The Good Food Revolution: Growing Health Food, People, and Communities*+ by Will Allen has been on both of your hosts’ To-Read lists, but hasn’t made it onto the official AgBookClub list today. We expect that this book touches on an important topic: what constitutes healthy food and how do we make sure everyone has enough of it?
A pioneering urban farmer and MacArthur Genius Award-Winner points the way to building a new food system that can feed- and heal- communities.
The son of a sharecropper, Will Allen had no intention of ever becoming a farmer himself. But after years in professional basketball and as an executive for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Procter & Gamble, he cashed in his retirement fund for a two-acre plot just outside Milwaukee’s largest public housing project. The area was a food desert with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to serve the needs of locals.
Despite financial challenges and daunting odds, Allen built the country’s preeminent urban farm-a food and educational center that now produces enough produce and fish year-round to feed thousands. Employing young people from the neighboring housing project and community, Growing Power shows how local food systems can help troubled youths, dismantle racism, create jobs, bring urban and rural communities closer together, and improve public health. Today, Allen’s organization helps develop community food systems across the country.
An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will’s personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.
Click here to order the book or download the Kindle version. Order through our link and AgBookClub gets a little somethin’-somethin’ back from Amazon to help keep this website running.
Here’s what you need to do this month:
Get the book. Buy it, borrow it, download and listen to it, read it over your neighbor’s shoulder — we don’t care. But don’t steal the book.
Read the book.
- Week 1: Foreword and Part 1 – pages 1-42 (Twitter chat on 7/7)
- Week 2: Part 2 – pages 43-110 (Twitter chat on 7/14)
- Week 3: Part 2, cont’d. – pages 111-182 (Twitter chat on 7/21)
- Week 4: Part 3 – pages 183-250 (Twitter chat on 7/28)
Join the chat (#AgBookClub) on Wednesdays at 8:00pm Central on Twitter. Learn how to participate in a Twitter chat here. While we hope you can participate in our discussion every week, we know that everyone has busy schedules. We always include general questions following the topic(s) of the book that can be answered by anyone, so please don’t hesitate to jump in the Twitter chat if you didn’t have a chance to read the section we’re discussing. We welcome any and all to join the discussion!
Happy reading!
AgBookClub 