Will Allen is using his green thumb to grow not only plants, but jobs.

The 60-year-old founder and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Growing Power Inc., which has its headquarters at 5500 W. Silver Spring Drive in Milwaukee's Silver Spring neighborhood, runs farms and greenhouses in Milwaukee and Chicago to make healthy, natural foods available and affordable to urban communities. Allen also runs tours of his Community Food Centers and hosts workshops across the country to train others to start their own urban farming businesses.

"We've missed two generations of passing on how to grow foods," Allen said, adding that a million farmers have disappeared in the past 50 years. "I want people to say, ‘I can do that.' "

At his various facilities, he raises 159 varieties of vegetables, herbs and edible flowers, as well as goats, ducks, turkeys, chickens and bees.

Growing Power has operations in Milwaukee and Chicago, with eight satellite locations around the country. Allen has received 20 applications to start similar operations in other locations, but budget limitations require him to be selective in new ventures.

Earlier this month, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, based in Battle Creek, Mich., awarded Growing Power a $400,000 grant to train others to start urban farms in economically depressed areas and to create new green-collar jobs. Some of the grant will go toward expanding Growing Power's infrastructure, creating more farmland and building greenhouses.

The Kellogg grant isn't the first national recognition for Allen's innovative work. In 2008, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation named Allen a MacArthur Fellow for transforming the "cultivation, production and delivery of healthy foods to under-served, urban populations through a novel synthesis of low-cost farming technologies," according to the foundation

As a Fellow, Allen receives a $500,000 grant over five years.

Family history in farming

Allen grew up on a farm in Maryland, which he and his brothers tended in the summers. At age 18, when he left for the University of Miami on a basketball scholarship, the first African-American athlete at the university, he thought he would never go back to farming. His major field of study was in physical education and his minor in sociology. He also didn't think he would work in either field after he left to play professional basketball in Europe in the early 1970s.

But he rediscovered his passion for farming while playing basketball in Belgium for three years.

"I guess I always liked it," Allen said. "And I found that out in Europe. And when I came back here, I had to do it."

He wanted to farm full-time as soon as he returned to the United States, but took a marketing job at Procter & Gamble to make enough money for his family.

In 1993, he took a risk and bought 3 acres of the last farmland in Milwaukee. His family already owned farmland in Oak Creek. Now Allen farms on 20 acres in Oak Creek, and has the indoor facility in Milwaukee.

As people requested that he train them for their own small-scale agricultural projects, he launched the nonprofit to serve the community and to promote the accessibility of healthy foods to urban populations who are often unable to easily reach grocery stores and rely on poor quality diets.

He designed a program that offered teenagers a place to work at the food store and in the greenhouses, where they could grow food for their own community.

From its farms, Growing Power feeds 10,000 people each year with a budget of $2 million. Its revenue streams include sales to retailers and wholesalers, as well as its Market Basket sales. The Market Baskets contain enough food to feed a family of four for $16. The same amount of food at retail price would be about $25, Allen said. He said it's an easy sell, but the logistics of distribution are tricky with a small budget and insufficient supply to meet demand.

Future growth

Over the next year, Allen plans to open another farm south of Madison, and three greenhouses in the Forest Home cemetery. He also said he's in negotiations with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District to use some 4 unused acres it owns for use in composting.

There is a substantial shortage of suitable soil in urban areas, Allen said. Growing Power has used 6 million pounds of food waste and 18 million pounds of plant debris and carbon residue to produce nearly 25 million pounds of compost.

"And that's just a drop in the bucket," Allen said.

The lack of soil is just one challenge to commercialized urban farming, but modern technology helps to overcome those obstacles. Aquaponics is one strategy, which combines aquaculture, or the growing of fish and other water-based animals, and hydroponics, or the cultivating of plants in water.

© 2009 American City Business Journals, Inc.