I just finished reading Will Allen’s book, The Good Food Revolution. Will has a non-profit organization call Growing Power that raises vegetables in the inner city of Milwaukee and mentors the youth that live in the neighborhood. The book was not quite what I expected. I thought it would be about the techniques and challenges of growing food in an urban environment. Will has been at this location since the early nineties and has a lot to offer on this subject. That was only a part of the book.
Will begins with his parents humble beginnings during the Great Migration when African Americans fled the South and farming and headed North to work in factories. But Will’s family couldn’t get farming out of their system and they continued to have large gardens for their families. Will’s story is also about the racism that his parents and he encountered over the entire 20th century including discrimination by the Farm Bureau in the 1980s and 90s.
Through lots of hard work (getting up at 3:30am to farm before going to a full time job) and by making many community connections Will perseveres and created an amazing organization that has programs throughout the nation.
This would be a good biography for teens 14 and up.