Post Carbon Fellow Erika Allen was interviewed in the Chicago Sun-Times about her work creating community based food systems.

From the article:

I grew up on a 120-acre farm, scary farming, with no off-farm labor, meaning there was no one coming in to do the farming, just me and my brother with my father. We grew spinach, greens, cabbage, okra, butter beans, turnips, mustards. At 18, I ran off to the Art Institute of Chicago. I wasn’t trying to farm for a living.

My first job out of art school was Gallery 37, when it was Block 37. From there, a lot of teaching artist gigs. I was always interested in community-based transformation through the arts. But I kept coming back to why aren’t these kids able to focus on painting? So I went to UIC for a master’s in art therapy. I was working for a social service agency on the West Side in 2001, running a food pantry, when I realized the people I was serving were so food insecure. I thought of my parents, who had a farm and a food system they controlled, and of my dad’s organization that was building community-operated food systems.

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