>> will allen and urban former transforming cultivation and delivery of healthy food to underserved urban populations. after number of years of

corporate marketing he returned to his roots used his retirement package to purchase inner-city land with grain -- greenhouses announce ceo of growing power of an organization that develops community food. only the second farmer to be honored from his grant. [applause] also part of the clinton global initiative and invited to the white house to meet michelle obama to help read-- reverse the epidemic of piercing childhood obesity. and was named one of the most influential people. [applause] and was named one of the seven world's most

influential foodies. he was named the theodore roosevelt o word recipient and lives with his wife and wisconsin. [applause] will allen. ♪ ♪ ♪ >> food is a powerful way to

bring people together. ♪ >> when i graduated high school i had 100 scholarship offers. i wanted to get an education and play professional basketball. i said i would never go back to the farm. turning local food production from 10%. ♪ they are growing energy energy, growing disloyal and people and that community.

part of the whole concept provides the most important thing to all of us. mother's family was then farming and my father's family was a sharecropper. but he wanted us to know where our food came from. for practical reasons to grow our own food. >> actually i was driving down the street at the time 1993 working with procter & gamble and i saw a four sale

sign i said this is the place. nine new a little bit about the area. just a few blocks away from the largest housing project that is called the food desert the only access to food in is the corner store or the fast-food swap. i was just in cleveland meeting with the mayor. we're getting waste from wholesalers. they throw away thousands and thousands of pounds per week. >> you have to figure out ways to reduce costs that is

what we do with growing so will by using renewable energy to get the food to everybody at a reasonable cost. >> how did you make that happen? >> it is a unique farm system is how we grow food here you saying every square foot to. not to stick it in a closet. >> i have never interviewed anybody that has officially been named a genius. >> we have a command. hundred and hundreds of thousands of acres and the

cities like day trait, buffalo new york, chicago, 33 square miles of bake and land we could grow food. i always believed to have by diverse group of folks. that this part of my agenda. i said i would hire kids from the community. then we were looked at as and assets. >> i used to walk past year everyday to go to the basketball court. one day i stopped by never thought i would do something like this.

whoever wants help, the trade, alabama, mississippi, wisconsin, we in gauge those communities. not just inner-city but those that hurt today as well. we will try to make it something that works out for everybody's bag people spend a lot of money but when it travels at loses its value and we need to go back to the days when the food system was local. that is the only way to end hunger. industrial food system has not worked.

we need projects like this and others not just vandam line. we have the proof. something we've need to continue to grow with challenges to overcome by like competition and challenges. this could be very good for the community. ♪ ♪

[applause] >> good evening. these things never worked for me. it is great to be back here in washington. early this week went to miami and invited by our president of our university of miami the chancellor at you w. madison to give the

commencement speech to the graduating class which i did yesterday. especially the fact in 1967 left the farm in maryland and went to the university of miami to be the first african-american in basketball player. it was a special weekend for me. also to be back home for just one day. [laughter] tomorrow i head to york. i want to bring up charles wilson who co-wrote the book with me and to acknowledge a couple people to help with the book. do you want to do that these?

[applause] >> my friend told me it projects from your wallet and from your heart that this is from my heart and i feel grateful. it does work. [laughter] five i have great respect and i feel grateful to have worked for this and joan fisher, a very graceful writer who got the project off the ground. don richards. everybody knows him.

