listos California, the state’s disaster preparedness program, partnered with Ethnic Media Services and California Black Media to provide vital information to help Californians be prepared in the event of an earthquake.

“Preparing can be about securing your space, having an emergency plan, minimizing your hardship after the fact by having important documents organized and in place,” said Amy Palmer, Deputy Director of Crisis Communications and Public Affairs at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES).

The experts say there are seven key safety steps to take to make sure you and your family are prepared for an earthquake:

Secure your space by identifying hazards and securing movable items.
Plan to be safe by creating an emergency plan.
Organize emergency supplies in convenient locations.
Minimize financial hardship by considering insurance and organizing important documents.
Drop, Cover and Hold On when shaking begins.
Improve Safety after earthquakes by evacuating if necessary or helping others.
Reconnect and restore daily life by rebuilding community, and reconnecting with others.

“We’ve had a number of quakes this year where our system of statewide sensors is giving people a significant number of seconds before the shaking starts,” said Palmer. “The key for everyone in California is to make sure that you know the phrase: ‘drop, cover, and hold on’ so that you can take action when you get an alert on your phone, or you feel the very first indications of shaking.”

To further prepare Californians for earthquakes, Cal OES hosted a tour focused on providing life-saving tips, including a simulator that can demonstrate the power of up to a 7.0 magnitude quake.

“You need to take action upon feeling shaking or receiving an earthquake early warning alert and that means truly drop, cover, hold on,” said Jose Lara, Chief of the Seismic Hazards Branch at Cal OES. “We really encourage you to practice that on your own with your all types of settings. Because without this muscle memory when shaking arrives at your location, you may not take that protective action that you need to stay safe.”

There are also several ‘myths’ about earthquake survival the campaign aims to dismiss. One is that standing in a doorway is a safe measure during an earthquake. This is NOT a safe measure due to modern building codes that have strengthened other areas in homes and commercial buildings. Another myth is that running outside is safer during an earthquake. Due to the danger of falling objects that could strike you on the way out, running outside is not encouraged.

If you’re driving during an earthquake, the best practice is to pull over if you can and wait out the shaking inside of your vehicle while looking out for debris falling onto roadways in mountainous areas.

Another critical tool, the MyShake App, connects users with the Earthquake Early Warning System designed to give residents warnings seconds before shaking starts.