By AREA — We realize that by focusing on activities in the Chicago area, we are excluding a great many seriously important players in the regional food system. There are many sources for finding out about local farmers, including the many projects of local agriculture advocates Sustain, such as http://www.familyfarmed.org. We have decided to compile a list of [...]
By Salvation Jane — The Seed Archive: A public archive of healthy seeds collected from many places and people The seed archive is housed in Chicago. The seed archive is particularly interested in seed that is food or medicinal, habitat building, shade creating and soil building. The archive only accepts, stores and loans viable, well-identified seeds. Seeds are alive. [...]
By Alisa Baum — When you talk to Dill Pickle Food Co-op (dpfc) instigator Kathleen Duffy, it’s easy to see how her dreams of a neighborhood source for organic food turned into the little idea that could. With one email asking a few friends what they thought about starting a food co-op, Kathleen publicly asked the question that many [...]
By Sarah Lewison — I jumped into the Resource Center’s 10-wheeler as it rounded a corner in Hyde Park, with Program Director Ken Dunn at the helm en-route to his first load of some-thing. I’m riding along to get a sense of what keeps the program going day to day. While the Resource Center isn’t the only recycling operation [...]
By Cassie Fennell — Growing Power’s “deliberately comprehensive” approach to urban agriculture embeds sustainable farming practices within first-rate training programs, and a national, family farmed food distribution network. Renowned in Milwaukee for its farming initiatives and a training facility nested within an urban farm that houses ducks, fish and many a happy worm, this national non-profit began to tackle [...]
By Cassie Fennell — At the height of the summer, foodies jam Chicago farmers’ markets in pursuit of fresh fruit and heirloom vegetables. For nine years, the Chicago non-profit Growing Home has worked to transform perceptions that these markets are solely the hunting grounds of the well-heeled, by providing employment opportunities for homeless and low-income Chicagoans. Recruits of this [...]
By Micah Maidenberg — Food is at the center of God’s Gang. A South Side group with a holistic perspective on community transformation founded in 1980, God’s Gang is a volunteer-run organization that tutors neighborhood kids, curates exhibitions on Black history and teaches about agriculture and food through farming, animal husbandry and urban gardening. God’s Gang’s flexible organizational structure [...]
By AREA — About two and a half years ago, Cooperative Image Group (Co-op Image) was working out of their first art center, a two car garage sized space in Humboldt Park, across the alley from Carmen Arroyo’s (El Coqui) garden and around the corner from Campbell Gardens. The space would oftentimes fill up with more than 20 [...]
By AREA — As a new local chapter of the international Food Not Bombs movement trying to take form in Chicago’s Humboldt Park area, can you say anything about the specific motivations of this FNB Chapter in relationship to the local area? What is the impetus for starting up a FNB in this specific location? What challenges have [...]
By AREA — Nance Klehm is a grower, forager and artist with experience making cheese, brews, miso and other ferments. Her ‘neighborhood orchard‘ involves neighbors growing on various urban sites (“vacant” lots, back yards, transportation corridors…) and bartering between one another for services and food. She actively collects food waste and community composting. On occasion she barters produce [...]
By Sarah Lewison — What do you see as the future for food production in Chicago? We’ll have all of the vacant acreage in Chicago under production and the city will be able substantially to produce its own food. That’s probably ten years down the road, but the Mayor is in agreement with the principle of producing food or [...]
By Kristen Cox — The early Civil Rights movement was led, in part, by unsung heroes in their teens. In 1951, 16-year-old Barbara Johns organized a walkout and twoweek strike at Moton High School in Farmville, VA. This case became one of five reviewed by the Supreme Court when it declared segregation unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown v. Board [...]
By Cassie Fennell — It’s hard to imagine a sea change emerging from the ranks of men and women with little to no earning power, little to no voting power, and few reliable sofas on which to stretch out their limbs each evening. Yet since winter, members of Roll Call, a group of ex-offenders and their allies, have met [...]
By Chicago Couriers Union — The following interview was conducted by members of the Chicago Couriers Union (ccu) who felt it was best to remain anonymous for various reasons. As a truly democratic organization, we feel that consensus in our actions is a necessary component in the work that we do, including how we represent ourselves publicly. For these reasons, [...]
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