Clare Lane: You're listening to WBEZ. It's time for our weekly climate conversation. Urban farms grow fruits, vegetables and flowers all over Chicago. They produce food, offer educational opportunities and they can have an impact on our climate. Urban growers collective operates eight urban farms, mostly on Chicago's south side. Erika Allen is the CEO of Strategic Development and Programs and she joins us now. Welcome Erica.

Erika Allen: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.

Clare Lane: So tell us about what urban agriculture is and how it differs from agriculture in rural areas.

Erika Allen: You know, I tend to think about urban agriculture, right, those two words - in cities and more densely populated geography and spaces. Rural being a lot more space, a lot more different kind of production in a different kind of relationship to community.

Clare Lane: So how does growing food locally relate to the bigger fight against climate change?

Erika Allen: I mean, if you look at climate change and human behavior and thinking about, um, you know, if everybody pitches in and addresses their their carbon footprint. One of the biggest carbon footprints is from the agricultural sector and how can folks by just where they grow, and really support supporting localized regional food system. How that can directly impact food miles that we're bringing in apple in from, you know, from another country or bringing it in from Washington state when we have that produce here. So really making better decisions and thinking about how if we grow food that we can hear seasonally, with our water abundance, how that can actually be measured. And really justify and encourage and support more and more people taking responsibility as home growers and as eaters. 

Clare Lane: Yeah, shortening the supply chain.

Erika Allen: Correct!

Clare Lane: And I understand that your collective is building an anaerobic digester at one of your sites. What does that do?

Erika Allen: It's a mouthful...

Clare Lane: I know, I'm like, I better say this right.

Erika Allen: No, you said it perfectly. Um anaerobic means the absence of oxygen. So you're literally doing decomposition, digestion. So it's it's a kind of an artificial digestive system that you put food waste in - organics is what we call them. Things that can decompose, carbon based things, and having them come to our facility instead of a landfill where they're going to decompose and then release, in the natural process, methane. So we can capture our food waste, the methane that's naturally released and actually create a new source of renewable natural gas and have enough soil (compost) broken down former food waste, we're actually creating a closed loop environmental system and something that everybody can contribute and sort of see their part of that puzzle.

Clare Lane: Yeah. And you know, building community, growing community. How can people get involved in urban farming or even just involved in growing their own food?

Erika Allen: There's so many different ways, I mean, of course urban growers, collective um you know, we have programs, community garden spaces, we have apprenticeship programs. There's Chicago food policy action council that hosts food justice summits and also is working on supply chains. There is Advocates for Urban Agriculture that that helps to support folks um doing um just to be able to do more urban ag. There's a community food navigator which is a really exciting project that we've been working on for a while to really like open up to answer that question, I want to get involved: I want to learn how to how to grow food on my porch. I want to actually you know, get involved with a community garden. Where do I find my people, where do I find the folks who I can learn from and share with and grow with within my own neighborhood?

Clare Lane: Erika Allen is the CEO of Strategic Development and Programs at Urban Growers Collective. Thank you so much for joining us.

Erika Allen: My pleasure as always. Thank you.

Clare Lane: And if you have a question for our weekly climate segment, you can email us at climate@wbez.org. This is WBEZ.

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