Will Allen
Will Allen has made it his life’s work to change the vast American food distribution system, with its propensity to cater cheap, highly-processed food to low-income urban populations, but his 20-year-old urban farm humbly squeezes bushels of vegetables and hundreds of fish and livestock onto a three-acre plot. A pro-basketball player turned farmer, Allen founded Growing Power in 1993 to teach Milwaukee city-dwellers about healthy food production while in turn providing what was then a neighborhood food desert with fresh produce. Today, Allen’s vision to teach and farm creatively has spread to numerous farms in and around Milwaukee, inspiring partners from diverse backgrounds to provide local communities with affordable food through closed-loop farming practices. No less a teacher than a farmer, Allen instructs his partners in the Good Food Movement how to build wholesome communities by growing wholesome food.
More about Will Allen:
- Works with 3,000 volunteers annually through the Growing Power Community Food Center
- Has offered tours, workshops, and hands-on experiences to over 15,000 visitors
- Was a 2008 Genius Grant and MacArthur Fellow, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- One of Time Magazine’s World’s 100 Most Influential People in 2010
- Member of the Clinton Global Initiative
- Holds honorary doctorates from Marquette University and the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design
- The son of a sharecropper, Allen became the first African-American scholarship athlete at the University of Miami. Allen played professional basketball for one year in the ABA and several years in Belgium before moving into corporate sales and marketing.
- Will’s work has been featured on PBS, The Colbert Report, The Huffington Post, and more.
Learn more about Will Allen here.