148: Michael Ableman on Street Farms
Growing Food, Jobs and Hope on the Urban Frontier.
Michael Ableman -Episode 148
Michael, the co-founder and director of Sole Food Street Farms, is one of the early visionaries of the urban agriculture movement. He has created high-profile urban farms in Watts, California; Goleta, California; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Michael has also worked on and advised dozens of similar projects throughout North America and the Caribbean, and he is the founder of the nonprofit Center for Urban Agriculture.
His newest book is called Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier and is out now by Chelsea Green Publishing. Michael lives and farms at the 120-acre Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.
In This Podcast: This is an interview that Greg has wanted to do since before he even started the podcasts. A epic urban farming project more than a decade ago inspired him greatly, and now Michael brings Greg up to date with his Street Farm project he’s been working on for the past several years and it is just as epic and inspiring. With a natural ease, he tells us the story of an urban farm that is situated in the heart of one of the worst parts of a large city and is farmed by a group of the lost and disenfranchised. This project takes the hopeless and the discarded, plants them on the unwanted and unworthy land with a box and some soil, and magic happens.
Listen in and learn about:
- How he joined an agrarian commune in Ojai, California in the 1980s
- How at 18 he became responsible for managing the 100 apple and pear orchard onsite
- He learned a lot about fertile soil, hot days and cold nights and how that affected the trees and crops
- The Center for Urban Agriculture and his role with the founding of this innovation group on a 12-acre farm in California
- Why he moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to live on a 120-acre farm
- How he attempted to test the concept of urban agriculture in Vancouver with an Urban Farm
- How they are producing 50,000 lbs of food on 5 acres of pavement
- More about his book and what he was trying to do with urban agriculture and working with disenfranchised people as staff members
- A little about Jesus, a crew member who was described in the book
- The Urban Food Manifesto and how it is a series of questions and ideas for urban farming and what the real core issues are for the urban food system
- Some of the issues addressed includes
- Access to land and why there is a problem tying land to agriculture
- Theft in an urban setting
- Contaminated soil and why it is irresponsible to plant in these soils
- Lack of space and learning how to grow in small spaces
- A reflection on where he was 13 years ago at Fairview Gardens and how he has grown in his farming
- More about Fairview Gardens and the innovative urban agriculture project and the pivotal change that occurred as a result of working with the community
- Do we have the right to use the term “agriculture” in the context of urban
- Why he thinks garden scale is extremely important for the future
- More about his box system that helps address many of the challenges of urban sites
- Some of the social issues that are addressed with his Street Farm systems
- How the name Sole Food came about
- How soil offers salvation and how his insight on this developed
- What his vision for Sole Food is for the future
- Their goal for a 10 million endowment
- Their hope for a permanent site in the city at a future park in the Vancouver area
As well as:
- How after 40 years he has had many experiences and challenges but how being 100% present is sometimes the hardest time to do the outreach that he cares about, and to also have time for a family during peak harvest time
- How he feels his biggest success is the people, such as the time at the farmers market that he became aware that many of the other vendors had been his apprentices, or studied with him, or been informed by him
- The time he had meal with several friends prepared from foods grown by people he had influenced
- More about drives him to continue to do what he is doing in and for his community
- His advice is that we have a crisis of participation and his advice to find a way to be engaged in the process of growing food
Michael’s Author Recommendations:
Sir Albert Howard – An Agricultural Testament
Wendell Barry – Unsettling of America
Rachel Carson – Silent Spring
Book written by Michael:
Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier
How to Contact or find out more about Michael:
*Disclosure:
Some of the links in our podcast show notes and blog posts are affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase, we will earn a nominal commission at no cost to you. We offer links to items recommended by our podcast guests and guest writers as a service to our audience and these items are not selected because of the commission we receive from your purchases. We know the decision is yours, and whether you decide to buy something is completely up to you.
