(A portion of this post will also appear in the Noyo Food Forest Newsletter.)
Background
“The good food movement is now a revolution.” Will Allen, the founder of Growing Power likes to point this out. I had the pleasure to hear this in person, and to experience various elements of the organization, by taking part in the ongoing “From the Ground Up” regional food production workshop series in Milwaukee on February 20-21, 2010.
Many great write ups have been done of late on the work this outfit is doing. If you are interested in learning more about Growing Power, here are some links to recent articlesThere is also plenty to find on You Tube (including my own additions.)
I have been daunted upon return to condense the sum of my experience into a manageable post (not to mention all of the flow charts and concept maps and spreadsheets swirling around my head), so this has evolved into a mini-series of sorts. My plan with this post is to focus on the workshop experience, some of the intentions i had for going, and general observations about Growing Power, the greater food-system, and thoughts therein and since. Future posts will build on those observations and include details of two systems in particular: Micro-Greens and Aquaponics, with relevant tie-ins to some of Growing Power’s other endeavors (e.g. compost and vermiculture.) I might wrap it up with a closing post if there are any loose ends / inspirations along the way.
My greatest intention in this series of posts is to celebrate and share the work of this visionary team–so far ahead of the curve in so many respects when it comes to food access and security in urban communities. However, I also want to take opportunities to point out some of the vulnerabilities in the greater food system that become apparent in a localized instance, even one as advanced as Growing Power. This is not to fault them in any way, and if my conclusions in this regard are not resonant with the views of staff, or Will, or any 3rd party readers, that is OUTSTANDING and I encourage you to respectfully dialogue in the comments so that we may all see our collective food system more broadly as a result.
That all being said, let’s get on with the report:
Deciding to go, why I (ultimately) went, and getting what I wanted (and more, almost).
My preference for a workshop is to leave at the end feeling like a (well used) wet noodle, (if you have a more ag-oriented metaphor, please let me know 
) meaning the end result of the activities equal or exceed my desire for mental, physical, and (bonus) emotional exhaustion. Bioneers is like this (for me) annually, as was Integral-Sustainability (in 2006, website no longer available) and The Un-Money Convergence in Seattle in 2007. My concern in signing up for Growing Power’s offering was that it would not live up to my high-expectations of how dense an experience can be.
Looking at the schedule–two breakouts consisting of eight possible choices overall–I almost decided not to attend, as I kew I always hold a workshop to a high-bar, and at $350 for the event plus travel and accommodations, this would be a significant outlay for a self-funded consultant in “tight times”. I wondered if my precious resources wouldn’t be better spent on self-study and equipment/infrastructure, but, I realized the importance of this opportunity, and the idea of being there for two days and observing and learning was, in the end ample motivation. I decided to go.
I will save the suspense and say that the trip was worthwhile. The “but” to that statement is that I was encouraged by a confidant to realize beforehand that this trip was actually for one or two “gems” plus the fine detail I could witness by being at Growing Power in person for two days. According to this wisdom, if I went with this intention I could actually get quite a bit out of the experience–in spite of my reduced (typical) expectations. This was all that I needed, and in light of this intention, I got just what I went for… and a bit more.
[That is not to say that this is not a call to all event producers--including Growing Power--to offer a "granularity" of experience, so that the individual attendee may select for their own "wet noodle" multiplier. When I have my way producing workshops and retreats, there is an offering of core programing around which an ancillary offering is presented (and still further encouragement of 'de-central' [spontaneous] meetings) so that, depending on the motivations of the particular agent participant (no longer “attendee”), an event can be as full as one desires it to be, without being left wanting for a lack of programing. [Think: SxSW the aforementioned Bioneers and (potentially) the 2010 Integral Theory Conference. With a bit of tweaking, Growing Power workshops could be a VERY full experience. (Perhaps a wrap-up post topic?)
Experience and Observations:
The Organization
Growing Power is part farm, part living museum, "idea factory", leadership incubator, and urban agriculture/aquaponics center. Lead by Allen, the operation is run by a beautiful, diverse, and capable team--some of them working and growing there since single digit ages, now budding young adult leaders in their own right. And that's my first emphasis to share: I had been so focused on Growing Power's growing fields and systems, and the soil, food and other products that come out of the small two acre site, that I was taken by surprise by what is quite possibly the most important and powerful product of this organization: strong and confident young-adult leaders
During intros Sunday morning, these young community leaders were standing before the workshop, taking pride in their production (over 100 were reported in the general workshop, and another 20 or so had returned in the 5 month course). Others are clearly experienced in their field, such as Rick Miler, chief aquaponics officer. Together, they are professional food producers, processors, distributors, preparers, administrators, and--last but not least--educators, and together they represent the "value chain"--from compost to soil to seed to plate--to which we should all give thanks and gratitude every time we sit down to eat.
