The United States has a food crisis and a food system that is broken, “and we have to fix it,” Will Allen, a leading authority on urban agriculture, told a group at Indiana State University Friday.
While there’s plenty of food, “only about 3 to 4 percent of what we eat daily is good food,” he said. Too much of it is not healthful, or its nutritional value unknown, and that must change, he said.
“Even though a lot of people think they’re eating healthy, they’re not really eating healthy, but there’s no way to really know the nutritional value of what we put in our system,” he said. ”We don’t have a testing protocol to figure that out.”
Allen, well-known as the founder and CEO of Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisc. was the keynote speaker during ISU’s Mid-America Prosperity and Security (MAPS) Conference.
At Growing Power and in community food projects across the nation and around the world, Allen promotes the belief that all people, regardless of economic circumstances, should have access to fresh, safe, affordable and nutritious foods at all times.
He also is the author of “The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People and Communities.”
Referencing the nation’s health care crisis, he suggests an important way to help fix the problem is to grow healthy food, which will translate into healthier people. Eating unhealthful fast food and processed foods contributes to obesity and other health problems.
“What we need to do is give people a choice,” he said. Most Americans shop for groceries at “box stores.” Wouldn’t it be great to have a section in those stores with an area marked “locally grown?” he asked.
He also talked about the importance of growing new soil, because “all of our soil is contaminated. The only way to grow good food is to grow good soil” through composting and vermicomposting, using worms to refine and fertilize compost. He also is a strong advocate of aquaponics, a method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating system.
In an interview, he said his advice to people is to buy locally grown foods as much as possible and “know where your food comes from, if you want to live longer. Spend some time. (Eating) is one of the most important acts we do, three times a day, if not more.”
He advocates naturally grown foods that don’t use chemicals, herbicides or pesticides. He suggested “finding a farmer you trust who is going to grow in good soil and doesn’t use chemicals.”
During his keynote speech, he described Terre Haute as a leader in sustainability, and he was impressed with ISU’s community garden, something that should be happening in every town in America, he said.
”This university obviously has a commitment to sustainability in a number of different areas,” he said. ISU’s president, Dan Bradley, “gets it,” he said, and Terre Haute Mayor Duke Bennett also “is on board.”
Among those attending Friday’s conference was Eric Simo of Columbus, who was enthusiastic about meeting Allen and had a picture taken with him.
Simo, who owns a landscape company and also does organic food production, described Allen as “awesome. ... He’s developed the practice of urban agriculture and he is the founding father of this green industry.”
“You are what you eat,” Simo said, and having a good, healthy food source for communities is critical to good health.
The conference included several other speakers on topics including community health, economic development, green energy and regenerative agriculture. MAPS is a group of organizations and individuals in Mid America promoting healthy communities, regenerative agriculture and resource conservation. The conference was sponsored by ISU’s Institute for Community Sustainability.