Urban Agriculture Conference

HOSTS

SPONSORS

PRESENTERS

Michael Ableman
Michael Ableman is the founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non profit organization based on one of the oldest and most diverse organic farms in southern California, where he farmed from 1981 to 2001. The farm has become an important community and education center and a national model for small scale and urban agriculture, hosting as many as 5000 people per year for tours, classes, festivals, and apprenticeships. Under Ableman's leadership the farm was saved from development and preserved under one of the earliest and most unique active agricultural conservation easements of its type in the country.
Ableman's photographs have appeared in publications throughout the world and in solo exhibitions at the Oakland Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Field Museum in Chicago.

Ableman has received numerous awards for his work including the 2001 "Sustie" Award for his work in sustainable agriculture, Eating Well magazine's 1995 Food Hero Award, and the 1997 Environmental Leadership Award from the governor of the state of California.
When he's not traveling the country or the world talking to farmers about their techniques, Ableman, a farmer, educator, photographer and writer, works his own fields with his wife and two sons on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. He recently wrote Fields of Plenty: A Farmer's Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It, Chronicle Books, 2005. Other books: Fields of Plenty, On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm, From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World read more

Jac Smit
"Eco Cities must be farming cities"
Jac Smit is the President of The Urban Agriculture Network [TUAN]. This information and consulting organization was founded in 1992. It has visited over 30 countries in its advocacy. The urban agriculture book they wrote for the United Nations is the 2nd best selling book ever published by the UNDP. Harvard paper: Natural Resources of the SuAsCo River Valley:Planning with Nature. TUAN operates in all media. It is engaged frequently in workshops and conferences.
Jac's first urban agriculture study was written as a term paper at Harvard. It defined how agriculture and suburban residential and commercial development could coexist in the SuASCo watershed [Sudbury, Assabet and Concord rivers].
As director of the Chicago Regional Plan project for NIPC he led the team that promoted agriculture in the green wedges between the urban corridors in Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Jac has contributed to plans for agriculture in cities as diverse as: Abidjan, Asmera, Bogota, Dar es Salaam, Karachi, Philadelphia,Chicago and Port au Prince, Haiti, Vancouver and Washington DC. Some of his most satisfying urban agriculture effort was in refugee camps in India, Bangladesh and the Ivory Coast. http://www.cityfarmer.org/TUAN.html

Chukou Thao
Chukou Thao is the director of a longtime Oxfam partner organization that represents the immigrant Hmong farmers of California's San Joaquin Valley. Now that Thao is becoming a national spokesperson for immigrant farmers, Oxfam interviewed him and other members of his community about their experience advocating on behalf of small family farming.

With assistance from the University of California at Davis, Thao organized training sessions for HAC’s farmer cooperative to meet quality standards of institutional buyers, get fair prices for what they grow, and to find the right markets for their crops—daikon, lemon grass, bok choy, and other Asian vegetables. The co-op has done well: Hmong produce is now sold in gourmet stores and farmers’ markets, some hundreds of miles away in San Francisco. And now they are tackling the mainstream markets—with strawberries as their latest victory. read more

Jerry Kaufman
Jerry Kaufman is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Over the past decade he’s been actively involved in a variety of activities related to community food system planning and urban agriculture. For the past four years since his retirement in 2001, he’s been President of the Growing Power Board of Directors. He is a member of the Dane County Food Council established in 2006, the first food policy council in the state of Wisconsin. On the planning front, he was a principal author of the Policy Guide on Community and Regional Food which the American Planning Association, with a membership exceeding 40,000 urban and regional planners, adopted in March 2007. And he served as guest editor of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning’s Journal of Planning Education and Research Summer 2004 special issue on Planning for Community Food Systems.

