Editor’s note: This profile is from a story focusing on the legacy and future of Black farmers in the U.S., part of The Packer’s ongoing series about urban farming.
Urban Growers Collective is a Black and women-led 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Chicago that cultivates nourishing environments that support health, economic development, healing and creativity through urban agriculture.
Working closely with community partners, its approach is to demonstrate the development of community-based food systems and to support communities in developing systems of their own where food is grown, prepared and distributed within the community itself.
“We want the next generation, really all generations, to get re-engaged in agriculture,” says Urban Growers Collective CEO Erika Allen.
Urban Growers Collective operates eight urban farms on 11 acres, providing fresh produce through farmers markets, community supported agriculture subscriptions and a mobile market. The collective also supports food security initiatives and education.
Allen grew up in agriculture. Her father, Will Allen, is a retired professional basketball player also known for his innovations in urban farming. Erika Allen says she grew up on a small farm in Wisconsin where the family grew cabbage, greens, tomatoes, green beans and corn, and the experience shaped her childhood.
“I learned early about hard work and how to grow different kinds of vegetables,” she said. “I went to the farmer’s markets, so I did a lot of direct marketing and helped with wholesale orders. It was kind of an old-school farm family upbringing.”
Allen attended art school in Chicago and, through her work as an artist, dealt with social issues and cultural reclamation; she eventually decided to return to school to get a master’s degree in art psychotherapy.
“I wanted to do intervention work with at-risk teens who are at high risk for incarceration using therapeutic intervention, because art is such a therapeutic modality,” she said.
In the wake of 9/11, Allen was working at a small social service agency, delivering Federal Emergency Management Agency services to families for utilities and rent assistance. She was also running a food pantry.
“I started thinking it would be great to grow food and engage families while complementing the food pantry resources,” she said. “Meanwhile, I’m in Chicago with millions of people, working with at-risk families, and knew they didn’t have a family farm to go to or the expertise to grow food. I realized that in my age group, very few people like me know how to grow food.
This need led Allen to pivot her intervention work. Instead of art, she focused on food production and using space to grow lots of food.
She had been building systems and experimenting with that in Milwaukee, so in 2002 she opened an office in Chicago for her new pursuit, translating the techniques she learned for creating soil into the urban landscape to meet the same basic human needs, making sure there’s access. Since then, Allen says she’s been activating farms wherever there have been spaces.
“Many are on public land because public land is for everyone,” she said. The work is about growing food, engaging youth and making sure there’s access, equitable access in all communities for fresh, safe, healthy, culturally appropriate food. So, those eight farms are community rooted, and all have youth programs to employ youth workers and also farm staff. The farm staff are often adults who start off as part of the youth core, maybe as interns that matriculate to become growers — first growers in training, then full-time growers.”
Between the farms and the outreach options, Allen says they provide education and are a community resource where people can have food security but also introduce young people to agriculture.
“Many go onto agriculture or food-related careers and education,” she said. “We just want the next generation, really all generations, to get re-engaged in agriculture.
“There’s also an opportunity for young people with limited options becoming able to earn revenue through their efforts,” she added. “So, it was another way to intervene. I wanted to add a bridge for a different kind of life.”
One life she changed was that of Malcom Evans, who started working on urban gardens at age 9 and, now in his 30s, is a farm director.
He began his farming career when Growing Power installed the Chicago Lights Urban Farm and Community Garden in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood; then while still in high school, Evans began the composting program at Growing Power Chicago, collecting compost from restaurants throughout the city after school and on weekends. In 2017, Evans began as production manager for Urban Growers Collective and became director of farming in 2022.
The food grown is sold at farmers markets and through community supported agriculture subscription programs. Last year, 150 CSA members received weekly shares.
There’s also a mobile farmers market where they converted an airport shuttle bus that was retrofitted as a grocery aisle on wheels, Allen says.
“It’s refrigerated, so we have some butter and eggs, all your fruits and vegetables, anything you would buy in the grocery store produce aisle,” she said. “During the pandemic, we did a lot of emergency food distribution. Now we’re really focusing on fresh, local produce that’s seasonal but still offering bananas and oranges and grapes, some of the items our community members can’t easily access.”
The organization already grows a lot of food, Allen says, and its current goal is to expand its reach.
“We’re activating a farm in Glenwood, right outside of Chicago, a 30-acre farm where we’re able to grow all of our nursery plants for all of our projects in the community,” she said. “So, we can offer so many creative things and also kind of reactivate people’s connection to farming.”
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