Tag: allen

Using His Genius for Good

  • Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc. (Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Fellows Program)

Experts say there’s plenty of food around the world, but nearly a billion people go hungry because of poverty, politics and rising prices. One man is working to change that by teaching people how to grow healthy food, in any climate, anywhere. Erin Toner has more:

Transcript

Experts say there’s plenty of food around the world, but nearly a billion people go hungry because of poverty, politics and rising prices. One man is working to change that by teaching people how to grow healthy food, in any climate, anywhere. Erin Toner has more:

There’s one farm in the whole city of Milwaukee, and it’s
not much to look at.

In the front, there’s a small farm stand and some grungy old
greenhouses. Out back, you’ll find turkeys, chickens and
goats – and all over the place, big piles of compost are
steaming in the cool morning air.

Will Allen runs this inner-city, non-profit farm, called
Growing Power.

We walk into a greenhouse that’s heated by compost, and
Allen pulls back a long sheet of plastic.

“I just opened up a bed and you see this beautiful
spinach growing here, and it’s Wisconsin,” Allen says.

This 59-year-old is a big guy.

He’s 6-foot-7, and ripped from his days playing pro
basketball.

Allen started Growing Power 15 years ago.

It’s a measly two acres, but it’s incredibly productive.

The staff makes compost to heat the buildings, they use
raised plant beds to maximize space, and they grow greens
and raise fish using the same water.

The farm sells a ton of food to restaurants and grocery
stores. It also gives food to local pantries, and sells fruits
and vegetables to neighborhood families at reduced prices.

“We have minorities that are eating processed foods
and getting diabetes and people aren’t living very long
because of you know the negative effects of poor eating
and poor lifestyle and so forth. So we’ve got to change
that,” Allen says.

Allen travels all over the world showing people how to
make what he’s done in Milwaukee work in other places.

The farm’s also become a training ground for local school
kids, interns and backyard farmers.

Last fall, Allen won a half-million-dollar “genius” grant
from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

He also gets invited to conferences by former presidents.

So, he’s become a sort of urban farming celebrity.

But you wouldn’t know it.

Allen says he still gets his hands in the dirt every day in
Milwaukee, and he’s always looking for ways to help
people who live here.

Growing Power’s newest project is with Rockwell
Automation, an industrial parts company in Milwaukee.

Every day, 1000 employees eat in the company’s cafeteria,
and that produces a lot of food waste.

Growing Power’s started hauling it away for free.

We’ve arrived at the loading dock of Rockwell Automation
and there’s lots of stuff in here that actually looks like its
still pretty good. There’s a couple buckets full of celery and
onions and a big trash bag full of lettuce.

When we get back to the farm, co-director Jay Salinas
starts unloading the Rockwell scraps.

“Of course a large part of it is compost, but there’s
always something in here that we can feed to the
animals, especially the chickens,” Salinas says.

Growing Power founder Will Allen says his passion for
food comes from his parents.

They made a meager living as sharecroppers near
Washington D.C.

“We fed people – our family and extended family – and
we sold food. So what I’m doing today, when people say
so how do you feel about this McArthur thing you won,
or this Ford Foundation thing or whatever you got, it’s
really my parents. They should be the recipients of
those,” Allen says.

He says it’s really getting back to the way things used to
be, when people ate healthy food that was grown or raised
in their own community.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

One Genius of a Farmer

  • Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power, Inc. (Photo courtesy of the MacArthur Fellows Program)

An advocate of urban farming will
be able to do more to get locally grown foods
to communities. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

An advocate of urban farming will
be able to do more to get locally grown foods
to communities. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Will Allen founded the group ‘Growing Power’. Allen says the group tries to provide healthful and affordable food to
people who really need it. He says he’s mainly focused on growing and getting food to cities.

“Our rural areas are becoming suburban areas, and cities are getting larger and
growing out into suburban areas. And we have to figure out a way to feed people
with local food, and we need to come up with a just way of doing that.”

Allen says growing food locally and getting better food to people is key to building communities.

Allen is getting help. The MacArthur Foundation has recognized him with one of its ‘genius’ grants. He’ll get a half-
million dollars over the next five years to use as he sees fit.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Governments Accountable to Great Lakes?

A commission that advises the US and
Canadian governments on the Great Lakes wants to
see more accountability from Washington and
Ottawa. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A commission that advises the US and
Canadian governments on the Great Lakes wants to
see more accountability from Washington and
Ottawa. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The International Joint Commission is focusing its latest report on
getting the US and Canada to set up an accountability plan for
restoring and protecting the Great Lakes.