In the late 1990s, Jerry was a member of the Community Food Security Coalition Board for two years, served on the Madison, Wisconsin Community Gardens Committee for several years, and was one of the original working group members that helped develop the plan for the innovative and successful community-based Troy Gardens urban agroecology project in Madison. In 1997, he and a colleague conducted a workshop class for graduate planning students that led to the publication of the first community-wide food assessment, Fertile Ground: Planning for the Madison/Dane County Food System, produced by a graduate planning program. In 2000, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy published a research study he undertook with Martin Bailkey, Farming Inside Cities: Entrepreneurial Urban Agriculture in the United States.

Will Allen
When offered a generous exit package from Procter & Gamble in 1982, Will took the money, and grabbed the last working farm In Milwaukee. His $80,000 stake was just a seed. “I ended up investing nearly $1 million over 10 years.” Will’s three kids — two daughters, then 8 and 13, and a then 10-year-old son — grew tip working the 100-acre farm alongside their parents. “Tomatoes, squash, peppers, pumpkins, watercress, -- you name it, we grew it,” laughs V/ill. As promised, the work was grueling “I had to work every summer while my friends had fun,” remembers Will’s son Jason, now an attorney. “Up every morning at 4 am, I complained plenty” adds Jason. But that work ethic helped him get a scholarship, and into law school.” Today the Allen kids are grown, and Will is 53. The farm produces over 100,000 pounds of chemical— free vegetables and distributes close to 2 million more through his roadside stand.
We’re marketing to the poor; the food—insecure areas,” he says. And he is still a believer in the power of farming to shape lives. All kids, particularly poor city ones, are welcome to come by to volunteer and learn, “These kids are going to have to be tough enough to stick to something. Farming really helps you do that.”
Three years ago Will merged the farm with a nonprofit training center: Growing Power. To date, he has taught farming and food processing to more than 1,000 students and helped launch more than 25 urban gardens, some in the poorest counties in the U.S.

“We’re not just growing food, were growing communities." http:growingpower.org

Mark Winne
From 1979 to 2003, Mark Winne was the Executive Director of the Hartford Food System. During his tenure with HFS, Mark organized community self-help food projects that assisted the city’s lower income and elderly residents. Mark’s work with the Food System included the development of a commercial food businesses, Connecticut’s Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, farmers’ markets, a 25-acre community supported agriculture farm, a food bank, food and nutrition education programs, and a neighborhood supermarket.
Mark is a co-founder of a number of food and agriculture policy groups including the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, End Hunger Connecticut!, and the national Community Food Security Coalition. He was an organizer and chairman of the Working Lands Alliance, a statewide coalition working to preserve Connecticut’s farmland, and is a founder of the Connecticut Farmland Trust. Mark was a member of the United States Delegation to the 2000 World Conference on Food Security in Rome and is a 2001 recipient of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary's Plow Honor Award. From 2002 until 2004, Mark was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a position supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
Mark currently writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food systems. He His essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the Hartford Courant, the Boston Globe, The Nation, In These Times, Sierra Magazine, Orion Magazine, Successful Farming and numerous organizational and professional newsletters and journals across the country. His first book "Closing the Food Gap -- Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty", published by Beacon Press, will be released in January 2008. He now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he serves on the New Mexico Task Force to End Hunger, the New Mexico Food and Agriculture Policy Council, and the Southwest Grass-fed Livestock Alliance. www.markwinne.com

Sharon Adams
Co-founder of Walnut Way Conservation Corp. is a grassroots, community development organization serving the Milwaukee Central City neighborhood. Walnut Way is a 501(c)3 nonprofit neighborhood organization founded by residents in 2000. Its offices are located in a carefully renovated, formally infamous drug house. Emphasizing the importance of valuing place, residents restored this 1910 house slated for demolition into an active Neighborhood Center where youth, families, elders, homeowners and renters are actively engaged in community development. Walnut Way’s mission is to sustain an economically diverse and neighborly community through civic engagement, environmental stewardship, and economic enterprise. "To make this work", says Sharon Adams, co-founder, "you have to live the truth from the heart.
Sharon served as plenary speaker at the 2007 national conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Engaged to support transforming communities, she worked for the Alliance for the Revitalization of Camden City, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Urban Economic Development Association of Wisconsin, and Metro Denver Black Church Initiative. Her work calls for restoration of sustainable ecological systems for natural and built communities. The Board of Directors and many active volunteers are residents of this roughly 30-block neighborhood. In the past seven years engaged residents in collaboration with academic institutions, businesses, public agencies, and neighborhood associations have welcomed local, state-wide and international groups to learn about our sustainable community revitalization methods. http://www.walnutway.org/

