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Article Excerpt
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
On a one-acre vegetable farm in Chicago, a bearded, 6 foot, 3 inch-tall black man squats before a bed of green, leafy radishes. Unlike most produce, these have been grown without toxic chemicals.
As he reaches into the dense foliage to harvest them, an oversized black t-shirt hangs on his thin square shoulders and red basketball shorts skim his calves. Sunglasses shield his eyes, and a Bluetooth rests on his right ear. He sees a red, tennis ball-sized bulb and grabs its plume, plucking the radish from the ground. "That's a big boy," said Arthur King, 36, smiling as he pinches the stringy roots and threads them between his fingers to remove the dirt.
King is proud of his large radishes but prouder of what they represent. Unlike the bulk of organic, or low- to no-chemical food in Chicago, these radishes are not headed to white neighborhoods, an upscale grocery or gourmet farmers market. Growing Home, the Chicago nonprofit that runs this organic farm, is one of the few growers who markets its organic food to people of all races and incomes.
The roughly to pounds King gathers--just enough to gauge buyer interest for the rest of the season--will be taken to the grand opening of the Englewood Farmers Market the next day, along with several bunches of organic collard greens and kale.
Englewood is a predominantly black, low-income community that, like most black Chicago neighborhoods, offers residents few groceries where they can buy organic food. Organic food is healthier and environmentally friendly, but rarely found on store shelves in Chicago's black neighborhoods. "It's easier to find a semi-automatic weapon in our communities than it is to find a tomato, much less an organic tomato," said LaDonna Redmond, a food justice activist at the Frederick Blum Neighborhood Assistance Center, a Chicago State University urban planning think tank.
No one has proven that residue from the carcinogens and neurotoxins--cancer-promoting and nerve-damaging toxins--used to grow most produce in the U.S. makes healthy adults sick, according to a March report by the Organic Center, a nonprofit, pro-organic research and education foundation. But a recent study suggests probable links between adult exposures to pesticides and diabetes, cancer, birth defects, premature birth and several neurological diseases associated with aging, such as Alzheimer's disease, according to the report.
The environmental benefit of organic farms is also compelling, said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. Fertilizer that runs off into the Mississippi River has helped destroy the fish habitat in an 8,000 square-mile section of the Gulf of Mexico. The nitrogen in the runoff promotes excessive algal growth, suffocating marine life. Organic farms pollute less because their soil better traps the nitrogen, reducing the amount entering the water, DeWitt said.
"People are going organic because it is better for the soil, better for water, better for animals and better for humans," DeWitt said....
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