Will Allen has been a hero for decades. His recent accolades are rooted in his founding of Growing Power, the last working farm in Milwaukee. He may be America’s foremost ambassador of good food for all. Allen the Chief Executive Officer believes, "If people can grow safe, healthy, affordable food, if they have access to land and clean water, this is transformative on every level in a community. I believe we cannot have healthy communities without a healthy food system."
Recognized for urban farming initiatives
Allen won a $500,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in September, the first time the prestigious grant has been awarded to a person in the Milwaukee area.
The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction, and bases its Fellows award decisions on three criteria: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.
Growing Power won a 2009, $150,000 grant from Chase to provide fresh vegetables for Milwaukee Public Schools, and expand a regional urban farming training program. The grant from Chase is given in the recognition that the inaccessibility of healthy and affordable food continues to be a major challenge for families struggling with unemployment and poverty.
A star in team play long before he began to lead others in the field of local food production
Allen's fame didn't begin with Growing Power. He also had quite a career on the basketball court, and now he will add a significant athletic honor to the lengthening list of awards he has garnered. 
At this year’s Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament, Allen will be introduced as an ACC Men’s Basketball Legend representing the University of Miami. The ACC Tournament will be held March 11-14 at the Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, N.C.
In 1967, Allen became the first African-American scholarship athlete recruited to the University of Miami, where in four years of play he became team captain.
Playing at center, Allen had a 44-inch vertical leap and is still listed in the Miami record books as holding second-place all-time for rebounds, behind only the great Hall of Famer Rick Barry. Allen also holds the first-place mark in free-throw attempts.
Those stats mean something to knowing basketball fans: Anyone with that many rebounds and free throws was doing a lot of pounding the boards and driving to the basket – and both making and drawing a whole lot of body contact.
“I’m certainly feeling all that now,” Allen said. “All that banging and crashing and jarring your joints comes back to haunt you.
“But those were great days, I had great teammates, and I loved the game.”
Allen grew up in Rockville, Md., on a small farmstead and went to Richard Montgomery High School, where he became the first three-time Washington Post All-Metro player in the history of the Maryland, District of Columbia and Virginia metropolitan area. As a senior All-American, he averaged 25 points and 21 rebounds a game.
Graduated from Miami with a degree in education and went on to play professionally in the American Basketball Association and the European League. Playing for Belgium, he began to reconnect with his farming roots as he met local farmers using the kind of intensive, organic, compost-based methods Growing Power champions today to train new, young farmers to grow good food in their communities.
“The University of Miami community is tremendously proud of what Will Allen has accomplished,” said Director of Athletics Kirby Hocutt. “He has used his life to empower and enrich so many people's lives – and there is not a more noble goal than that. We are truly honored that he will be representing the University of Miami as this year's ACC Men's Basketball Tournament Legend.”
Allen proudly displays his two greatest loyalties in his daily attire. He habitually wears a Growing Power sweatshirt, the uniform of his current passion for urban farming – and his ubiquitous green-and-orange Miami Hurricanes ball cap to attest to his now-legendary passion for strong, physical play in the toughest of college basketball conferences.
Growing Power is a short story of Will Allen who is the founder of "Growing Power Inc."
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Amy Lou Jenkins is the author of Every Natural Fact: Five Seasons of Open-Air Parenting
"If you combined the lyricism of Annie Dillard, the vision of Aldo Leopold, and the gentle but tough-minded optimism of Frank McCourt, you might come close to Amy Lou Jenkins...I, for one, would follow her anywhere."—Tom Bissell author of The Father of All Things
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