Harry Rhodes
Mr. Rhodes has been with Growing Home for four years. He initiated the first year of growing organic food and training people in 2002. He has overseen the growth of the organization, and has helped it become a model transitional job program, concentrating on urban agriculture. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy and Administration from the University of Wisconsin.
Unique in its vision and mission, Growing Home uses the context of an organic agriculture business to foster life- and job-skill training in a transitional employment program for previously homeless, low-income, or incarcerated Chicagoans. Recognized nationally and internationally Growing Home has been featured on National Public Radio and multiple television outlets as well as an article by Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture and Food Security.
A recent article in Northwestern University’s Medill Reports explained that for our program’s participants, “the object is to gain valuable job-readiness and life skills to ensure that their work at Growing Home is just the beginning of a more stable existence. And there’s evidence that it’s working.” http://www.growinghomeinc.org/

Orrin Williams
Orrin Williams is the Employment Training Coordinator and Case Manager for Growing Home. In this position Mr. Williams overseas all aspects of Growing Home’s job-readiness program for hard-to-employ women and men, most of whom have been homeless and have been incarcerated. Orrin organizes this very diverse program that includes hands-on learning about urban agriculture, classroom learning about horticulture and nutrition, as well as soft skills learning, including art therapy, conflict resolution, teamwork and communication skills training.
Orrin has been instrumental in working with the Englewood community on Chicago’s south side, in order to promote Growing Home’s new Wood St. urban farm. This is Chicago’s first permanent year-round farm.
Orrin is also the executive Director of the Center for Urban Transformation (CUT) in Chicago, Illinois. The CUT is focused on providing leadership for the creation of sustainable business opportunities in Englewood, in partnership with Teamwork Englewood. Particular interest is given to those enterprises related to urban agriculture, landscape and food processing. Orrin is author of Food and Justice: The Critical Link to Healthy Communities appearing in Power, Justice and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement, MIT Press 2005 as well as numerous additional articles and position papers.

Michael Olson
An agriculturalist, journalist and business person Michael Olson consults on farm projects throughout the world, with projects ranging from the City of Watts to the island nation of Cyprus, to the jungles of the Amazon. Olson is the author of MetroFarm, the Ben Franklin Book of the Year Finalist and Executive Producer and Host of the syndicated Saturday Food Chain radio talk show, which received the Ag/News Show of the Year Award from the California Legislature.
As General Manager of two news talk radio stations, KSCO & KOMY in Santa Cruz, California, Olson has over twelve years experience helping local, regional and national businesses compete within the metropolitan marketplace. Olson is currently President of the MO MultiMedia Group in Santa Cruz, California.
Olson has produced, written and/or photographed feature-length news for a variety of media, including the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner newspapers, Skiing and Small Space Gardening magazines, NBC, ABC, Australian Broadcast Commission, and KQED Public Television networks. His production and photography helped win a National Emmy nomination for NBC Magazine with David Brinkley. http://www.metrofarm.com/

