The Future of Urban Farming

 

The Future of Urban Farming

Transcript of AhaGarden Presents Urban Farming with Tower Garden featuring FarmUrbana.com
Your Road Map to a healthy life by cultivating your own food and making a difference with the Tower Garden System!
In the past we grew fresh food which was nutritious and grown naturally, next to people’s homes.
With the industrialization of farming we grow food but we are extensively using fertilizer, GMO’s, and pesticides which depletes the nutrients from our foods.

We can make Urban Farming a Reality Today

You grow fresh and nutritious foods without pesticides and GMO.
You lower your food costs and lower your carbon footprint.
We can create an economically viable urban farming enterprise and create a more sustainable living environment
We can do this with permaculture, aquaponic, and Tower Garden aeroponic system.
Urban Farming also helps stimulate a more cohesive community environment.

A Model for Urban Farming Enterprise

Currently food is shipped across the country and even from other counties.
With Urban Farming we can grow our own fresh foods and with more nutrients, locally.
We also create local jobs and increase our food security with the advantage of consuming fresher, more nutritious produce from local farmers without the current health hazards.
Urban Farming strengthens our local economies by keeping dollars circulating within the community.

Children’s Education

Preschool education about nutrition starts by teaching our children about growing food and how to eat healthier.
With the Tower Garden system you can start to affect change today!

The Tower Garden is a smarter way to feed your family, it is better for the environment and
uses less water….only 10% compared with traditional farming.
No dirt or fertilizer, no pesticides, no insecticides.

The Tower Garden Way is a compact vertical aeroponic system invented by Tim Blank.

TO LEARN more and buy your own tower visit:
http://eco.TowerGarden.com
https://farmurbana.com

CONTACT: Ruth@FarmUrbana.com
Fun and Affordable, Tower Garden is the Future!

Will Allen Leading Farmer

Will Allen Leading Farmer

Will Allen Leading Farmer. Will Allen, farmer, founder and CEO of Growing Power Inc., is recognized as a preeminent practitioner of urban agriculture in America and throughout the world.

Will grew up on a small farm in Maryland, the second-youngest of six children of a sharecropper. Despite a strict rule of his father’s – no sports until all farm chores were done – he became a standout basketball player in high school and the first African-American scholarship athlete at the University of Miami. He eventually became the basketball team captain, and still holds a number of Miami Hurricanes records. Will graduated with a degree in education.

Will was drafted in both the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association. He played in the ABA for a year and then entered the European League, playing for Belgium.

While living in Belgium, Will reconnected with his farming roots. He observed the intensive methods used on small plots by local farmers, and began applying those methods in a garden where he grew food for his family and teammates.

Upon returning to the United States, Will began a career in corporate sales and marketing. Job opportunities brought him to Oak Creek, a suburb of Milwaukee, his wife’s hometown and site of her family farm.

Eventually, Will tired of corporate life and took over operation of the farm. In 1993, wanting a place to sell his produce, he located a vacant garden center with three-acres on Milwaukee’s north side.

As it turned out, the small property was the last tract in the city of Milwaukee still zoned for agriculture. Will realized he could not only sell food from his own farm in Oak Creek, he could grow food on-site in a neighborhood where there was little fresh food to be found.

The ultimate direction of Will’s life truly changed when young people from the neighborhood, including kids who lived in the largest low-income public housing project in Milwaukee, began to ask him for advice and assistance with growing their own vegetables. Almost overnight, Will took up the mantle of teacher and trainer, and the impromptu gathering of neighborhood children became the Youth Corps, a program that continues today. In 1995, Growing Power Inc. was born: a not-for-profit center for urban agriculture training and building community food security systems.

Will has been an innovator in methods of composting, vermicomposting (using worms to refine and fertilize compost) and aquaponics (growing fish and food plants in a closed system). These and other intensive practices result in remarkable yields of food, even in a very small area.

Today, Growing Power is involved in more than 70 projects and outreach programs in Milwaukee, across the United States and throughout the world. Will has trained and taught in the Ukraine, Macedonia and Kenya, and has plans in place to create community food centers in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Haiti. In the U.S., Growing Power has set up multiple Regional Outreach Training Centers throughout the U.S.

In 2008, Will was awarded the John D. and Katherine T. McArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” and named a McArthur Fellow – only the second farmer ever to be so honored.

Will is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. On Feb. 9, 2010, was one of four national spokesmen who stood on the dais with First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House to launch her “Let’s Move!” initiative to reverse the epidemic of childhood obesity by 2015. In May 2010, Time magazine named Will as one of 100 World’s Most Influential People.

Despite his busy schedule as an international ambassador for urban agriculture and universal food security, Will continues to farm his own property in Oak Creek and direct operations at Growing Power, still headquartered in the original location on Silver Spring Drive in Milwaukee.

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