Street Farm
Kristina’s Bookshelf
Meet Michael Ableman, Author
and Transformative Farmer
Michael Ableman is coming to town! This is a great opportunity to meet an engaging early visionary from the urban agriculture movement.
Home for Michael Ableman is Salt Spring Island in British Columbia. That’s where he grows food on the 120 acres he calls Foxglove Farm. A cofounder of Sole Food Street Farms and founder of the nonprofit Center for Urban Agriculture, Ableman is also the subject of the award-winning PBS film Beyond Organic, narrated by Meryl Streep. As an urban and local foods system advocate, Ableman has created high-profile urban farms in Watts and Goleta, California, as well as in Vancouver. He’s also worked on and acted as an adviser for dozens of similar projects throughout North America and the Caribbean.
For over two decades, Michael Ableman has been telling the story of urban agriculture through his books: From the Good Earth, On Good Land, and Fields of Plenty. The scene of this new book, Street Farm, is the Low Track in Vancouver, British Columbia, noted as one of the worst urban slums in North America. Ableman narrates how the residents of this community worked to create an urban farm that could address chronic problems in their neighborhood. The story shows how the power of farming and nourishing others can serve in healing our world and ourselves. Intended to serve as a template for other struggling neighborhoods, the book offers an approach that combines innovative farming methods and concrete social goals to create healthier, more resilient communities.
Patrick Holden, founding director of the Sustainable Food Trust, calls Ableman, “one of the handful of inspiring visionaries on the planet who are redefining our future food systems.” Dan Barber, author of The Third Plate, calls this book, “a deeply moving story of reclaiming land and building real community in the most unlikely places.”
Meet Michael Ableman on January 28, noon–12:45pm, in the CUESA Classroom (under the white tents in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building) as he discusses his latest book, Street Farm, with Lauren Lewis of the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance. Info: here
Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier
by Michael Ableman
(Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016)
-Kristina Sepetys is a contributing editor to Edible East Bay and is eager to share her ideas and book recommendations with our readers.