>> he put in a good word for will win he was applying to get that place. i church wanted it as well. he said rehabing of churches in our community. [laughter] and said it is religion. also jennifer to have some beautiful pictures in the book and is a great photographer. there are other people i am forgetting. thank you. >> we have other folks other instrumental in the

work that we do. we have our facilities manager you may run into her. where are you? she is somewhere. also we have a couple other people and we want to thank them because they are a part of our routine. at growing power we are a team. this team perspective is not just me. i get to a lot of credit that we have 110 employees today and we will hire another 150 over the next

year or so. [applause] they do the heavy lifting. and we embark on a strategic plan and frank mark to note -- frank is leading us through our second strategic plan. first brought us to where we are today. that is what we will develop to take us into the future with a succession plan and so forth. we're looking forward to that. this would not have been if not for the community. also this is a grass-roots revolution as i travel

around the country thousands of people show up because we realize the food system is broke and. you can read articles. "time" magazine shows a baby predicted to be 300 pounds by the time they reach 30 years of age. one-third of us are obese. we eat a lot of foods that we pay lot but it loses its value when it travels. the only way you will end of world hunger where we lose 5 million people black of food and water is to have a

local food system not the industrial food system we have. way shed work on the system where much of the food is grown where we live. now we have a tremendous opportunity to use the land sell milwaukee is the leader. but how to start their. part of what they will do

over is quantify those you have to have concrete examples there are naysayers especially in the industrial food system. they say that could never work. so we will quantify what it does work. milwaukee's, less than 1% hits the goal. the goal is 10 percent. that has this huge implications with jobs that are not farm jobs that connects all of us we food in os

within a day of production and medical people recognize that. they are participating with us to get the word out food is medicine. they start to have good medicine to develop the infrastructure and the system to do that. it can be fun if everybody works together. anybody needs to be at the good food revolution table. we cannot worry about politics because every major corporate company today has

a sustainable mission. everybody wants to live in sustainable cities. they have the 20/20 plan to become green and sustainable. if not, they will not reach those goals. food is the number one thing this in our live. we have a an opportunity here in milwaukee in the metro area to prove this can happen. i believe the revenue next couple of years we can quantify thing this to get food back into the diets.

there is mercury contaminants. so we will use the system not just thousands of lake perch but millions. we have a plan to have a hatchery here in this city of milwaukee. and to hatch the enough friday -- wry and to build enough greenhouses to have 100 acres to grow food year-round. is not good just to the food 20 weeks at of the year but 365 days. we launched the 20,000 backyard gardens program to assist families do quoted

20,000 backyard gardens. if people can grow their own food on balcony's, containers, that is important. but there are challenges. the soil is contaminated. we grow so we'll. we take 40 million pounds of four -- food residue rescued and carbon residue to grow thousands of yards of compost. if you remember anything, it is all about the soil. any farmer will tell you that. we want to grow food without chemicals. i will stop here. i will share a few images.

that is my grandmother. she started everything and part of my family. they were slaves but i have a diverse family background. my grandfather was chickasaw indian who married my grandmother. my mother and father came to the washington d.c. area in the thirties. my father was a sharecropper who one day just headed north with my mother.

these are the early years. 1993 through 2000. this is what it looks like. the young people that i worked with. they are over 30 years of age today. they came from the neighborhood. working with the kids. there is something different about them from the kids of today. these young people have their pants pulled up. [laughter] [cheers and applause] restarted to grow soil in the year veers you can say one of the greenhouses. from late 1920's and we started

to, pat -- , -- compost more. today at this army have 7,000 pounds of worms. you can see people have the coach on. we had an old boiler and it did not work farewell. -- very well. the kids wore their coats and greenhouses. this was the start of the aqua quanex program 1995. one was the filter tank we grew to lafayette in the strums. we would move the of water from tank to tank.

then you can see how we move forward. we also had bedding plants. we use those to decorate then i would teach the kids how to grow food and one of the things i noticed they had bad reading and writing skills so after they did something hands-on they had to write about it. they would coulda want to dig deeper and give them reading on microorganisms. one of the lost arts is canning food. my family always is to that.