US Commissioner Allen Olson says one example of accountability is
getting Congress to approve money for an Asian Carp barrier near
Chicago to keep the foreign fish out of the lakes.


“There are a number of members of the United States Congress of both
parties that are immediately accountable to address that issue.”


Canadian Commissioner Jack Blaney says the governments also have to be
accountable to what citizens said at recent IJC hearings:


“They want to swim at their beaches, they want to be able to eat the
fish. They want to be able to take water out of the lakes that they
don’t have to spend enormous sums treating.”


The IJC wants a preliminary plan to be ready by the summer of next
year.


For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach

Related Links

Paying for Ponds to Stem Farm Runoff

  • Alan Roberson's pond traps sediment. Before the pond was built, silt washed into a creek and caused problems farther downstream. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Since the dust bowl days of the 1930s Depression, the government has been working with farmers to reduce erosion. Today, soil conservation is better. But fields still lose a lot of topsoil because not all farmers use the best conservation methods. Dirt is washed away by rain. That silt clogs up streams, rivers and lakes. But one region is trying to intercept the silt before it gets to the river system. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Since the dust bowl days of the 1930s Depression, the government has been working with
farmers to reduce erosion. Today, soil conservation is better. But fields still lose a lot of
topsoil because not all farmers use the best conservation methods. Dirt is washed away
by rain. That silt clogs up streams, rivers and lakes. But one region is trying to intercept
the silt before it gets to the river system. The GLRC’s Lester Graham reports:


Farm fields in all or part of 38 states drain into the Mississippi River. Some of the
tributaries of the Mississippi are so silted that dredges have to operate around the clock to keep river
shipping lanes open.


The Sangamon River in central Illinois is not big enough for shipping cargo, but it does
run into the man-made Decatur Lake. The city of Decatur gets its water from that lake
and often has to dredge it to keep the water inlets from clogging up.


Keith Alexander is the Director of Water Management for the city of Decatur, Illinois.
He says a little soil erosion on enough farms adds up:


“And the drainage area that runs into the lake is 925 square miles of some of the world’s
best topsoil. We have literally a half-a-million acres of corn and soybean fields that flow
into our lake that we use for drinking water purposes.”


Not only does the silt clog the lake, it also carries fertilizers and pesticides with it,
polluting the lake. The city has offered farmers financial incentives to reduce soil
erosion. But it hasn’t gotten enough participation from farmers to solve the problem. So,
the City of Decatur decided to try another approach. They would offer money to landowners to build ponds. Those ponds would be located in key drainage areas next
to farm fields.


Shannon Allen is a watershed specialist with the Macon County Soil and Water
Conservation District. He says it turned out to be a pretty popular program:


“The landowners wanted it for recreational purposes, obviously fish, maybe swimming
or whatever. We’re putting them in so we can collect sediment from the farm fields
above them so they don’t go into the river system.”


Shannon Allen says the ponds work a lot better at keeping silt out of creeks and rivers and lakes
than other methods to reduce erosion.


“Basically ponds collect 90% of the silt. And, so anytime you can put up a pond, you’re
doing better than a grassed waterway or a terrace that don’t reduce sediment loads by that
much.”


The city offers up to 5,000 dollars to landowners, but that’s well short of the actual cost. A typical pond
can cost 20 to 25,000 dollars to build. But landowners have been taking the city’s offer.


Alan Roberson owns a few acres at the bottom of a sloping corn field. About 42 acres
drains onto his property and then into a creek. He says when he moved there, there was
just a big ditch where stormwater from the neighboring farm fields washed a bigger and
bigger gully, carrying sediment to the creek:


“There was places eight, ten feet deep. We’ve lived here almost 20 years and it just kept
getting deeper as it went along. I hated to even come down here and look at it because it
was getting so bad. So, I’m glad that program came along to take care of it. As you can
see, it’s not doing that anymore.”


Roberson took advantage of the city’s pond program. Where the gully used to be, a carpet
of green lawn now borders a picturesque little pond.


Alan Roberson says the pond has a pipe in the bottom of it, kind of like a bathtub plug. It
was part of the design required to get the matching funds from the city. When the pond
fills up with silt, Roberson will be able to drain it and dig out the soil:


(Sound of water trickling)


“See this valve down here? You can actually pull that up. It could very well be 20 years
from now they’ll get enough silt in here where a person will have to bring it down. But
like I said, it’s designed to do that.”


