By Kelsey Hulbert
Feature Editor
On an October Serving Other United in Love (S.O.U.L.) trip to Milwaukee,
Wis., ten SMU students learned about problems in agriculture today while
working at Growing Power.
Growing Power is an organic farm in the heart of the city that focuses
on providing healthy food to urban areas.
The organization focuses on sustainable food production and the growth
of communities through local gardens.
Present agricultural problems that SMU students learned about center
around the reliance on processed and pre-packaged food. By furthering the reliance on processed
food, people are giving up their right to have safe, affordable and plentiful
food.
SMU students also had the opportunity to gain hands-on experience
like mucking chicken pens, picking tomato plants, spreading mulch, sifting dirt
and weeding.
Will Allen, the CEO of Growing Power, is hoping to create a foundation
of urban agriculture in order to bring the benefits of a community food system
to the needs of a large city.
Agriculture has become increasingly more industrialized and reliant on
unsustainable practices while creating a huge gap in between the food source
and the consumer. This forces
people in large urban areas to buy inexpensive and low-quality food and
sacrifice fresh fruits and vegetables for low-cost processed food. This has an avalanche affect on
healthcare and social welfare and especially harms the poor.
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