drawing on what we did as it teach the kids in the year the days. also the use young people did not know how to use tools. i broke that rule teeeighteen the kids live skills. [applause] some people in the audience dealt properly know how to use tools. [laughter] then programs and schools started to come around to volunteer. also working with the juvenile justice system. some kids coming back into the community to go through

a transitional school. i would use agriculture as a way to help them do that. we will lead to bring the compost and they will it grow food and donated. it is of healing process. to take from society now to give back. then the kids good growth the bedding plants. they had problem with theft and compost and plant flowers and next to it. the what happened people

started to pay attention. so the car theft went away. we beautified the community but we did this a round the entire block. i remember the project file or explosions where the drug dealers would pay no. we would bring in compost and to the flower beds. and the drug dealers went away because people would turn their heads. now they look at the flowers and they became

uncomfortable. it was of a crime fighting tool believe better about. kids had jobs to take care of the flowers. then be worked with native communities because they suffered from high rates of diabetes and they were not farmers but gatherers. we would start with the youth. we woodwork in communities like chicago there was almost one murder per day and that was another crime-fighting tool. there was an article wednesday in this took off. the turn-of-the-century it

really started to grow. this is what it looks like today. the total transformation. we use renewable energy, wind power, that is an important piece because in terms of shipping food and processing food 25% of the fossil fuel is used in agriculture. it is very important to have water collection we capture all of the water off of all of the buildings and reuse that in our project. the solar panels take 1/4 of

the energy use with the solar energy and look gain and the wind generator. every time i go home. i have to have made one of those. [laughter] we call this the community food center where people can come to purchase food and learn about growing food. it is one of the few multi-cultural agencies led by persons of color. multi-cultural and multi generational organization. we have 110 employees. people came on tour over

15,000 and trade over 1,000 farmers per year. even these guys. [laughter] is all about the soil. we really have to gross will. -- growth soil.

they need a large scale compost dain operation because the soil is contaminated. also suburban area is because we use chemicals and we spray everything. the microorganisms have been killed off. the bees are struggling to make any so we have to resurrect our soil to take the waste that goes into the landfill to put it back into mother earth. that is what we do. we do have 1 million pounds a newly. some have participated. and we have animals.

we are only 200 feet away from a residence. how can you compost and have animals? the key to curbing in agriculture is to regain to your neighbors. [laughter] the goats are too smart. we have weight to chickens that lay brown vegas. [laughter] also aquaponics. that is what the look-alike. misses the system. this is a research project to quantify thain this. we're growing seven

brent -- seven different types of systems. natural feedstock, worms come of food waste, or but, growing fish that we've have done research broad which is a brazilian fish eating only that's, berries and vegetable waste. they give up at 60 pounds. and they taste wonderful. we hope to start raising some of those. they have the omega three fatty acids also. this means a lot to the city to start to grow 1 million pounds of allay use i could have been sold by tomorrow morning that this the demand right now.

this is a 10,000 system when doing greenhouse production every bit of space is important. typically greenhouse users don't use -- this is 10,000 this is symbiotic relationship. the plants use the nitrogen that they give off. we have lake perch and tilapia. the water is heated at 85 degrees and of solar

water system that is 70% of the heated water. it also heaps the greenhouses it is more effective with geothermal instead of just the hot mass of air. we've all slowed teach beekeeping. we teach that through hundreds of people. we can have over 100 pounds of honey per high witches 50% more than rule farmers are getting today. the bees are coming over two steel pollen.

[laughter] this is another project on tenth and north and we've turned into of sight on rooftops. will this is lead this planted a very in then we transplanted into the compost and it was ready this goes to sysco. who has put the delivery system into almost all public school systems gets free delivery by cisco systems -- sysco. this year but it will have 200,000 pounds of carrots.

