by JoAhne PenneyWest Allis Campus Editor

Farmer Will Allen was driving down Silver Spring Road when he saw a small farm site that he knew would be a great place to sell his produce from the 100 acres he was then farming in Oak Creek.

Once Allen purchased the farm and got it up and running, he began giving farming lessons to children and youth from the surrounding neighborhood. Those classes have grown into Growing Power and the site is now the national headquarters for the non-profit organization dedicated to providing hands- on training, demonstrations, outreach, and technical support to urban farmers. Allen spoke at the Sustainability Summit on Thursday, March 27.

“Food is the number one killer of people today,” said Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power. “The food most of us are eating comes from as far away as 1,500 miles, and are laden with pesticides, hormones and preservatives that are not healthy for human consumption.”

Growing Power is a solution to the problem of providing fresh and locally grown foods to inner city residents that live in food deserts.

Twenty-three and a half million people live in food deserts, according to the USDA’s Economic Research Service estimates; these are areas that are a one- to three-mile radius with no fresh produce available. Instead of grocery stores and supermarkets these areas have gas stations and convenience stores, which have poor or no fresh fruits and vegetables.

More than half of these people are low income. “Food justice is what this is all about,” said Allen. Milwaukee has over 2,000 vacant lots and Growing Power is in the process of turning these lots into gardens that provide fresh produce to the residents of the city.

Using the census tract to identify these food deserts, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the USDA provide funding priority to projects and interventions that establish healthy retail outlets.

Located at 5500 W. Silver Spring, Growing Power has over

two acres of inner city farmland dedicated to growing food sustainably. They are pioneers in teaching and harvesting sustainable food practices for the future.

Vermicomposting, which is the practice of using worms to fertilize and refine compost, and aquaponics, which is growing fish and edible plants in a closed loop system, are the cornerstone practices at the farm. They specialize in producing exceptional yields in very small spaces, because Allen has over 50 years of organic agriculture expertise. Worms are the livestock of Growing Power; they also have goats, chickens and bees.

The hoop house system used at Growing Power can be seen in use at various sites around the city. Forest Home Cemetery, Maple Tree elementary school, and the Silver Spring Neighborhood Center

are a few of the locations where their systems and practices are transforming the neighborhoods into productive food producing centers. They can transform very small spaces into farms, but they prefer acreage to get the maximum from their efforts.

Growing Power is the first nonprofit organization to enter into a 20-year partnership with the Milwaukee Public School system to install school gardens.

They teach their farming systems internationally and through their Regional Outreach Training Centers. They provide sustainable farming education to 15 states, Canada, countries in Africa, Ukraine and other locales.

Allen’s methods have become the urban agricultural standard, and people are flocking to his Growing Power headquarters to learn and empower themselves. Allen has won hundreds of prestigious awards including several honorary doctorate

degrees, the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, being named to Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people, the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, and the Theodore Roosevelt NCAA Award. He was the only farmer invited to the White House to help Michelle Obama launch her “Let’s Move” initiative to combat childhood obesity, and he is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Growing Power’s vision is to inspire communities to build sustainable food systems that are equitable and ecologically sound, creating a just world, one food secure community at a time. The farm has a good food manifesto.

They have many compost partnerships with local industry leaders, like Lakefront Brewery, Kohl’s, Miller/Coors, and SC Johnson. They collect over 400,000 pounds of food waste weekly through these partnerships. He has agreements

and contracts to provide food from his farms to Milwaukee Public Schools, Pick ‘n Save groceries, Lakefront Brewery, Northwestern Mutual Life and Sysco Foods.

November 6 through 9, Growing Power will convene its annual conference on urban and small-space farming at Potawatomi Bingo Casino and Hotel in Milwaukee. They will offer training in farming, and in setting policy and procedures that will assist communities in becoming more efficient in food cultures and practices.

Allen has written “The Good Food Revolution,” and “Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table,” and he has a video that documents his journey from professional basketball athlete to professional urban farmer called “Growing Power and The Good Food Revolution, A Call To Farm.” Allen’s website address is www.growingpower.org.

SuStainability iSSue april 24, 2014matctimes360.com

THE MILWAUKEE AREA TECHNICAL COLLEGE STUDENT BI-WEEKLY PUBLICATION

Special IssueWill Allen’s sustainable farming providing sustenance to urban farmers

Jose Dehoyos/TimesWill Allen expressing his views of environmental sustainability and urban farming.

Inside this issue

Ed Begley Jr. Pg. 2 CASSE Pg. 4Farming and Sustainability Pg. 3

by Lauren Wylie Times Staff Reporter

Ed Begley Jr. is a very successful actor, appearing in such programs as “St. Elsewhere,” “Arrested Development” and “Portlandia.” Begley is also considered an environmental leader in the Hollywood community for many years.

