The “Growing Food and Justice for All” conference began with a tour led by Tyres Walker, one of the dozens of mainly African American teenagers trained and employed at Growing Power. Walker, a wiry young man in a bright blue Growing Power T-shirt, showed us the warehouse that has the organization’s offices upstairs and fish tanks, worm bins, and mushroom cultivation on the main floor, as well as a farm stand where produce and crafts are sold.
Behind the warehouse, next to the Chicago River, is the farm itself. Walker pulled open the doors to the hoop houses—half circles of piping that hold up sheets of plastic and keep the beds warm and productive—to show off the rows of vibrant lettuces and greens ready for harvest. Other vegetables were growing outside in raised beds, and goats and chickens were penned up nearby.
Walker described the trucks that pull up several times a week at Growing Power and dump piles of discarded fruit and vegetable waste. Other trucks deliver loads of wood chips. Layered together, these giant mounds break down into rich compost that, months later, crews shovel into vegetable beds. All told, the farm turns 450,000 pounds of waste into soil each year, allowing Growing Power to plant vegetables above Chicago’s contaminated soil.
Tyres Walker demonstrates Growing Power’s composting techniques at a tour for participants of the “Growing Food and Justice for All” conference.
In many so-called food deserts, where boarded-up store-fronts and payday lenders dominate, fresh food is hard to find. Liquor stores, gas stations, and bodegas are the only sources of food, and much of that is processed, loaded with sugar, and lacking nutrition. Several times a week, Growing Power crews load up a painted repurposed city bus with fresh fruits and vegetables and take it to places in those food deserts: schools, health centers, churches, and senior centers in Chicago’s west and south sides.
People often think of food first when they start looking for ways to revitalize their communities. Residents establish community gardens, food co-ops, and food hubs; they grow food in school yards, parks, backyards, and indoor farms.
The local food economy also offers opportunities to entrepreneurs and immigrants, who start with little or nothing. Some begin with a food truck or vegetable stall; others sell a favorite soup or salsa at a farmers’ market or by word of mouth. All of these activities connect people to each other and create livelihoods.
Food-related jobs in the extractive economy are another story. Farmworkers, meat processors, restaurant employees, and Walmart clerks are among the worst paid. According to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, food laborers are most prone to injury, with high rates of illness and fatalities.1.
The vision of the people attending the “Growing Food and Justice for All” conference is that the food system should pay a living wage and offer food that is healthy, culturally appropriate, and affordable. Furthermore, people who have been most excluded from good-quality food and good-quality jobs should have the first chance to lead.
Painting a mural at the Growing Power urban farm in Chicago.
Walker’s tour was over, and after an opening ceremony honoring the original Native American inhabitants of the land, the conference hosts lit a fire near the back corner of the property. Participants took turns keeping the fire burning throughout the three-day conference, creating a sacred and safe place. This shared responsibility and space served to acknowledge that trauma is a fact of life for many and that, just as we are working to restore soils and ecosystems, we also need healing and the reconnection that nourishes our souls.
Conference participants then got to work adding to the murals already begun on fences and warehouse walls, images that celebrated shiitake mushrooms and sweet potatoes, a girl facing a brilliant sunflower, a pair of dark brown bare feet with roots extending down through the rich earth to the water pooled below.
Food does much more than nourish our bodies. It connects us to our families—children who eat with their family regularly do better on all sorts of measures. It is at the center of celebrations and cultural events, so it connects us to our identity. And food connects us to place, to the soil and waters of where we live.
In the late afternoon, the farm staff laid out long tables, end to end, along the edge of the garden beds, lit candles, and brought dish after dish of fresh farm-raised food. Young staff members introduced themselves, their eyes bright in the candlelight. Each one—some shyly, some confidently—told the crowd, to applause and affirmation, about their plans and how they would use their training at Growing Power. Here, young people written off as destined for prison or a drive-by shooting are becoming, instead, the protagonists of their own future.