we develop relationships and this is where we have a composting site with 40 million pounds of foods and we can break down the carbon waste into high quality in three months. we also have 30-acre farms. we just planted those two weeks ago. the tomatoes, very productive we will have these until january or

february. they are in determinants and keep climbing. we have 16, adding 18 more and every day we build more and for structure. and we build these from scratch. these young men build houses every day. we have five new employees every month. this is important to. it shows to grow food on every bit of space. this is a fire station. i got a call from the fire

chief who heard about what we we're doing and he had vacant land and the men did not want to cut the grass anymore. [laughter] they are in a food desert area so the bill for houses there. we don't dig down. we have no digging equipment. recently for birthday birthday -- birthday these are participants for all over the country canada suite 10 people from all

over the world come to the two day workshop. we do a project planning process. you don't sit added table to three years until you play yourself out of business. this has been a very effective tool to launch the folks into action. we have 50 outreach centers. we did the workshop one make a go to sign a one-year contract which is the land grant to university. i convinced them they needed

to grow soil. trying to do urban agriculture, this is important to me but they excavated of compost pad we went down when seven of our staff. this is what goes on at a workshop. this particular young man has a truck that picks up food waste from different homes.

he charges the tipping fee but he came to our training program and we wanted to do rooftop burdening but he changed his mind and wanted to start composting. he picks up the waste from this particular truck and others. the brain when a the 24-foot trucks been due weekend training learning techniques

how to do composting, this is done in two days. everyboby gets a hand in doing this. everybody participates. that is the only way to farm. not in a class room.

this is chicago. we have seven farms probably the most aesthetically pleasing in the nation. 150 different varieties. we have been doing this seven years now the city has given up more land to grow. the food gross to programs marketed and also the most famous housing project in the country, before the presbyterian church bought the land and it has been a huge success a seven year plan grown on top of

asphalt. is a great project with folks from different cultures pro this is the latest 7-acre farm to get more acreage from bridgeport the average income is 55,000 on the other side of the river it is 19,000. this farm is important. i will be here. we were at the chicago farm and garden show. this was our display. these gardens need to be

aesthetically pleasing we need to enhance gardens. these the young people of not participating they would do something that they get paid and many have stayed with us. this is the future. we hope to be breaking ground. this has been designed. the first of the kind been the world with a five story. farm we could house 400 people on the second floor with a commercial ticino kitchen for the culinary arts. and hopefully be the start

of a project working with universities around the state to to have a nutritional and ' trawl institute in the future would be tomb move next door to build the the institute there. we will start with 24 office spaces they keep very much. [applause] [applause] one person i did not introduce, he has been

working with me. [applause] we are putting together this will be coming out with the work we're doing. you have a small slice. my normal power point* has almost 1,000 images. [laughter] this only has 200. i will take some questions. i think we have a process? >> thank you horror at an informative and inspiring talk. we are fortunate to have you

here and thank you for setting up shop. i heard you speak recently you said he would do something at the state fair. can you elaborate? >> largest international urban and small farm conference coming september september 7th through 9th. 17 different tracks medical, a corporate, the former, former and of who's who list they come into milwaukee. we've just give them freed entrance into the conference so these people will come in with over 200 it is a huge

youth presence is on the weekend so they will not mince too much school. maybe one day. the conference in 2010 we had 1500 people. it is that the expos center. all the food is from the infrastructure we will have the highlight with over 30 different chef stations on saturday night where they take the food to make this amazing food. we look forward to that. we have been planning that were over one year. we're still looking for people.

sign up. >> what are the main challenges you have today with your group? >> oh god. [laughter] we would be here all night to. >> always finding. we are a nonprofit 50% comes from our own efforts of selling products. i do not come from than nonprofit background so when i started i said let's sell products. nobody would find us. we do have a small

development team to write grants and we have been fortunate to get sizable grants but we don't beg for money every day that this cash flow what we're doing and auspex of the four main system -- farming system. >> [inaudible] >> i don't mean to be facetious but i grew up with the inner standing eating

vegetables from greenhouses was not good. >> it is all about this will. maybe the traditional way is chemicals even hydroponic systems. most greenhouses u.s chemicals. we don't. it is about to the soil. the root fibers of the plant if you have health the soil and microorganisms you have good taste. we use warm casings, it is important to have the right nutrients in the soil. >> do you have a

relationship with whole foods? >> a permanent placement of products at all three outpost stores. and we work with them at sinai hospital we have a farm stand. one of the most important thing this to get the food is to get those programs out to the community. >> you talk about this project and chicago was instrumental two men defenses? can you talk about that? >> it is being dismantled of

the high-rises as people move into the community the presbyterian church from downtown chicago wanted to use this piece of land originally to build a community center but they did not have the funding so they came to us to ask the three would help to set up a large scale community garden two men fences then they could recruit people to join the church to bring people together. people from different cultures. it is a big success to do that.

