REGIONAL MODELS Case study: Wendell Local Food Security Project
The town of Wendell, located in Franklin County, Massachusetts, has launched an innovative initiative called the Wendell Local Food Security Project. This project is a “neighbor-to-neighbor network” collaborating to actively support local gardeners and farmers by helping to establish: • Workshops and events about food production • Labor shares and work parties • Mentorship connections • Cooperative purchasing
• Shared infrastructure • Materials recycling • A yearly seed-swap and seed banking • Demonstration gardens at the Community Garden
The town has also hired a local food coordinator, who is contracted to support local gardeners. In addition, a self-appointed New Gardeners’ Ambassador—a farmer, herbalist, botanist, and seed saver—shares her forty years of local farming experience to help people in the town learn to farm and garden (The Wendell Local Food Security Project).
Case study: Growing Power’s Community Food Center
Growing Power, founded in 1993 by Will Allen, was originally designed to employ teenagers in building and renovating greenhouses in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It has since expanded into a model for “the young, the elderly, farmers, producers, and other professionals ranging from USDA personnel to urban planners” (“Our History”). In 1999, Growing Power established its Community Food Center. It has become the prototype for community food centers around the country, described as “local places where people can learn sustainable practices to grow, process, market, and distribute food” (“Our Community Food Center”). The Community Food Center provides space for hands-on activities, technical assistance, outreach, large-scale demonstration projects, and for growing a wide variety of plants, vegetables, and herbs. On a twoacre lot, “in a space no larger than a small supermarket live some 20,000 plants and vegetables, thousands of fish, and a livestock inventory of chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, and bees” (“Our Community Food Center”). Green Power offers schools, universities, government agencies, farmers, activists, and community members the opportunity to learn from and participate in the development and operation of community food systems (“Our Community Food Center”).
Growing Power’s prototype for Community Food Centers; their facility at 5500 W. Silver Spring Drive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The historic two-acre farm is the last remaining farm and greenhouse operation in the City of Milwaukee (“Our Community Food Center”). Photo Credit: Growing Power Inc.
“If people can grow safe, healthy, affordable food, if they have access to land and clean water, this is transformative on every level in a community. I believe we cannot have healthy communities without a healthy food system.” —Will Allen, Growing Power, Inc. Community Food System Assessment
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