Exploration 8 - Katie Wells

     As I watched the documentary Fresh, the most important ideas and evidence that I got was not just how important farming is for the world, but how important it is to farm in the more proper, natural way. At the home of Mr and Mrs Fox, they raise chickens. I found out that the way they are raising thousands of chickens is not in a natural way but more of a factory organized way. When I think of farming, I think of cattle roaming through the grass, farmers hearding the sheep, and waking up the chickens every morning for them to come out of their chicken coops for the day. After watching Fresh, my perspective of farming and the food I eat every day has changed drastically. I now know that farming is more about making the money in an industrial way rather than making the food healthy in a natural way. Now not all farming is that way, but for many it has become that way. I had no idea that the number of farmers in America is starting to dwindle because this new way of farming that has started to take over the past 7 or more years.
     Joel Salatin is one of the few farmers in Fresh that still is doing farming the natural way like I pictured in my mind that all farmers did in the paragraph above. In the documentary he states, "Nature is speaking to us saying ENOUGH." The passion is showing for farming as Joel said, "Treat the herbivore like a herbivore, then the other things will fall into place." What really stuck out to me that Joel made very important is that the cattle and farm is part of his team. Without his team, he wouldn't have anything. He has to treat every team member with the respect and gratitude that they deserve and what nature has intended for them to receive.
     The theme that I studied more from Fresh was Will Allen, the co-founder of Growing Power Weekend Workshop. Will and what he is doing for his community really stood out to me the most in the documentary. As I researched the Growing Power Weekend Workshop, I came across the vision which states, "To inspire communities to build sustainable food systems that are equitable and ecologically sound; creating a just world, one food-secure community at a time." The vision for this company is not just about creating a healthy, organic way of supplying food for a community in Milwaukee's north side, but it's about spreading the ways of doing so to others. Will Allen doesn't mean that he wants to create every person that walks into Growing Power into a farmer, but more just to show them how nature is really able to be used to create the healthiest food around and that it's easy.
     Growing Power has 70 projects and outreach programs in Milwaukee, United States, and all over the world. It all started out as a young man, the second youngest of six children, growing up on a farm and moving away, becoming a professional basketball player . . . to later realize that farming is still in his blood and has never left him. In 1993, Will Allen and his wife located a vacant garden center of 3 acres on the northside of Milwaukee, and ever since his vision has only grown. Will Allen continues to train and teach others about his natural farming ways, and how to create food using what the earth has given us. Will has taught in places like Ukraine, Macedonia, and Kenya. In the future, he plans to create community food centers across the world. I hope his success continues.
     Overall, this documentary really taught me a whole lot about what farming has come to but there is still hope out their to get it back to the way nature intends it to be . . . no "Herbivores eating Herbivores". The link of Will Allen and Growing Power is www.growingpower.org.
 
     Shelby brought up another great point that goes with what I said in the first paragraph about Mr and Mrs Fox. They didn't even know what was in the feed that they were feeding their chickens to make them grow at incredible rates. That just goes to show how industrialized farming has become for many farmers.