>> you add shown the construction of four greenhouses near washington. they are well organized in today's time. how do you get the people? how do they know this is coming? had you get them signed on for the project? to be completed in such a short time. >> that is a great question because that is part of the art reach the organizations we work with. we're not trying to put growing power businesses all over the country but we

assess to give them training. they recruit the folks to come to the workshop and those people have zero knowledge of how to build the hoof house. we bring six of our staff to the locations around the country and look up the trucks with the materials because we learned when we send people up to purchase the material we get there and nothing is there or half of it is missing. reload up truck and we lead the training. with 30 or 40 people you could put up the 2540 flood house in today's.

once they learn they can pass it on and take the knowledge back. . . is very concerned if you have a backyard and have not been using -- i'm afraid that the water isn't healthy. [laughter]

my question is, i'm going write directly directly to the source. if i don't i'm going right into the soil. >> let me answer that for you because it is one of the heavy as lead cities in america. there is more lead led in the southside of chicago -- milwaukee and i think we are ranked number one in the nation so certain things pick up lead and a lot of different plants take up that lead and especially the vulgar kids who have led and they have led drop bombs and so forth and they get tested. so we have had no digging equipment. if you are going to do a full spectrum test of all your soil in your backyard, it will cost with few thousand dollars. it's not really practical to do that. we have found a method that the epa likes.

we put two feet of soil on top of the existing soil and the mycra root fibers don't go down into the hard clay. i am not interested in the nutrients in the two-foot soil. that is the technique we have been using for many years and even though epa has gotten signed on, they will be coming out with some, because of all the activities, but we are in a city where we have a lot of old houses that used to use lead paint in that paint has been spread around the yard. we have a lot of arsenic and a lot of other things. i would not eat food that was grown directly in the soil inside the city. me personally, i wouldn't want any of you to eat food because if you just think you have really healthy soil without really finding out for sure, so it's really important to grow some soil.

okay. over here, this young man. >> hi matt. could you comment a little bit on landfill contamination sources like electronics and trash and how that affects our smooth supply? >> i don't have a lot of knowledge to tell you the truth. i know the landfills are not good and probably the worst thing that goes into landfills as food waste because it leeches out the nitrogen leeches out and if there's a hole in the liner, causes groundwater contamination. we do know that so that's why it's important for throwing food waste out. one of the things we are going to start of the new housing tragic that west lawn which is development, reconstructing the 75-acre project, milwaukee's first food waste pickup from the

homes there. we are training folks that are moving in their what to put into the container because we don't want things like rags and diapers and things like that. so we have a sticker on the container and that will be our pilot project for the whole city of milwaukee and we hope in the future we can roll this out and talk to the mayor about this. we are going to start it there and work out all the kinks. over here. we are going going back and forth. >> i understand that there may be three areas for you to grow that i didn't see much up in here. one is the abandoned buildings in the menominee valley here. another is schools where there might be a couple of science teachers and some of these schools who are actually setting up a system like yours, quietly

they are, undercover. [laughter] and the third-place is internationally, what are we sending over there and especially places like palestine or desert areas where hunger is killing millions of people? >> my memory is real short so you might have to remind me. for solid start with the schools. we are training teachers. one of the things that they tried to keep you on cant -- teacher on campus and they don't give you any practical learning but one of the things we are we are doing is working with teachers now and they are coming to our training over a five-month period and learning how to do hands on education because that is really important today. many for kids learn in a hand on -- hands on way before they get interested and learn the traditional way so we are working with teachers.

