The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities

“When I was growing up, she rarely spoke of her Southern past, as if it were a secret that was best not talked about in polite company. She told my brothers and me that she liked the taste of every vegetable except asparagus—she simply had picked too much of it.”

Allen describes his mother, Willie Mae, and her own history with farming and growing food. This introduction to the agricultural life was a complicated one for Allen; parts of him absorbed the value of such work and the potential for enjoying farming, while other parts inherited a resistance to farming. Willie Mae would have understood Allen’s reluctance as she herself had experienced it in her own life.

“I believe that equal access to healthy, affordable food should be a civil right—every bit as important as access to clean air, clean water, or the right to vote.”

Allen asserts his political views early on in his book, establishing his vision of urban agriculture as a something much more than a personal goal or preference. This assertion reflects his understanding of the complicated nature of race and social hierarchy in America, as well as his idealism and his desire to serve the larger community.

“As a young man, I felt ashamed of my parents’ sharecropping past. I didn’t like the work of planting and harvesting that I was made to do as a child. I thought it was hard and offered little reward. I fought my family’s history. Yet the desire to farm hid inside me.”

Ironically, Allen’s reluctance to become a farmer appears to have been overridden by an intrinsic need to connect with the land. His discussion of family ties to agriculture suggest that such connections can be inherited from family and that working with the land, for some, can be more of a biological imperative than a choice.

“According to the 1990 census, I was only of only twenty-five black people in the entire state of Wisconsin to operate or manage a farm.”

This statistic reveals the dearth of black farmers in the state of Wisconsin. It is significant because Allen has few black role models to follow in his ambition to develop himself as a farmer and because he is part of yet another minority population. As well, the absence of more black farmers may indicate that Allen’s reluctance to farm is a broad experience, one that many black Americans can understand.

“‘We have enough churches in our community,’ he said. ‘What you’re planning to do is religion in itself.’”

Don Richards, a Milwaukee city hall committee member who contributed to the decision to allow Allen to buy the greenhouses that enabled him to start his operation, said these words to Allen in response to Allen’s goals for urban agriculture. Richards immediately saw the value in Allen’s plans, recognizing that the value Allen sought to bring could transform the community.

“I hired her. Karen quickly proved that she was responsible—even though I quickly understood that trouble pursued her.”

Karen Parker is a key figure in Allen’s story, and Allen provides the reader with foreshadowing here, alerting the reader to the impact Karen’s trouble has on others. Karen expressed to Allen that she wanted him to tell her story of abuse and how the greenhouse changed everything for her and her children, reflecting the importance of Allen’s efforts to an individual as well as to the wider community.

“During my years selling my produce at other farmers markets, I sometimes saw black customers go to a white farmer in the stall next to me, even though I knew my produce looked better and cost the same. This was not typical, but it happened. I felt it was the result of internal racism.”

Allen is a keen observer of people, and in these moments, he notices racism playing out at the market. Because so few black farmers exist in Wisconsin, some black consumers prefer to buy from the majority white farmers, perhaps mistrusting the produce and the processes of black farmers. Allen assumed a loyalty from black consumers simply because he too was black, and at times, he recognized that he was wrong to make such assumptions.

“As a family, we were almost self-sufficient. We operated largely outside of a cash economy.”

Allen reflects on his childhood with his parents, Willie Mae and O.W., and his brothers. From his parents, he learned how to live off the land, farming, fishing, hunting, and avoiding waste as much as possible. The life lessons he learned from this time proved to him that it was possible to live well and to eat well without having to spend too much money.

“By my senior year, I had received more than one hundred similar letters from colleges. My mother read them with pride, anxious that I get the four-year education she never had access to.”

Thanks to Allen’s demonstrated talent as a high school basketball star, he received many opportunities to pursue higher education as a college athlete. These letters opened doors for Allen that had been closed to his mother, despite her passion for education and her goals to be a teacher. At this time in his life, Allen ironically believed that playing basketball at the college level ensured that he would not have to become a farmer.

“We set the wedding date for February 8, 1969, my twentieth birthday. When I called my mother to tell her the news, she voiced no disapproval. My father, when he got on the phone, said simply: ‘Boy, you’re a fool.’”

Allen and his girlfriend, Cyndy Bussler, planned to marry despite the challenges of living as an interracial couple. Cyndy’s parents were unsupportive because Allen is black and Cyndy is white, but the young couple chose each other over the expectations of her parents. Allen’s parents did not disapprove, yet O.W. perhaps understood that Allen was choosing a difficult path by marrying a white woman as a black man.

“I thought a career in professional basketball would allow me to be master of my own fate. In reality, I saw now how much I was subject to the whims of other men.”

Allen’s reflections on his professional basketball career reveal his growing need to work independently and according to his own terms. By purchasing the greenhouses in Milwaukee, Allen has taken the first steps towards running his own business and being his own boss. Soon, his appetite for self-sufficiency becomes contagious, and he invites members of the community in to participate in the growing of the food that he hopes they will enjoy.