Marcia Caton Campbell MCRP, PhD
Marcia has served as Milwaukee Project Director with the Center for Resilient Cities (formerly the Urban Open Space Foundation) since May 2006. Currently, she coordinates the Johnsons Park Health Alliance and oversees the revitalization of Johnsons Park, Alice’s Garden, and the Brown Street Academy schoolyard. From 1998-2006, she was an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and affiliate faculty at the Gaylord E. Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the UW-Madison. Her research and teaching focused on dispute resolution and consensus building, community-based planning with diverse publics, and increasing inner-city residents' access to healthy, nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food through community food systems planning.
In 2003, she received the UW-Madison Chancellor’s Award for University and Community Partnerships for her work on Troy Gardens, a 31-acre, sustainable development on Madison’s Northside that includes 30 mixed-income, greenbuilt townhomes, over 300 community gardens, a 5-acre community-supported agriculture farm, and a restored prairie and natural areas. Dr. Caton Campbell is co-principal investigator for community-academic partnership grants from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health and the Medical College of Wisconsin that support the Johnsons Park Health Alliance in Milwaukee. She is also a Preceptor with the Wisconsin Population Health Fellows Program. Dr. Caton Campbell was a founding member of the Friends of Troy Gardens Board of Directors, on which she served until July 2007. Since 2006, she has been President of the Madison Area Community Land Trust Board of Directors. http://www.uosf.org/

Wally Satzewich and Gail Vandersteen
Wally Satzewich is a veteran urban farmer and the developer of SPIN-Farming. After farming conventionally for nearly 20 years he realized that by downsizing his operation to less than an acre he could generate the same income as a large-scale farmer, but with less stress and overhead, and with more certainty of success from year-to-year. Along with his wife/partner Gail Vandersteen, he operates Wally's Urban Market Garden, a multi-locational sub-acre urban farm dispersed over 25 residential backyard plots rented from homeowners in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada. The sites range in size from 500 sq. ft. to 3,000 sq. ft., and the growing area totals a half acre. The produce is sold at The Saskatoon Farmers Market.

Wally serves as agricultural advisor to Somerton Tanks Farm, an urban demonstration farm in Philadelphia, PA that has achieved agricultural and financial breakthroughs that many thought impossible, generating $68,000 in gross sales from a half-acre in 2006, its 4th year of operation. He is co-author of the SPIN-Farming online learning series that is helping to foster a growing corps of backyard and front lawn first generation farmers around the world. http://www.spinfarming.com/

Diana Lee Smith
Diana Lee-Smith lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya, where she was one of the founders of Mazingira Institute and carried out the first major research study of urban agriculture in the 1980s. From 2002 - 2005 she led the African Regional programme of Urban Harvest, an initiative of the international agriculture research system. She was also the Gender
Focal Point of UN-HABITAT for three years and has published widely on development and environment issues, including urban agriculture and women's issues. Mazingira Institute currently hosts NEFSALF, a policy forum for urban farmers in Nairobi that also provides training and a voice for urban farmers.

Martin Bailkey, PhD
Martin Bailkey is a resident of Madison, Wisconsin, Martin is a writer, editor and consultant on community food systems. He has written a number of reports and book chapters on urban agriculture and its contributions to community building, and on the connections between city farming and urban land use. Martin is a co-coordinator, with James Kuhns and Joe Nasr, of the new North American Alliance for Urban and Periurban Agriculture.
Martin is the current Vice-Chair of the Dane County Food Council, and was until recently a Board member of the Friends of Troy Gardens, a nationally-known model for urban agriculture, located on Madison's North Side. He received a Masters in Landscape Architecture from the University of Oregon, and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Joe Nasr, PhD
Joe Nasr is an independent scholar, lecturer and consultant, covering an array of contemporary and historical urban planning issues. He has been working on urban agriculture and food issues globally for a decade and a half. This is reflected in two courses he teaches – on Urban Food Security and Understanding Urban Agriculture – as part of Ryerson University’s Food Security Certificate. Other recent activities as associate of Ryerson’s Centre for Studies in Food Security include: developing a new project of “Distance Education, Documentation and Dissemination on Urban Agriculture”; and mentoring Ryerson architecture students working on design issues related to food and agriculture.
Dr. Nasr had been affiliated for over a decade with the Urban Agriculture Network, a not-for-profit organization that he co-founded. The 1996 book he co-authored, Urban Agriculture: Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities, has become the standard text on the subject. A book he co-edited in 2004, Interfaces: Agricultures et villes à l’Est et au Sud de la Méditerranée, has now been translated into Arabic. He coordinated in 2005-2007 a project on “Regional Training and Knowledge Sharing in Urban Agriculture for the Middle East and North Africa”, focused on a training course that resulted in the foundation of an Arab Network on Urban Agriculture. Recently, he has been co-heading a new initiative that is leading to the creation of a North American Urban and Periurban Agriculture Alliance.
Joe holds a doctorate in urban and regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Since completing his studies in 1997, he has been Fulbright Scholar in Lebanon and Jordan, Leverhulme Trust Visiting Fellow in England, and Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Lebanon. He has taught at seven universities, most recently at the University of Toronto.