it's not undercover by the way. it is funded by a number of sources, and many teachers are very interested. i know we are working with marquette and other schools so it's really important that her teachers learn how to pass this on. one of the messages we give our kids and talking about the five super foods in classrooms, you know, kale and whatever, i think its it's blueberries and three others and then we marched him down the hall and give them the world's worst food. [laughter] it's not a good message so i think we need to, as far as gardens, on the school grounds, it's very important. of course they started out in california but now in milwaukee we have a number of school gardens that we have installed. as a matter fact we signed a 20 year lease with maple tree school. every class in the school has a

garden and the community has a garden so it's a combination of community gardens and school gardens, so that is important. and international work, i am part of the global initiative so we are doing some work around the world now in kenya and we are developing some projects in zimbabwe, south africa and i have a big interest in doing stuff in different countries. we have done some work in the ukraine, once the russians got out of there, so we have been doing a lot of work in those areas too. >> we are looking at abandoned buildings and also looking at abandoned schools. we have over 20 close schools and some of them -- have a contract sitting on my desk to

look over where we are going to start putting up houses on i think it's 42nd in silver spring's. it had been closed for five or six years. we will be able to put up 20 by 96-foot hoop houses at that site. so we are looking at every type, and any space that we can find that definitely these buildings. like i said that building that we are building now, a hatchery on tampa north avenue. we have dealt eight greenhouses on the 2.5-acre facility. i showed images of the lettuce there. we also have a farm at home's cemetery. they had old greenhouses there and we resurrected those and we have been growing there for for five years now and keeping people out of that cemetery a

little bit longer by eating that food. [laughter] [applause] >> until most of us are eating more than 1% and up to 100% organic local food, do you have any ideas on things we can do about biologically engineered foods in this country? >> you can stop hiding it. >> right. >> i think that would be the first thing. one of the problems we have when we go to retail grocery store we have to search for local labels. what we are going to try to do and we have done it at the outpost, they buy a lot of locally grown food in the summertime that we need to be able to grow food year round so we can have locally grown food all year.

>> i was just wondering about the carter initiative or any of these are looking at biologically engineered food are not? >> i think a lot of people are looking at it and complaining about it. it doesn't really change the dynamics of how people access their food. one of the things we are trying to do is get stores to have locally grown section so we can walk into the vegetable aisle instead of searching for that locally grown food, it will be labeled and it will have baby pictures of the farmers that are growing the food, then it will be easier to make those choices. until we deal with infrastructure, remember if we get up to 10% implications are tremendous in terms of 10% less trucks coming in across the country, all of the money stays in the local community to create jobs and 10% or more, way more than 10% better health for

ourselves if we eat this food. >> thank you. >> this young man. [inaudible] >> they do a number of things. those are kind of fun animals. we are making artisan cheese. a friend of mine from spring green, bob wills, you have heard of him, has achieved plant on the south side. we will be taking our milk their for artisan cheese. >> i got you before. this young lady. >> i heard you talk about how you never dig into the soil and you are making your own fresh water system so i wanted to elaborate on what she was

saying, there are a lot of people out there, other activists that think that the genitically-modified food is contaminating our natural soil and there are a lot of people out there that believe in order to have natural organic over culture so i wanted to get your opinion on that and if you think it has to be a part of growing power in the future? >> that is a whole nother business so we need to get seed companies that do heirloom seeds and open pollen aided seeds. we don't use, and as a matter fact there are very few seeds in the vegetable line, tomatoes and corn are probably the only ones that are genitically-modified. most of the stuff is cash crop stuff like soybeans, corn, beans and cotton and things like that. as far as vegetables, it's important for us to start -- a

