Making & Using CompostUnit 1.7 | Part 1 – 333SUPPLEMENT 3
Built on Compost—The Good Food Revolution
at Growing Power
In 2008, the distribution of the world’s population shifted for the first time from a rural to
an urban majority.^1 That nearly 87% of the world’s population was rural only 113 years
ago puts the recent change into perspective. Interestingly, the U.S. population made the same
transition much earlier, around 1920.
Rapid urbanization, compounded by
globalization, has had lasting effects on
the agricultural sector and on both urban
and rural communities: As urban popula-
tions increase, they place more demands
on a shrinking group of rurally-based food
suppliers. And as the movement for locally-
based food systems grows to address this
and other food system problems, urban
agriculture has become a focal point for
discussion, creativity, and progress. Indeed,
the production of food in and around
densely populated cities bears much prom-
ise as part of any solution to food supply
and access issues for urban populations.
Growing Power, Inc. (www.growingpower.org), a
Milwaukee-based organization, exemplifies the way
that urban agriculture can address some of the needs
of rapidly growing urban communities, particularly
those with poor, minority populations. Will Allen,
Growing Power’s founder—born to former share-
croppers in 1949—was drawn back to agriculture
after a career in professional basketball. Aside from
his love for growing food, he saw that the mostly
poor, black community near his roadside stand in
North Milwaukee had limited access to fresh vegeta-
bles or to vegetables they preferred. Confirming his
observation, a 2006 study found that more diverse
food options exist in wealthy and white neighbor-
hoods than in poor and minority neighborhoods.^2
Allen decided that he would serve this unmet
demand by growing fresh food in the neighborhood
where his customers lived and involve the com-
munity in the process. In 1993, long before urban
agriculture bloomed into the movement it is today,
Growing Power began.
The importance of equal access to fresh food
cannot be overestimated. While ever more exotic
fruits and vegetables from around the world stock
health and natural foods stores in wealthy and
predominantly white neighborhoods, poor andWhat is Sharecropping?
Sharecropping was a Southern U.S. land-leasing system that
replaced labor formerly done by slaves. After the Civil War, former
slaves sought jobs, and former plantation owners sought labor.
Without land of their own, many black laborers farmed land owned by
whites for a share of the profit from the crops. Throughout the season,
equipment and seeds were distributed on credit that was settled at
the end of the harvest. High interest rates, unpredictable harvests,
restrictive laws, and unscrupulous landowners and merchants kept
black farmers in a cycle of debt that had to be paid the next season,
tying them to the land in much the same way as slavery.1 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
- UN expert group meeting on population distribution,
urbanization, internal migration and development. New York,
21–23 January, 2008. http://www.un.org/esa/population/meetings/
EGM_PopDist/EGM_PopDist_Report.pdf
2 Moore, Latetia V., and Ana V. Diez Roux. 2006. Associations of
neighborhood characteristics with the location and type of
food stores. American Journal of Public Health, 96:2: 325-331.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470485/pdf/0960325.
pdfSupplement 3: Built on Compost — The Good Food Revolution