“The doctor in Oak Creek operated on my thyroid, removing a tumor the size of a turkey egg. A follow-up surgery a few months later removed the rest of my thyroid after my doctor detected additional cancer that he had not caught the first time.”

Allen’s experience with cancer intensified when he was diagnosed with cancer of the parotid (salivary) gland after the removal of his thyroid. His cancer was the result of an overly aggressive radiation treatment for a childhood case of ringworm. These experiences left him forever skeptical of unnecessary technological solutions, in any situation, when simpler ones can work perfectly well.

“The committee found that one important reason was that black farmers were small farmers.”

Allen explains the history of black farming in America, explaining that the reason so many black farmers were leaving the profession in the 20th century had to do with their size. The American government subsidized technological advancements that served primarily large farming operations, enabling them to become more productive, while small farmers were unable to benefit from such developments and soon went out of business.

“I had added all these parts of my operation one by one, mostly by chance.”

At the end of this chapter, Allen summarizes his accomplishments at this stage of his farming operation. After only five years of owning the greenhouses, Allen is working on a system to create organic fertilizer, as well as a system to grow fish indoors. He is also working with local youths to help them learn about fresh food and his market baskets were helping low-income families enjoy high-quality food. 

“The image of the sunflower was particularly important to Hope: ‘The sunflower is a flower of beauty,’ she later told me. ‘It is also a flower of food.’”

Hope Finkelstein’s contributions to Allen’s efforts in Milwaukee were meaningful to him both practically and emotionally. By the time she left with her family for a new life in Anchorage, Alaska, Growing Power had a staff of 7 and more than 100 volunteers. Allen credits her vision for much of the success he experienced. Here, the symbolism of the sunflower reveals the personal connection both Hope and Allen feel with plants and nature.

“In many inner-city communities, the only companies that meet these specific demands of low-income families are corner stores and fast-food restaurants, with their dollar menus, 99 cent bags of chips, two-for-one offers, and twenty-piece boxes of chicken nuggets.”

Allen notes the connection between unhealthy food sources and poor health in low-income communities. Oftentimes, fast food is the only food some families can afford, so health issues like obesity and diabetes are a natural and unfortunate consequence of their income levels. This awareness motivates Allen to ensure that healthy food options are available for all people, an important theme throughout the entire book.

“Children often come into 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.”

Allen points out to readers how children in particular benefit from time in the greenhouses and gardens. A life without nature nourishes them less, as the candy in their pockets symbolizes, than a life in tune with nature and the healthy foods nature provides.

“For anyone who works to improve communities, the process of improving people’s lives can be painfully slow, much like the processes of nature.”

Allen draws a comparison between his experience and what he has learned from his time farming and working with the land. He advises anyone else interested in this kind of work to be patient, as a slow pace is only natural. He emphasizes that patience is necessary when significant changes must be made because nature, like people, cannot be rushed.

“I once spoke to an eighty-year-old farmer who told me: ‘I’m just learning how to grow food.’ I feel this way.”

The humble attitude of the elderly farmer is one that Allen understands; both Allen and the farmer understand that working as a farmer means working within the framework nature provides. Unexpected changes in weather, blights, and other challenges out of a farmer’s control means that learning how to grow food can take longer than perhaps one might expect.

“Just as my grandmother Rosa Bell had done in different circumstances during the Great Depression, I was trying to make do.”

Allen quotes another life lesson from an important family member in this quote, revealing that some of his most reliable knowledge comes from sources closest to him. Rosa Bell had survived a difficult time in her life by working with the circumstances, and Allen seeks to follow her example when faced with challenges.

“I had not changed, but I saw that the MacArthur award changed how people saw me. It gave me a stamp of approval, and it validated that what I was doing was meaningful.”

When Allen won a MacArthur “Genius Grant” award in 2008 for his contributions to the community, he noticed that others began to treat him differently. Up until this point, Allen noticed that some people doubted his abilities to make the changes he wanted to make; the official recognition of the MacArthur award made Allen seem more legitimate to his skeptics.

“My workshops at Growing Power were in the spirit of Carver’s own.”

Allen admires George Washington Carver, a black agriculturalist who educated others in the practices of growing food in the American South, and he takes inspiration from the work of Carver. In particular, Allen attempts to emulate Carver’s traveling education program with Allen’s own outreach training centers. Partnering with other organizations means that Allen’s expertise can reach more communities.

“Kids in the neighborhood threw rocks at my greenhouses when I first opened in 1993, but they stopped for several months after my arrival. I had not retaliated or chased them away. Instead, I invited the young people to come see what we were doing. I gave them summer jobs.”

Allen acknowledges that the local children and young people didn’t understand the value of the greenhouses at first, but that he is able to teach them and to offer them opportunities to see for themselves why his efforts are meaningful. In this way, Allen is accomplishing his goal of inspiring young people so that they can carry on the work he is currently establishing.