The movie "Meteor Man" comes to mind, where the hero plants organic gardens on vacant lots throughout the city. It also would be great if it were cost effective for micro-farms to exist anywhere and locally grown meant something. But farming is labor intensive and time is money, small farms have small returns. Still, these gardens could supply food banks with fresh produce, work for some and education for all. And we don't have to legislate much to do this, just get over our love for the useless proliferation of grass. Hey, the new "Victory Garden", you got land, allow others or you yourself grow food for food banks, get a tax credit.

Didn't know I was deluded and misinformed. Alas, I have moved from my grandparent built quarter-acre villa in a southeast Cleveland sub-urban community, west to a stamp sized city lot in Lorain with a huge tree in the middle and zero topsoil. My brown thumbs can't even manage house plants and heat sensing gov surveillance helicopters keep me from growing tomatoes hydroponically in my basement. Then those stupid cigar trees are surrounding my yard, I would have to remove them all. If I had the bucks, I would replace my busted garage with a greenhouse, grow plants in containers, all year round. I could put solar on the roof to charge my electrically enhanced car and might even put in a small fish tank to raise tilapia. Jack and Nancy Todd were heroes of mine in college. The self sustaining solar-ark concept was interesting.

Mall B was a victory garden in WWII times. Soon again?

Last nite it dawned on me. This new economy, putting so many out of work, splitting wages in half, we just might have to bring back local farming as a regular part of our life. That is one transition many will find hard to make. Our concept of farming is like coal mining, at least for me, out of sight and out of mind. We really don't care to be intimate with where our food comes from. Our view of the future is still the Jetsons and our reality of farming is giant machines tending to miles of flat treeless land, with the song "This land is our land" playing in the background. All done by somebody else.

I think we ought to perhaps have Eco-Villages similar to Hale Farm to show folks how to do local farming with todays methods and skills. The vacant lot garden, the micro-farm, back yard greenhouse. Even have green buildings, solar power, the whole shabang, to put this in the context that anyone can do it and have it. As much as I like the Epcot Center in Disney World, yet I've never been there in person, it is pretty much a Jetsons like concept show. To scatter a few of these Eco-Villages throughout Ohio in real neighborhoods will help common folks grasp the concepts and put them into our culture. Colleges like Oberlin, Ohio State and Case Western Reserve Univ, even Lorain Community should all have Eco-Villages as living/learning environments for students and residents. These should be hands-on proving grounds. If people can get healthy by their own effort, we won't need huge medical facilities offering services none but wealthy can afford.

We have the Home and Flower show every year, it is more and more fluff and peddling and useless display gardening. And where are the demos of green technology the average home owner can appropriate? The governor wants to create a green Ohio but is only looking at industry and business. While the higher ups are maneuvering their lawyers we down on the ground could be trading potatoes and carrots.

Just maybe always dreaming of being elsewhere is killing us. Maybe we need to embrace where we are. Is it really better somewhere else? When we get there is it over crowded because others think the same? Running all over the country trying to find a convenient or prosperous advantage. This is why property values are over our head and people who have chosen to stay here have it hard. We have created a market of trading property. Owning property does not make money. But we are told we own it even though we are paying for it. Land should be a stable and cheaper commodity and the building on it should depreciate over time. The American citizen is killed by his own goods and services. We need to make some adjustments to improve life for Americans in America.

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by Jeff Nield, Vancouver, British Columbia on 10.17.08 

Will Allen fishing for tilapia by cpentecost via flickr

Earlier this year, Sami recognized the good work of the organization Growing Power. The John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation took the praise one step further and named the organization's co-founder and CEO as a "MacArthur Genius". Will Allen is one of over two dozen recipients - including doctors, scientists and artists - of the foundation's $500,000 no strings attached fellowship award for 2008.

Check out the foundation's video about Allen and why he was chosen for the award after the jump.

The MacArthur Foundation points to Allen's practical solution to inner city hunger as the reason he was chosen for the award.

Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting. Through a novel synthesis of a variety of low-cost farming technologies – including use of raised beds, aquaculture, vermiculture, and heating greenhouses through composting – Growing Power produces vast amounts of food year-round at its main farming site, two acres of land located within Milwaukee’s city limits.

While Allen is well known in the sustainable agriculture world, this award has brought increased attention to his work. Good Morning America ran a story on his work in acknowledgment of his prize. The story was rebroadcast on Planet Green's Focus Earth. It's great to see Allen's innovative, small scale, low input food system design being recognized as an effective solution.

John D and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Growing Power

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/10/will-allen-macarthur-genius.php