The focus on younger generations is resonant with Allen's approach to farming:
Building the Soil
A few observations in this regard:
First: Soil is a capital investment, and one of the greatest resources of a community. Food is the by-product of the fertility of the medium (e.g. soil) plus the inputs required of the growing system you run. From the "sprayers and drivers" of Industrial Agriculture, to the globally sourced "organic" nutrient inputs, there is a legacy of emergy and exergy behind the calories we eat. In Allen's system, it takes a full year for food and brewery waste and yard/tree clippings to compost and be eaten by worms and turned into castings for soil building and food growth.
While Will himself says you can be marketing micro-greens "within a week", the truth is that the feedstock to establish that enterprise is 1 parts worm-castings (a full year in compost) to 1 part coconut husk (from Sri-Lanka) times your anticipated capacity. So, to go to market "in a week", you actually need to locate the above feedstock with one of the following: a.) have invested one year (plus cash) into the creation of this feedstock, b.) you get surplus from some source, or 3.) you will need to buy it in order to begin operations. (And then there's always the locale / facility cost to consider.)
The operation seems like dirt and seeds and water, but it's a bit more than that.
The Growing Power Micro-Greens system is quite innovative, as once it is established and harvested, it feeds into a recycle loop with only supplemental nutrients, which I will outline/diagram in the (forthcoming) Micro-greens post. Again, the point above is not that Growing Power is not answering questions of import, but only that there are still significant barriers to entry for young food producers seeking right livelihood.
Second: Presently most communities pay to export food and municipal waste on “garbage trucks” and pay (again) to import compost and vegetables/nutrients. A Growing Power style approach cuts out unnecessary transportation of nutrients from and back to the city, creates local “green-collar” jobs, and increases a community’s access to fresh local and healthy food by processing this “waste” within or near city limits and converting it to a resource.
Growing Power processes 100,000 lb. of food waste and recycling per week from points of source around Milwaukee. Read that again: 100,000 POUNDS PER WEEK. That's good news and bad news.
(I have anecdotal evidence that Will is quoted in Fresh (the movie) as saying 1M LB/year, which would double that figure.) The good news is that that's 100,000 lb. of compost matter that is going to a higher and better use than it had before, feeding people and forging community rather than being landfill or "bio-gassed" at some far off facility. In my eyes the bad news is like the sixth-sense of agriculture: "I see dead [dinosaurs]” (i.e. fossil fuels).
Here’s one of those stark realities I promised to shed light upon: the truth is, as far as I can see, the backbone of the success of Growing Power–and any Urban operation relying on a global agricultural feedstock / value chain for its soil compilation–is as inherently vulnerable to supply shocks as the rest of the fossil fuel economy. Because it relies on feedstocks made possible by OIL, same as any other modern system you see, even if the local site-operation is run solely upon wheelbarrows and wood heat (it is, and it’s not, respectively), the throughput (food waste–>compost–>worms–>food) is based on an inefficient system (the food waste) and the availability of (relatively) cheap energy.
While it is leveraging an extremely wasteful system in a manner more beneficial than before, I am reluctant to slap the “Sustainable Urban Agriculture” label on this (or most) endeavors just yet, because while the growing is ostensibly local, the footprint of the farm–the nutrient, seed, and energy feedstocks required to run it–are global in nature, same as “industrial chemical agriculture”.
This is an issue to return to in the future posts (particularly my forthcoming look into Growing Power’s Aquaponics). To understand this perspective, here is a recent post I wrote on a key pattern to comprehend: The Dissipative Structure and Energy/Resource Mapping.
Closure, for now
To counter-balance all of the above, I can’t say enough about the work that Growing Power is doing, and I am glad that there is so much good stuff going on there that posts such as this can push the edges of this work, hopefully helpin us all to advance our work in the production of regional and thrivable food systems. Make no mistake, we have our work cut out for us if we are to support the population that is presently eating fossil fuels, but thanks to Growing Power, Will Allen, and countless others before us, we have a head start on addressing the predicament.
Thanks for reading.
Together on Earth,
Chris