June Komisar, PhD
Dr. June Komisar is an architect and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architectural Science, at Ryerson University. She has an Masters in Architecure from Yale University and a PhD in architecture from the University of Michigan.
She is an associate of the Centre for Studies in Food Security and on the Board of ICOMOS Canada (the International Council of Monuments and Sites). She is the Principal Investigator of a multidisciplinary research facility -- the “REAL Lab” at Ryerson. She has been researching Brazilian architecture, and has delivered papers on teaching about food and urban agriculture as an aspect of sustainable architecture.

James Kuhns
James Kuhns has worked for many years in Ottawa and Toronto in food security work, including urban agriculture, community gardening, food banks, farmers’ markets and food policy council development. Currently he is president of the American Community Gardening Association, managing editor of FoodForethought.net and a member of the Toronto Food Policy Council.
James is co-heading the creation of a North American Alliance Urban and Periurban Agriculture Alliance. He holds a M.Sc. in agricultural development from the University of London.

Margaret Krome
Margaret Krome is MFAI's policy coordinator. In this capacity she coordinates the annual national grassroots campaign to fund federal programs supported by the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture. Over a number of years, she has helped create and sustain funding for a number of state initiatives supporting environmentally sound, profitable, and socially responsible agriculture, including the UW-Madison's' Center for Integrated Agriculture and the Pesticide Use and Risk Reduction project. In addition to policy work, she conducts workshops nationwide on grant writing and using federal programs to support sustainable agriculture. She also works with others in the Madison, Wisconsin area to foster close marketing relationships between consumers and locally environmentally sound farmers. Krome served Wisconsin Rural Development Center for 9 years before joining MFAI in 1995. She writes a bi-weekly editorial column for the evening daily paper, The Capital Times, in Madison, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Venice Willams
Venice Williams is the Executive Director of SeedFolks Youth Ministry and the Kujichagulia Lutheran Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and has been working through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Greater Milwaukee Synod for almost twenty years. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Venice's love of the land orginates from her Choctaw roots, her grandmothers' gardens and her mother's love of gardening.

She is the site coordinator and program director of Hockings Heritage Garden, a community garden that serves neighborhood children & families and local food pantries, focusing on traditional African American and Native American gardening methods. She is also the co-coordinator of Alice's Garden Children's Garden, a large urban garden program that works and plays with inner-city children, teaching them to love and respect the land, and to be caretakers of Creation. She also is a local Milwaukee County 4-H leader and creator of the SeedFolks 4-H Club, focusing on plants, people, and cultures. In addition, she teaches Women's Rites of Passage courses, based on the four seasons, helping women to understand their life's journey by exploring the cycles of the seasons. She believes, "everything you need to know about life, you can learn from nature." Venice is a board member for Milwaukee Urban Gardens, a local land trust, and the American Community Gardening Association.