Begley discovered that if done correctly, living green will actually save you money in the long run. He shared his path to living sustainably at the 11th Annual Sustainability Summit on March 26.

Begley had been noticing some serious problems with the environment. The smog where he lived in L.A. was terrible; he had problems running and felt like he could not catch his breath. A river in Ohio even caught fire that year because it was so polluted.

The death of his father is what really started him on his new path of sustainability. According to Begley his father was, “a Republican and a wonderful conservative who conserved,” and although his father never used the term environmentalist, that’s exactly what he was. His father was the son of an Irish immigrant and the type of parent who was always making sure that the lights were turned off, the water was never on longer than needed and that you knew exactly what you wanted before you opened the fridge.

In 1970, not long after the first Earth Day was held, his father passed away. Begley remembers a conversation they had before he died.

“I understand what you’re against, but what are you for?

What are you going to do to make a difference?” his father asked him. “What are you going to do to make a difference with the smog?” is how he heard it.

So Begley started to make changes immediately, doing the things that he could afford like riding his bike and taking public transportation, turning down the thermostat in the winter and up in the summer, composting and recycling.

Not only did Begley feel good about himself and the changes he made, but he realized that going green ended up saving him money! So he started looking for more changes that he could make.

Begley discovered that the first steps to living sustainably are learning how to conserve the energy that you already use on a daily basis.

According to Begley, only after you’ve made all the steps that you can in conserving energy should you even start to think about installing solar panels to produce your own energy. For every dollar you spend on conservation you’ll save $5 on your solar array. If you make sure to conserve and seal your house, by the time you’re ready to buy solar panels, instead of needing a 5 kilowatt system, you may only need to install a 3 kilowatt system. And you can put all the money you’ve been saving on your monthly energy bills toward paying for the solar array.

What should you do next? Begley suggests that you get your house energy audited. Call a company like Building Doctors and have them come out to your house to help you make meaningful changes in your energy conservation.

Reducing your carbon footprint with Ed Begley Jr.

The first seven things you can change to become more sustainable and save you money:1. Replace your light blubs, as soon as you

can and as many as you can afford.

2. Put weather stripping around your doors and windows.

3. Buy an energy-saving thermostat; this can save you $300 - $400 a year.

4. Start riding your bike. Not only does this save you gas money; you won’t have to join a gym.

5. Take public transportation. You won’t have to worry about parking, and you save gas money.

6. Composting doesn’t actually cost you any money and it reduces household waste significantly.

7. Recycling also cuts down on your household’s contribution to landfills, and if you choose to cash in your aluminum cans you can actually make money!

Mike Hiller/TimesEd Begley Jr. kicks off the Sustainability Summit with a presentation about his experiences with sustain-ability and what he does in his life to better the environment.

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by Monte DriscollTimes Staff Reporter

Farmers markets are experiencing exponential growth throughout Wisconsin and that’s creating a whole new crop of opportunities for farmers and buyers.

A group of 40 students, restauranteurs, and curious common folk attended a panel discussion about these emerging trends in farming at Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Center at the 11th annual Sustainability Summit and Exposition on March 26-28.

Agricultural communications expert Lisa Geason-Bauer chaired a multiperson panel that included Meghan and Tom Findley, wife and husband co-owners of Hartland Organic Family Farm, and Katie Miller, director of the Oconomowoc Area Chamber of Commerce, with the goal of highlighting the changes they’ve witnessed recently.

“There are 330 farmers markets within 100 miles of Oconomowoc,” Miller stated. Her numbers also showed a nearly 40 percent growth in customers since 2011 and a 30 percent increase in vendors. These statistics mark a swing in the perception of who is getting food where. “Farmers markets are becoming mainstream,” said Miller.

The rapid growth has sparked an upward surge in people going into small-scale business for themselves, growing and selling their own brands of produce. That’s the case with the Findley

family, who decided to cultivate their own land after taking a tour of Will Allen’s Growing Power farm. The inspirational trip spurred them to not only begin farming but to get up close and personal with what they put in their mouths. “We were driven by a desire to know our food,” Meghan Findley proclaimed as her husband nodded along approvingly.

It’s a desire shared by more and more Wisconsinites, said Geason-Bauer, who thinks the increase in shoppers at farmers markets indicates an increase in savvy consumer awareness. “It speaks to the quality of customers who treat farmers markets as average shopping,” Geason-Bauer concluded.

What this new brand of quality shoppers demands is to know what they are buying. “Consumers want transparency when they buy things and they want to read packaging to get the information,” Geason-Bauer theorized.