lot of companies that we support that do seed save on the organic side but that is a whole nother business. we try to support people that want to go into those kinds of businesses and we hope more people will want to do it. if you want to do it we will definitely try to help you. [laughter] yes. >> i am concerned about my new friend, who really wants to do farming in her house. has growing power considered scholarships or funding for anyone that is this enthusiastic? >> absolutely. we have scholarships. we also have -- we also have when we launched this 20,000-yard gardens, we had corporate companies that gave over $30,000 to be able to

purchase soil for a low income folks. every 10 gardens that we sell, we donate one to a low income family. we don't just want these gardens and the soil to go to folks that have a lot of money but we want everybody and that is the way we work. we want our food to go to everybody in our community. we want to save food -- the same food to go to every area of our city, our state or whatever. this work is really about social justice, food justice and we have an organization called great food justice that we have within growing power and we respond to different organizations around the country. we have a conference every year. [applause]

>> here is a softball you. urban farm, we saw the ghost and the chickens. how many total livestock do you have? >> oh gosh, i knew you are going to ask that. >> within 100,000? >> we don't have that many because of the state allocation that we have over 50 goats and 500 chickens, so when we do to worse, one of the things about our tours, we too are the thousands of kids every year and many of the programs don't allow kids to go out of the farms because of the economics today. that is another reason. >> what about the red wigglers? >> we have millions of those. and by the way don, those are important. [laughter] we are the biggest employer in the world. [laughter] [applause]

thank you very much. i will take one more. [inaudible] people who are really interested, people who want to support. you are a tremendous leader and your enthusiasm is unbelievable. what are you doing to ensure that this initiative continues well beyond you because this is a long process. >> stand up, frank nally. frank martinelli is helping us to lead organization to a succession plan. i have the most wonderful staff in the world they think. these young people are learning every day. i pass on everything i can to our staff and our strategic plan is much different than most organizations. our strategic plan and do you want to say a couple of words

about how we engage our entire management staff? that is a great question. >> thanks, well. i would start a saying that one of the hallmarks of a great leader is he or she thinks about the future. what needs to be done today so that the mission of the organization will thrive and will have an impact in the future and that is really why will is supporting and leading the strategic planning process. and like most or teach it planning processes, it's really important in a nonprofit to involve the board and the staff together, and then also to really throw the net wide in terms of who do we talk to, who do we ask about for the future and what is changing in the world around an organization like growing power? what are the implications of those changes and then how does growing power need itself to change in order to be around in

the future? and i've said this to will and the others, a special challenge to an organization like growing power, which is of course all about sustainability, your challenge, our challenge is to build an organization that is sustainable itself. >> thank you. [applause] >> you realistically i'm not going to be around forever forever and i realize that. i'm trying to pass it onto the next generation i believe in in the next-generation. as a matter fact over 75% of folks around the country are under 40 years of age for the first time. before was mostly academics studying the food system and crusty old farmers like myself but now we have all these young people that want to become farmers and farm in a different way. most of these future farmers will not come from the rural

community. they will be coming from colleges and universities in and programs around the country. they will be growing on rooftops and then asphalt and doing up upon accent hydroponics and all kinds of different techniques. this next generation i have a lot of faith in that we are passing on to them and they are going to take it and really grow a food system that really works for all of us. thank you very much. [applause] will allen is the ceo of growing power. for more information visit growing power.org. >> what are you reading this summer? booktv wants to no. >> i'm wrapping up the citizens of london which actually came out a couple of years ago.

it's a marvelous history basically of london during the war and three very prominent people edward r. murrow who was reporting back in the united states with rather strongly held views that we should get into the war and averill harriman who was sent over there by president roosevelt to deal with the land lease program which was their foreign aid program for england and the ambassador, a fellow named winan to replace joseph canady, president canady's father. joseph canady of course was partial to the chairman and we suspect that the reason roosevelt -- so it's a marvelous book about the three of them and their interaction and with churchill and their advocacy, they there are impressive at this -- advocacy of the united states raking out of this isolationist