Dennis Lukaszewski
Dennis Lukaszewski a Registered Landscape Architect, has served as Coordinator of the Urban Agriculture Program for the University of Wisconsin Extension (UWEX) in Milwaukee County since 1989. The Urban Ag program includes garden plot rental, accessible gardening, school gardening, educational support for community gardens and a prison garden initiative.
As a member of the state UWEX Horticulture team Dennis is a co-team leader for the urban agriculture/community gardening team. He is co- founder and co-administrator for the UWEX Wisconsin FEEDs project (Food and Ecosystem Educational Demonstration sites). The FEEDs web based garden network includes a listserve for community gardeners throughout the state and links to the University of Wisconsin. http://feeds.uwex.edu During his 12 years as Greenhouse Manager at Marquette University, Dennis maintained the research greenhouse, taught continuing education classes, coordinated student group plant sales and other plant-related projects and consulted on upgrades to the Marquette campus landscape. As the former owner of a multi-location floral business, Dennis has extensive experience in the private, retail horticultural products sector.

Erika Allen
Erika Allen is Projects Manager for Growing Power. As the daughter of Will Allen, she has a small farm agricultural background and experience. She spent her formative years, involved in all aspects of farm management from transplanting seedlings to managing farm stands and farmer’s markets. Ms. Allen has received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and recently received her MA in art therapy from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Years of experience working in urban communities with art education and social service have brought her full circle back to her farming roots. Integrating the creative and therapeutic techniques with food security and community development have enabled Ms. Allen to establish four urban agriculture and food system projects in Chicago, IL. Recent work has included the development of the Chicago Food Policy Council, where she has been elected as co-chair and also serves as civic co-chair for The City of Chicago’s Chicago Organic initiative’s Education, Training and Schools sub-committee. Her specialties include project planning, community food systems design and direct marketing training. Supporting limited resource producers to strengthen their farm businesses and working in partnerships to create healthy and diverse food options in inner city and rural communities. Ms. Allen was an awardee for the Chicago Tribune’s Good Eating Award in 2006 and was honored by Chicago area social service agency, Family Focus in 2007 for her work in community food systems; In 2008 Erika Allen was appointed to the Illinois local and organic food and farm task force by Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich

Tyra Rodgers
Tyra Rodgers grew up on the west side of Chicago, and as a teen he got involved with drugs and crime. As he’ll tell you, he was arrested in 1983 for armed robbery and spent 17 out of the next 21 years in prison. He says he knew what he was doing wasn’t right, but he was simply used to the way of life. In December 2004, Tyra was released from prison, got involved in the North Lawndale Employment Project, and was referred to Growing Home. Tyra graduated from the Growing Home training program in October 2005, and was hired by Growing Home as a full-time urban farm assistant in September 2006.
Now, as Growing Home staff, Tyra has been integral to the building and establishment of Growing Home’s new Wood Street urban farm. Through 2007, he’s been responsible for making sure that the site takes bloom. The bright, hardy winter greens growing in the three hoop houses there, even in the gray late fall of Chicago are cultivated and cared for by Tyra and other members of Growing Home’s urban farm team.

Jennifer Blecha, PhD
Jennifer Blecha is a human geographer who teaches and conducts research on urban agriculture, in particular small-scale animal-keeping. Her dissertation, called "Urban Life with Livestock," examined the motivations that moved urban residents in US cities to start keeping livestock animals, as well as their experiences and practices. While many people think that immigrants are the primary people involved in keeping livestock in cities, Jennifer showed that US-born urban residents are increasingly taking up this practice. She studied two cases in particular: college-educated professionals keeping backyard chickens, and the other, an inner-city high school in Detroit that incorporates a diversified farm including dairy goats, beehives, horses and rabbits into their science curriculum. This study found important social and environmental benefits of urban livestock. Jennifer is currently working to publish some of this research, while also embarking on new projects with beekeepers in San Francisco and with urban gardeners in Argentina. Currently Jennifer is on the faculty of the Department of Geography and Human Environmental Studies at San Francisco State University, where she teaches courses on agriculture, food, animal geographies, and garbage. She has been interested in urban agriculture since her first backyard garden in early childhood, choosing to 'go organic' at age ten. Since then she has considered the theoretical and legal aspects of urban livestock-keeping as well as observed and participated in the practice in various forms. Jennifer currently keeps both compost worms and two backyard hens, and dreams of adding a dairy goat.

