Urban farming has deep roots

Will Allen has been growing his own fruit and vegetables for more than 25 years, but said Thursday that his family’s legacy of working the soil goes back more than 400 years. Allen, a former professional basketball player and leading proponent of urban farming and the community garden movement, toured the community gardens at the Bagwell Food Pantry and William S. Davies Homeless Shelter in Rome Thursday prior to a lecture at Berry College.

Allen, who grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Miami to play basketball, said much of the family farms that were the backbone of early America stopped several generations ago.

“We started to become dependent on grocery stores and other people to come up with our food,” Allen said.

The only time Allen was not engaged in growing food for his family was when he went off to college and played professional basketball. “After that I got back into it,” Allen said.

In 1993, Allen cashed in his retirement savings to open an urban farm on two acres in inner city Milwaukee, which has now expanded to 300 acres.

Allen met with students from the Greenwood Learning Center of the Rome City Schools at the Bagwell Pantry garden where Jonathan Weaver said the learning center was in the process of making a grant application for a greenhouse and aquaponics lab that would be run by the students.

“What we have to do is what you’re doing here, work with kids, introducing them back to their food,” Allen said. “A lot of the grandmas and greatgrandmas are gone, and unfortunately we didn’t pass down how to cook food for the generations today.”

He said that part and parcel to growing your own food is the need to learn how to can, or freeze and store food.

Allen is the CEO of Growing Power, a nonprofit and land trust devoted to supporting people from every background gain access to healthy, highquality safe food.

He has spread his message across all of the states except Hawaii and Alaska, and has traveled extensively overseas.

Following his visit to the community gardens with Berry Professor Brian Campbell, he lectured to Berry students in The Cage Center on Thursday night.

Doug Walker / Rome News-Tribune William Davies (from left), Ray Goss and Charles Love listen to urban farming advocate and author Will Allen.

Photos by Doug Walker, RN-T LEFT: Jack Turner (from left) and Rick Branton check with Berry student Emmie Cornell on the status of beans an watermelons in the community garden at the Bagwell Food Pantry on Thursday. BELOW: Tomatoes start to ripen in the garden.