Mother Earth News_December_2016_2017

http://www.MotherearthNews.coM 57

where he describes the growing season

as “pretty traditional, after the snow

melts.” He educated himself with li-

brary books and online resources, and

got hands-on experience by cultivat-

ing productive gardens in the area.

Hill landed in Arizona as a business

student. Jobs in finance were scarce

when he graduated in 2008, so he en-

rolled in Arizona State University’s new

School of Sustainability. There, he was

shocked to learn that about 95 percent

of food waste in the United States ends

up in landfills or incinerators.

After a few years spent migrating be-

tween Minnesota summers and Arizona

winters, he and his brother Danny

came to a revelatory decision about

starting a composting business. (At the

time, Danny managed the aquaponics

setup for Growing Power, the iconic

urban agriculture project started by

Will Allen in Milwaukee.) The broth-

ers hooked up with a couple of close

friends to start Recycled City, adopting

the motto “We build urban farmland

in food deserts with local compost.” As

Hill likes to say, he found his purpose.

Recycled City turned over its first com-

post in early 2014.

At first, J. D. Hill did everything by

hand, digging trenches and burying

food waste with shovelfuls of soil to pro-

duce compost. He was making it work,

but just barely. Luckily, an encounter

at the Tempe farmers market led to the

OCLC partnership, and soon Recycled

City had more room to breathe.

A Different
Kind of Desert
While it’s clear that Phoenix is in a
climatological desert, it’s less evident
that parts of the city are also food
deserts — urban tracts where at least
one-third of the population is low-
income and lives more than 1 mile
from a supermarket or large grocery
store. What makes this fact so devastat-
ing is that Phoenix has three growing
seasons. Almost any edible vegetable
or fruit will grow there in fall, winter,
or spring. As with any major urban
area — Phoenix is the sixth largest city
TOP AND PAGE 55: SLAVEN GUJIC; BOTTOM: CATHERINE SLYE, WWW.CATSLYE.COMin the United States — unused plots of

Circle #22; see card pg 97

Circle #30; see card pg 97

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