Geason-Bauer, who spends her days as president of the environmental communication strategies business Evolution Marketing in Oconomowoc, has developed a few packages to enable this transparency to reach the hands of buyers. One she’s especially proud of is a carton of eggs with a newfangled QR code on it that allows buyers to get specialized farm and farmer information by scanning it with their smart device.

A second item of favor from Evolution Marketing is the label that adorns the compostable packaging that Hartland Organic Family Farm microgreens come in. According to Geason-Bauer, the labels enact the consumer to play a role in how their greens get grown by encouraging buyers to return packages so they can be composted into the soil that the next round of produce will be produced in.

“This makes our whole interaction with customers a full circle experience,” Meghan Findley stated. “I can feed that compost to beautiful worms and involve my buyers in building soil, building relationships.”

Questions from the audience included how the term “organic” is regulated, what someone should do with their land, and how someone might begin a honey farm. Answers from the panel were not abundantly clear but what was made abundantly clear was the panelists’ collective opinion on the Oconomowoc farmers market: It’s the best around.

Geason-Bauer stated, “The farmers market we have in Oconomowoc is very special and we have very high standards and practices.”

“We have the choice to set up at many farmers markets but we use Oconomowoc because it is the Saturday morning thing to do there,” said Meghan Findley.

Miller added, “Oconomowoc is the best farmers market.”

by JoAhne PenneyWest Allis Campus Editor

Raising awareness about the trade off between growing the economy and protecting the environment is the major mission of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE), the only organization dedicated to accomplishing this goal globally. The steady state economy is an alternative to stabilize consumption of capital goods and services, and conserve natural resources.

According to CASSE, in the United States the average person’s ecological footprint in 2010 was the size of eight soccer fields per person per year, while globally the footprint was two soccer fields per person. Americans are resource gluttons, and are not living within their ecological means. CASSE promotes methods of acceptance of climate change responsibilities, managing the debt ceiling more effectively, and adoption of methods that reduce the depletion of natural resources.

Brian Czech, president of CASSE, is urging everyone to sign the petition online to

support policy changes that will protect natural resources and give citizens empowerment to effect positive changes and stabilize consumption of capital goods and services. Some of the changes average citizens can adopt to conserve resources are using public transportation, growing personal vegetable gardens, riding bikes more, and car sharing. These changes will reduce the carbon footprint of individuals.

Adopting eco-audits that would monitor corporate water pollution and provide significant fines and penalties is another method to provide steady state economy solutions. Ed Begley, the actor and sustainability activist, is a supporter of CASSE and he, along with Brian Czech, were participants in the 11th annual Sustainability Summit held in Milwaukee March 26-28. They believe that without a steady state economy all of the efforts that are being expended to promote a stable economy will be in vain.

CASSE urges all to sign their petition to provide them with ecological political power to strengthen the American outcomes. CASSE can be found online at www.steadystate.org.

Farmers markets growing, getting technical too

CASSE promotes steady state economy solutions

Mike Hiller/TimesShajan John, president of NEW Works, shows off his model of a water cycle inside the FLOW Lab at the Milwaukee Water Council. The model is a visual representation of how we get our clean water and what happens to the waste water.

Jose Dehoyos/Times

Will Allen’s exhibit on aquaponics was one of the many innovative displays at this year’s summit.

12th annual Sustainability

Summit March 4-6, 2015

Darin Dubinsky/TimesIn one of the side rooms that was accessible to summit attendees, Dr. Andrew Williams demonstrates a robot that students from Marquette University built.

Jose Dehoyos/Times

The E85 Chevrolet Impala at the Sustainability Summit. This vehicle can be found at CleanAirChoice.org.

Darin Dubinsky/TimesMATC instructor George Stone emceed the opening reception at this year’s summit.

Mike Hiller/TimesInside of MKE Brewery, located in Walkers Point, is a member of the Wisconsin DNR Green Tier Program. On the roof are a series of solar panels which heat the water. The brewery donates used grain to local farms for compost, biodiesel is used to run the boilers, and they source some of their equipment from old breweries no longer in business. MKE Brewery supplies the beers for the Milwaukee Ale House.

Jose Dehoyos/TimesCERET (Career Education in Renewable Energy Technologies) and UW-Milwaukee’s Industrial Assessment Center presented displays at the Sustainability Summit.

2014 Sustainability Summit photos

This Acclaimed Professional/Academic Conference Featured:• Two days of outstanding local, regional,

national and international speakers• In-depth sessions, panel discussions and

workshops exploring a wide range of timely topics in energy, water and sustainability

• Exhibits showcasing products, services and opportunities in new wave investment, development, education and employment

• Opportunities to network with leading industry, government, consumer and academic experts

• Reception in exposition hall for sponsors, exhibitors and special guests

• Special day-three events, including off-site excursions and workshops

• 3,400 participants, 150 presenters, 68 exhibitors (2012)