mode and getting into the war on england they have. the author had previously written at a wonderful book which i highly recommend called trouble seeing him then. it's about the members of parliament who rallied behind winston churchill who opposed it throughout the 30s, and orchestrated his rise to the -- when avril fell. it's a great look at the early stages of war and i highly recommend that. >> former information on this and other summer reading list to visit booktv.org. >> next from wichita kansas, gretchen i talk so booktv about her book, dissented in wichita, the civil rights movement in the midwest, 1954 to 1972. >> it was one of the most segregated cities in america,

which may surprise you and surprise a lot of people, and it had a large migration of people during world war ii here. earlier than that lots of people migrated from the south to escape the jim crow laws and the horrible things that were going on and one of them in a black newspaper here, the black newspaper in the early chapter from 1917 on became centerpieces of civil rights activities. but in the 50s, a young kansan from another nearby town, hutchinson, moved here who was a lawyer, a person from the ku law school who served in the military and no cannot let the end of world war ii. he moved here and in 1968 he was the president of the local naacp chapter and some of the youth in that chapter had come to him and

said, we would like to do something. we think that maybe there's something we can the court had done and. we thought that maybe this would be a way to cause local businesses to have a loss of revenue and that will touch them or his moral arguments may not touch them, so the students at the local naacp in houston decided to organize a sit-in and they pick their target, the centerpiece of the largest drugstore chain in tampa, the rexall drugstore which i think is actually the largest in the country but they had nine stores in wichita owned by a local family. they pick the downtown store because i'm the one hand it was probably the most discriminatory but almost -- the flagship and the students went to chester and

he brought it to the board and they supported it, but the national naacp said no. they set our policy is to make court challenges. and to bring change the court decisions. the students decided to do it anyway. the student started sitting in the middle of july, 1958, at the downtown drugstore. i went on for three weeks. they increase the pressure and by the third week they had had a mass meeting and had at that mass meeting talked about trying to increase the number of days that they were going to do this and they would be there almost every day that they were open. the following monday, the store manager came out and said they were losing too much money. lewis, the great lawyer, an

incredible lawyer, with the management said, i hear that you have told the students that they would he served. what about your other people? well, i guess we were -- we will open to them as well. you are their largest drugstore chain in kansas. does this mean all the drugstore chains in kansas will be disaggregated? yeah, yeah i guess though. so it was really a pretty phenomenal victory done in the face of the opposition of the national naacp. the national board didn't actually record the sudan that it taken place because they were not happy that this had been done. the sedans were one part of the civil rights movement in wichita and they -- the victory was very significant. it was the first student led successful student led sudan.

they went through five years of this and the adults in the end naacp organized, don't buy, we can't work, campaigns they would distribute flyers. i have flyers of the stores in town that would be open to hiring you or some of the wives of some of the doctors in the community. this is incredibly wonderful strategy. they realize that the doctors were only allowing black patients to have appointments on thursdays, so they would refuse and they just, okay if you want a business then you have to take us other times of the week. some of the stores, clothing stores fashionable clothing stores in town and would not allow you to crop -- try on

clothes if you went and so a number of doctors wives organized and ran up their tabs and then said they were not going to pay their tabs if the policy was not change. so there were many many fronts on which civil rights activity was taking place in wichita but the one that kind of set the precedent that really achieved a substantial victory was the dotcom oak store sit-ins. >> how would you compare the civil rights movement in the west to the civil rights movement in the south? >> the major difference i think, it was not as violent here. there were some threats of violence, but we didn't have people pouring hot coffee on your back. it was scary, very scary thing to do.

we still have hate groups around, but you didn't have the same level, you didn't have people like you did in mississippi who were civil rights martyrs. one of the reasons i wanted to do this work and i think it's so important that the story get out is that the civil rights situation, the civil rights problems were national. civil rights, the denial of rights and the lack of respect in the treatment of everybody was a national phenomenon and i was teaching students who would think that everything they would read talked about the civil rights movement and the sit-ins being a southern phenomenon and i think we are going to find that the more research is done, this is one of the first community studiesth