Alice Waters, of the renowned Berkeley, California restaurant Chez Panisse, with getting the ball rolling,” says Arnell Hinkle, executive director of CANFIT, an organization that helps communities implement healthy-food programs. About 15 years ago, over concern for a local public school, Waters launched The Edible Schoolyard Project. Through kitchen gardens planted on their own public school grounds, students across the country learn how to plant and harvest organic produce. The kids are then taught how to make nutritious meals from what they’ve grown. “We’re calling for a revolution in public education — the ‘Delicious Revolution,’” Waters explains. “When the hearts and minds of our children are captured by a school lunch curriculum enriched with experience in the garden, sustainability will become the lens through which they see the world.” The Good Food Movement got another boost when First Lady Michelle Obama planted a kitchen garden at the White House in 2009. She was inspired to do so by a grassroots advocacy campaign led by Roger Doiron, director of Kitchen Gardeners International. Doiron is a modern-day Pied Piper for the benefits of kitchen gardens. Knowing that when Eleanor Roosevelt planted a “victory” garden at the White House in the 1940s, it inspired 40 percent of the U.S. population to follow suit, he figured Mrs. Obama’s enthusiasm for the cause might have a similar effect. “The commercially grown foods we’re eating today are significantly less nutritious than they were just 30 years ago,” Doiron points out. “What we need are millions of people joining the movement by planting four-season kitchen gardens right in their own back — or front — yards. This produce provides healthy meals for families and any excess can be donated to local food pantries.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF URBAN FARMING As the population explodes and urban areas continue to encroach on farmland, the ability to grow more nutritious food in less space becomes paramount. Will Allen, CEO of Growing Power, is an urban-farming guru, admired and revered by everyone in the Good Food Movement. Allen’s mission is to get nutritious, organic food grown with the smallest environmental impact. Using his methods, Growing Power’s two-acre urban lot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, produces enough healthy food to feed 10,000 people. Some of these methods include: greenhouses
6 Roger Doiron, Kitchen Gardeners International. 7 On a two-acre lot in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Growing Power produces enough healthy food to feed 10,000 people. 8 No room for a kitchen garden? Set up Windowfarms. 9 vintage Victory Garden poster.
and “hoop” houses (made from plastic sheeting and plywood) that are composted with the richest fertilizer, verimcompost, made from worms (heat generated from the composting process also warms the greenhouses in winter); aquaponics, a symbiotic method of growing certain plants and fish together; and raising crops and animals (bees, chickens, ducks, goats) sustainably, without chemicals. Growing Power not only raises healthy food in a compact urban space, they run extensive programs for inner-city and disadvantaged youths to get them interested in and involved with the process. They also hold workshops and travel around the country training others how to replicate their results. Allen, winner of a Ford Foundation leadership grant, a MacArthur “genius” award, and a spot on Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” team, states: “We have to change where and how food is grown right now, because we are malnourishing ourselves to death. Today, most people live in urban areas, yet many have very limited access to healthy, nutritious food. What’s needed is a Good Food Revolution.”
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GET ON BOARD THE GOOD FOOD REVOLUTION All of these organizations offer advice, classes and workshops. Kitchen Gardeners International can help anyone plant a kitchen garden. If you don’t have the space, find a community garden with help from the American Community Gardening Association. Learn how to get a kitchen garden planted at your local public school through The Edible Schoolyard Project. And, if you want to start or join an urban farming project in your community, attend a Growing Power workshop. As Thomas Jefferson said: “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.”
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Learn More: Good Food Movement Resources ACGA communitygarden.org CANFIT canfit.org Edible Schoolyard Project edibleschoolyard.org Growing Power growingpower.org Kitchen Gardeners International kgi.org Windowfarms windowfarms.com Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, through August 2013
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