Larry Adams
Larry Adams is a Co-founder of Walnut Way Conservation Corp. Emphasizing the importance of valuing place, Larry led the restoration of this 1910 house into an active Neighborhood Center and Garden Campus where youth, families, elders, homeowners and renters are actively engaged in community development.
Walnut Way’s mission is to sustain an economically diverse and neighborly community through civic engagement, environmental stewardship, and economic enterprise. Larry’s garden work began in 2000 when Walnut Way acquired five vacant lots from the City. The lots were dumping grounds, a disturbing symbol of decades of disinvestment. In a thirty-block area over 100 homes had been demolished. The first lots were planted with 1000 tulip blubs in what was called “a circle of hope." People warned that everything would be stolen. “You can’t steal what is yours” Larry responded.
Veterans, teens, and ex-offenders have been trained in soil remediation, vegetable and flower gardens that not only offer beauty and quality food, but also introduce participants to the economics of growing and distributing fresh produce. A field of 40x100ft produces over 3,500 lbs of collard greens in one season.
Larry serves on the Board of Growing Power. In 2007, he received the UW-Extension Chancellor’s Award for providing maximum access to learning opportunities to the people of Wisconsin. In the past eight years engaged residents in collaboration with academic institutions, businesses, public agencies, and neighborhood associations have welcomed local, statewide and international groups to learn about our sustainable community revitalization methods. http://www.walnutway.org/

Nathan Larson
Nathan Larson is the Education Program Director at Friends of Troy Gardens, a nonprofit organization responsible for the development, management, and stewardship of 26 acres of open land in Madison, Wisconsin. Troy Gardens integrates a 5-acre organic Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm, over 300 community garden plots, and a restored tallgrass prairie and sugar maple woodland. The organic Troy Kids’ Garden—nestled amidst the 5 acres of community gardens—is a vital, vibrant center of exploration, learning, and play for hundreds of children from area community centers and schools. Children are involved in the whole garden cycle—from planting seedlings to harvesting to preparing meals like fresh garden salsa and mashed blue potatoes with collard greens. The Friends of Troy Gardens also supports a garden at our neighborhood elementary school, and collaborates with organizational partners to offer hands-on gardening/nutrition lessons at the school as well. In addition to programs for children, the Friends of Troy Gardens runs mentorship and job training programs for teenagers and young adults in its Kid’s Garden and on its farm. Over the past decade, Nathan has facilitated a number of gardening programs for children in both rural and urban areas. In 2001, he co-founded the Troy youth education committee, which was established to develop experiential education programs for children and teens at Troy Gardens. One of Nathan’s paramount goals is to provide young people with a safe, supportive environment in the city where they can learn to grow and prepare nutritious foods and develop a lasting respect for nature. http://www.troygardens.org/

The Garden Cycles Bike Tour
This a documentary project exploring "the new American farmer" through portraits of urban gardens, food security and innovative projects in sustainability in the northeast United
States. Filmed en route from Washington DC to Montreal, Canada, a trio of ladies - Lara, Liz and Kat - stopped off and talked to dozens of new farmers while cycling themselves across the continent. The conversations they recorded are a tribute to a positive future of food.
The trailer to this upcoming film features speakers from East New York Farms, Germantown Community Farm, the Baltimore Forest Street Garden, the Intervale Center and the Montview Neighborhood Farm. Lara, Liz and Kat are gardeners and independent producers living in Washington, DC. view their trailer.

Carmen Bolorin
Carmen Bolorin is the Community Capacity Builder for the 16th Street Community Health Center Environmental Health Department (DEH). Her mission at the DEH is to assist our diverse community of families in their efforts to improve their overall health and well being. She is also the Grass Roots organizer for Southside Parents Against Lead for social and justice change. Her main focus is prevention of lead poisoning through healthy homes, lead safe environments, and healthy eating habits.

