Patty Loew:
Stretching a dollar and putting fresh food on the table isn't easy for inner city families. But that's the mission of one urban farmer. Last month Will Allen joined Michelle Obama at the White House to launch the Fight Against Childhood Obesity campaign. Liz Koerner shows you how his energy and passion for gardening continues to grow in Milwaukee.

Will Allen:
How many bananas?

Woman:
Six.

Will Allen:
Six bananas?  

Liz Koerner:
Will Allen is a man on a mission.

Will Allen:
I love this.

Liz Koerner:
His mission is to develop cost-effective ways for farmers to grow nutritious food and make it affordable for low-income urban residents. To do this he created a nonprofit called Growing Power. Allen also happens to be the owner of the last farm in the city of Milwaukee.

Will Allen:
What are you doing?  

Liz Koerner:
To provide fresh food to people on a limited budget, Allen developed a program called the Market Basket. The program offers customers about 25 pounds of produce for $16. People on federal food assistance can participate.   

Will Allen:
So all segments of the population are able to access this food. And that's the way food should be. It should be food for all. And, you know, I use that little term rich food for all, for all people.   

Liz Koerner:
The staff and volunteers at Growing Power deliver the Market Baskets to some 35 sites in the city of Milwaukee, places like schools, community centers and churches. For some people, the delivery service is crucial.   

William Robbins:
From my house, the grocery store is about 15 blocks away. Unless you have like a vehicle, if you have a vehicle, then, you know, you can make it there pretty easy. But if you don't have a vehicle, it's pretty hard to get there.

Liz Koerner:
Allen is able to keep costs down because he gets the produce from another one of his initiatives, the Rainbow Farmers Cooperative. Allen helped create the cooperative as a way to help small scale farmers find a market. There are now 300 co-op members from around the country.

Woman:
This week we're featuring fresh sweet potatoes from Mississippi, one of the farmers in our co-op.

Liz Koerner:
The Market Baskets are packed up every week of the year. So during the winter, some produce is purchased from a local wholesaler. But Allen wanted to find ways for farmers in northern states to make money in winter, too. That's where Allen's greenhouses come in. Inside these steamy spaces Allen demonstrates the types of crops that can be grown, like wheat grass and a variety of sprouts. They're sold to restaurants, retail stores and added to the Market Baskets.

Woman:
We also feature sunflower sprouts and pea shoots. Those will be put in the baskets also so there are home-grown fruits or vegetables. In Wisconsin we don’t grow a lot of fruit this time of year, but we do have the sprouts growing all year round.   

Liz Koerner:
The greenhouses also contain thousands of pots that produce a mix of greens that go into their salad mix.   

Woman:
When I say salad mix, salad mix consists of different lettuces. You’ve got romaine, Swiss chard, you got mesclun growing, arugula.

Liz Koerner:
A couple hoop houses out back produce rows of spinach without the cost of electric heat. Large compost piles in the corner provide all the heat required. Allen is running an experiment in another greenhouse, one that people from around the world find so interesting that they come to Milwaukee for tours and workshops to find out how it's done. He estimates that 10,000 people will visit in the coming year. What draws them in is a system that combines hydroponics, growing food crops in water, and aquaculture, which produces marketable fish. It’s called “aquaponics.”

Will Allen:
This system is a replication of clean river or stream. Everything that’s happening in a clean river or stream is happening in this system. The water gravity feeds through these two beds and drops back into the system. So, in other words, we're taking the same water and pushing the same water over and over through this system. The reason that it works is because the fish give off waste in the form of ammonia, and that ammonia turns to nitrate and then to nitrite. The plants act as a filter for that waste.

Liz Koerner:
The system works well in cities because it has a small footprint. He does this by stacking the potted plants above the fish pools. But it promises to benefit farmers in the country too.

Will Allen:
I wanted to come up with a way of training displaced dairy farmers and others that wanted to get -- you know, take those dairy barns. A lot of them had concrete runs and train farmers how to do this.   

Liz Koerner:
Allen began this experiment 12 years ago with a fish called tilapia. This year he's trying to raise perch. Perch have a higher market value because there are so few left in Lake Michigan that commercial fishing is prohibited by the state of Wisconsin. Tilapia thrive in warm water, but perch need cold water, so he placed the perch tank below ground level.

Will Allen:
The temperature stays around 17, maxes out at about 25 degrees Celsius.

Liz Koerner:
Allen also designed the system, so start-up costs are low.

Will Allen:
This system cost about $3,000. But a conventional system with all the filters and sucking out the waste would cost about $50,000.

Liz Koerner:
These perch started out as fingerlings nine months ago. In another three months they'll be big enough to sell. Allen is ready to call this experiment a success, but you won't find him sitting on his laurels. He's continuing his quest to help farmers produce affordable, nutritious food.

Will Allen:
This is probably the hardest thing one could do, is to grow food, because you never, you never, ever learn everything. You can talk to 80-year-old farmers and they're still learning.

Patty Loew:
Will Allen's aquaponic idea is starting to spread. Using his model, Sweetwater Organics has set up shop in an old industrial building in Milwaukee. They’re selling a variety of greens and yellow perch to markets and restaurants in the area.