That silt is some of the richest dirt in the corn belt and could be sold back to farmers or
used for gardens or flower beds. The landowner will have to pay the cost of digging it
out, but it’s that much more silt that won’t have to be dredged from the lakes or the rivers
that feed them, where people get their public water supply.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Indoor Shrimp Farming: A New Market?

  • Russ Allen breeds and grows thousands of shrimp in a barn in his backyard. The entire process is contained. There's no water coming in or going out, and there's no waste leaving his farm. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

Recently, shrimp surpassed tuna as the most-consumed seafood in the United States. Most of the shrimp Americans eat is produced in Southeast Asia, India, Mexico and Brazil. Russ Allen wants to change that. He’s opened one of the world’s few indoor shrimp farms in the Midwest. Allen says his operation meets an obvious market demand, is good for the environment, and presents a new economic opportunity for the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Recently, shrimp surpassed tuna as the most-consumed seafood in the
United States. Most of the shrimp Americans eat is produced in
Southeast Asia, India, Mexico and Brazil. Russ Allen wants to change
that. He’s opened one of the world’s few indoor shrimp farms in the
Midwest. Allen says his operation meets an obvious market demand, is
good for the environment, and presents a new economic opportunity for
the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


In a big blue barn in Russ Allen’s backyard, there are thousands of
shrimp… beady-eyed, bacteria-munching, bottom-feeders.


Here, the life cycle of the shrimp starts in the breeding center, where
two big tanks of water mimic a place 150 feet deep off the shore of the
ocean where the water quality and temperature are stable. Allen says
it’s the perfect environment for shrimp to mate.


“Like in just about all animals the male chases the female, and they do a
little courtship dance, and then the male will deposit a spermatophore on
the female and when she spawns, the eggs pass through the
spermatophore, are fertilized and then go out into the water.”


A few months later, the shrimp end up in the production room where all
they do is eat, and sometimes, if they get excited or spooked, they jump
right out of their tanks.


“They don’t like light…”


“Oh (laughing)! Do you ever have them hit you as you’re standing
here?”


“Oh yeah, that’s why we have the nets up so they don’t jump.”


Russ Allen has been farming shrimp for three decades. He started in
Ecuador, and then went to Belize, where he started the country’s first
shrimp farms.


Allen and his wife moved back to Michigan in 1990, when he started
designing his indoor shrimp farm. It finally opened for business about a
year ago, and now, he’s selling all the shrimp he produces.


(Sound of shrimp market)


Allen says his indoor shrimp farm is one of the first of its kind in the
world. There’s no waste leaving his farm, so pollution’s not an issue,
and because there’s no water coming in or going out, there’s no danger
of introducing diseases into his system.


Allen says an indoor farm also moves shrimp farming away from fragile
coastal ecosystems. That’s where most of the industry has developed
around the world.


“In a place like the United States with all the development on the
coastline and land costs, you can’t really do it anywhere near the ocean
anyway. So, if you’re going to have a viable shrimp farming system in
the United States, you need to move it away from – you know – these coastal areas.”


But indoor farms haven’t always been a viable option, either.


In the 1980s, a handful of them opened in the U.S., including a big one in
Chicago. They all failed because the technology didn’t work quite right,
and because the cost of production made them unable to compete with
outdoor farms.


Bill More is a shrimp farming consultant and vice president of the
Aquaculture Certification Council. He says now, indoor shrimp farmers
have a better chance of making a go of it.


“Coming from third-world countries, there’s been a lot of issues with
illegal antibiotics being found in shrimp. There’s been environmental
and social issues that environmentalists have come down hard upon. It’s
sort of prompted the opportunity for a good indoor system where
you could manage those and you didn’t challenge the environment.”


But More says creating and maintaining a clean, organic indoor shrimp
farm is still very expensive, and it seems an even bigger problem now
that the price of shrimp is the lowest it’s been in a decade.


Shrimp farmer Russ Allen says he’s invested several million dollars in
his business. He’s the only guy in the game right now, which he
admits is good for business, but he doesn’t want it that way. He says
he’d like to see the industry grow in Michigan, and throughout the
country.


“In order to do that the government has got to be a partner in this, and
that has been the challenge… that when you don’t have an industry, you
don’t have lobbyists and nobody listens to you and you can’t get an
industry until they do listen to you. So, that’s been our real challenge
right now.”


Allen says he wants the government to offer tax breaks and other
financial assistance to the aquaculture industry like it does to other
sectors of the economy, but he says he can’t even get some local elected
officials to come and see his shrimp farm. He says with so many
companies moving jobs and factories overseas, he thinks government
leaders should be looking for ways to help new and perhaps
unconventional industries like his, grow.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links