Evan McDoniels
Evan McDoniesl is the Sixteenth Street Community Health Center Assistant Project Coordinator- Kinnickinnic River Revitalization Program. After serving a year as an Americorps member at Sixteenth Street Community Health Center (SSCHC), Evan was hired onto the Kinnickinnic River Revitalization branch of the environmental health department. Fusing water resource education with recreational activities, the KK River Program aspires to improve awareness about the nation’s 7th most-endangered river (source: American Rivers). With awareness, education and enthusiasm the community can begin to take ownership and pride in a once-neglected and abused river. Evan views sustainability as an impressive, essential interconnection between socio-ecological-economic forces. These interconnections manifest themselves in the activities provided by the KK River Program. When he’s not canoeing with school groups or gardening with the southside community, Evan enjoys the laborious rewards of the various garden and arts projects he creates at home including vermicomposting, vegetable beds and creating garden sculptures.

Jessie Tobin
Jessie Tobin is a UW Population Health Fellow placed with the Center for Resilient Cities (formerly called the Urban Open Space Foundation.) She is currently organizing the Johnsons Park Health Alliance (JPHA), a community coalition working to reduce health disparities and create a deep and sustained culture of health and community sufficiency in the Fond du Lac and North Avenue neighborhoods of Milwaukee. With the goal of increasing neighborhood access to nutritious foods, JPHA is currently conducting a community food assessment, developing a farm-to-fork vision, and working with the Walnut Way Conservation Corporation to develop the Gardens to Market program. Ms. Tobin has her Master’s of Public Health from the University of Washington in Seattle. Her public health research and community practice work focuses on the benefits of community-driven development in creating and sustaining healthy neighborhoods.

Kristin Maharg
Kristin Maharg is a graduate student in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Kristin Maharg is in the Water Resources Management program where she is studying the sustainable restoration of wetlands and communities of New Orleans. She is ultimately interested in water use efficiency in agricultural systems. Kristin is also an intern with the Friends of Troy Gardens in Madison, Wisconsin where she works in the Kids' Garden and instructs Field Natural History, which inspires and teaches young adults the skills of a naturalist. Kristin hopes that all youth have the opportunity to intimately connect with nature and their local food systems.

Diane Dodge
Diane Dodge is theListserv Administrator, Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative (GFJI),2007-present. Longtime ACGA member, Volunteer Coordinator for 2005 ACGA Conference. GardenWorks Minnesota member and cheerleader since it’s inception in 2005. Midway Green Spirit Community Garden Member Leadership in Support of Neighborhood Fellow (LISN), leadership training sponsored by Hamline University and Hamline Midway Neighborhood Coalition, with focus on community gardening organizing, 2006-2007. MN Extension Master Gardener in Ramsey County (St Paul) since 1996 an charter member of Ramsey County MG Diversity committee since 2006. She is a sustainable farmer and beekeeper in USDA zones 3 and 4 during the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Andrea Godshalk
Andrea is a writer, artist and activist. She is committed to a courageous, vibrant world where humans know themselves as a beloved part of ecology rather than as researchers of it. She helped establish a CSA at Colorado State University where she graduated with a degree in American and Ethnic Studies. For the last three years she has collaborated with the brave teens of the Cyprus Bold Leaders program in conflict transformation. She has worked on large-scale community arts projects around the country and has seen the power of murals to heal and energize public space. Her written work is published in LOUDmouth, The Resister, The Bullhorn and the Rocky Mountain Chronicle. She recently received an honorable mention in the SARE's New American Farm Photo Contest for her photo taken at Growing Power. Andrea is currently writing about urban farming organizations, which are weaving community with meaningful jobs for youth, nourishing food, social justice, and collaborative art. She is also enjoying the opportunity to work with the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative in dismantling racism and making sure everyone is well fed.