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Batavia's 'One Book' to focus on food, poverty, race, environment

How does a book about a black former professional basketball player who became an expert on urban farming, sustainable agricultural practices and food deserts relate to Batavia, a suburb that is about 88 percent white and has four grocery stores?

“It (food security for poor people) certainly is an important topic, and not very far from home,” said Stacey Peterson, adult services manager for the Batavia Public Library.

Combine that with the growing interest in Batavia on “green” matters such as organic vegetable gardening, backyard hen raising and environment-friendly building practices, and “The Good Food Revolution” by Will Allen should fit right in.

It is the 2014 “One Book, One Batavia” choice, selected by representatives of the library, the Batavia school district and the Friends of the Library.

“There is a strong interest in this community in gardening and in healthful choices,” Peterson said.

The committee's goal each year is to expose people to a variety of books and ideas, Peterson said. Allen's book may do that especially since he writes about race and discrimination in farming.

Allen calls himself the “chief farming officer” of Growing Power, a national nonprofit organization and land trust. It aims to provide equal access to healthful, high-quality, affordable food to people in all communities. Besides a farm in Milwaukee, it has a rural farm in Merton, Wis., and urban farms in Chicago. The nonprofit provides training, grows produce, raises livestock, tends bees, runs a store and participates in markets.

Allen, 60, is a former professional basketball player. His parents were sharecroppers who moved north during the Great Migration of black people from the South. The book addresses the concepts of food deserts, areas where poor people live that don't have grocery stores — or good grocery stores — close by. Allen also writes about overcoming prejudice when he started selling at a Milwaukee farmers market, both toward him and to Hmong refugees who had settled in Wisconsin. He talks about the stigma of returning to farm work for black people, given their history as slaves and sharecroppers; and about U.S. government policies, intended to promote industrialization of agriculture, that hurt small farmers in the last half-century. Black farmers were disproportionately affected by those policies, Allen writes.

Allen has become an expert on sustainable practices and urban farming. In 2008, he was awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. He is a member of former President Bill Clinton's Global Initiative, and was named by Time magazine as one of the top 100 influential people in 2010.

Activities related to the book are still being planned. Library officials will discuss the book at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 11. Local healthful eating activist Jennifer Downing will review the book at noon March 20 during the “Books Between Bites” lecture series. That evening, there will be “Green By Design,” about Chicago-area efforts in adaptive re-use of buildings, sustainability and more.

Previous “One Book, One Batavia” selections were “Pride and Prejudice,” “A Night to Remember,” “Poetry 180: A Turning Back to Poetry,” “Playing With the Enemy,” “Killer Angels,” “Doomsday Book,” “There Are No Children Here,” “The Giver,” “The Encyclopedia of Chicago,” “Of Beetles and Angels” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

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