- [Announcer] "Sacred Ground with Tim Daly" is made possible by Patricia and Edwin Matthews through the New York Community Trust Progress Fund, by Glenmede Private Wealth, by the Murray and Susan Haber Charitable Foundation, and by the following funders.

- Food is fundamental to all life, but the vast and complex agricultural system we rely on to feed more than 8 billion people is straining the planet's capacity.

- [Reporter] This isn't an act of God.

It's farmers and ranchers intentionally destroying the land for more development.

- It contaminates our waterways, accelerates the loss of biodiversity, and is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, intensifying an already dire environmental crisis.

- [Tamara] The trouble is that we're moving in the wrong direction.

- [Nita] Business as usual will end up with us disrupting what's called planetary boundaries, which offer us safe operating space for human activity.

- At the same time, climate change is amplifying weather extremes and destabilizing key links in the system that sustains the global food supply.

- [Reporter] Drought driving up vegetable and coffee costs, heat waves hitting cocoa harvests, and stronger hurricanes that can devastate Florida's citrus crops.

- It's a negative feedback loop that threatens what we grow and what we eat.

- There's no magic bullet here.

The complexities and the layers of a food culture run so deep.

They're brought together from cultures around the world.

They run fundamental to truly who we are, to how we've lived our lives, our whole lives, to what our mothers and grandmothers have given us.

And that change is going to be inherently slow and hard.

- [Tim] But that slow, hard work is happening.

The seeds of change are taking root in Chicago.

(bright music) It may be winter, but production hasn't stopped on this windy city farm.

- [Erika] So, what's going on in these hoop houses?

- Lot of greens.

Lot of greens.

- Lot of greens?

- Greens coming up real nice.

It's trying to manage the temperature.

- [Tim] And this isn't just a small plot of land in South Chicago.

This 14-acre site is one part of a holistic vision presented by the Urban Growers Collective to transform the food system.

- What'd you put in?

What roots?

- Beets.

Different varieties of beets.

So I got the golden beets in there.

- Oh, you're trying golden this year?

- Yeah, I got some golden in there for eat.

- [Tim] Erika Allen is the CEO.

- Urban Growers Collective is a not-for-profit organization that works through agriculture to transform environments, people, and systems that aren't working for everybody.

If I don't know how wealth is being created within my community, or I am contributing to a system that I know is harming somebody maybe in my community, maybe somewhere on the other side of the world, that's not sustainable.

That's not regenerative, and that is not green.

And with climate change, we have to look at all the systems that have got us to this point that have exploited nature and her resources.

- [Tim] She's building a circular economy that begins with fresh grown produce distributed throughout the community and ends with food waste returning to the farm in the form of nutrient-rich compost.

- You've made a lot of progress since the last time I was here.

- [Malcolm] I always hope that's the plan.

- Ooh, yay.

- I always hope that's the plan.

- Oh, Malcolm, you got it.

You all got it.

Good seeding.

- These slick curly mustards.

Alabama.

- That's great.

- And then you can see 'em on the side.

I just... I just wanted to get a little better, but you could see the beet?

- [Tim] This is one of eight farms run by Urban Growers Collective, producing 150 varieties of fresh vegetables year round.

It's also a center for community programs and youth education.

- I have been in Chicago since '87.

My plan was to establish a after school and intervention program to divert young people from pathways to incarceration.

It became really clear that the root of that was economics.

I grew up farming, so I knew how to farm.

It wasn't something I was trying to come back to, but I had a real kind of calling to weave those together.

Urban Growers Collective, really, is an evolution.

It started with my dad's work in Milwaukee with Growing Power.

- The key to this type of production that we're doing is to use every bit of space you have.

This is high valued space.

- He just imagined a future where 20% of Milwaukee's food was coming from local production.

How do we actually do that when so many people are disconnected from the food system?

We would go up to Milwaukee to learn, we kind of re-skill around these really basic building blocks.

And all of this to have sovereignty.

The ability to transform our neighborhoods in ways that don't perpetuate the same systems.

- [Tim] Malcolm Evans was an early recruit.

He met Erika at just nine years old in the notorious public housing project, Cabrini Green.

- The first time I met you, we were just putting in the garden on the former basketball courts.

And I just remember you just coming out of the tower right there and just staring like, "What are these people doing?"

- Every time Erika showed up was teaching us, I showed up and I got real serious about it at a young age.

I remember when I was 12 years old, I used to go up to Milwaukee, Wisconsin for these workshops.

Big farm.

Animals, lot of production.

That just sealed the deal right then and there for me seeing all that.

I remember coming back and telling her I wanted to be a farmer.

- [Tim] Today, he's the collective's director of farming - For me, it's so gratifying because that was the vision.

It was to create pathways.

I'm super proud of you and the crew for sticking with it and having faith that the work that you do can actually not only benefit you all, but all of us because now we're feeding whole communities.

- Exactly.

- And now you're doing George Washington Carver experimentation with some of the side cropping.

- Yeah, it's just, you know, learning and just, you know, testing things out and really, you know, trusting my gut.

Farming is fun.

You try different things, you learn from your mistakes, and you keep going.

And that's one of the things I'm passionate about.

- [Tim] With a team ready to grow, Erika's next challenge was to transform Chicago's brownfield sites into land suitable for farming.

- Most urban soils are either depleted or have contamination from lead and from, you know, all kinds of other industrial uses in the past, in our neighborhoods.

If you want to do natural production or regenerative agriculture, you're thinking about the sources of your fertility.

- [Tim] Fertility, as Erika calls it, is added to the soil with an energy and nutrient-packed compost designed to support crop growth in a compacted urban environment.

- We've done this for so long.

We know that the more fertility there is, the more food that we're producing.

But we've also seen that the ability to turn crops, how quickly they germinate, all of those things are a result of fertility.

I wanted more compost.

I needed fertility.

I saw this pilot that my dad had created in Milwaukee.

- [Tim] He built a micro digester, a machine that speeds up the decomposition of food waste.

- That inspired me to think about how we could scale up the amount of fertility that we would need.

'Cause we were producing our own, but it takes a tremendous amount of time and inputs.

A digester can do it really quickly.

- [Tim] There was nothing micro about the digester Erika had in mind.

She teamed up with Jason Feldman to create Green Era Campus, the Midwest's first self-sustaining anaerobic digester capable of breaking down not just kitchen scraps but packaged food waste.

- Green Era is a food waste recycling plant.

We separate the packaging from the food waste.

Most of the packaging gets sent to a material recycling facility, and then the organics get turned into like a food waste milkshake.

And that big milkshake of food waste goes into the big digester tanks right behind me.

And inside those digester tanks, billions and billions of microorganisms are breaking down that food waste into biogas, which is mainly methane and CO2.

And that biogas goes into the system where we separate the CO2 from the methane.

Have pure methane, compress it, and put that, what's called renewable natural gas, back into the grid.

- [Tim] The natural gas produced at Green Era powers thousands of local homes.

- Methane is the greatest contributor to climate change.

We can collectively reduce that by diverting our kitchen scraps to come to a digester specifically to capture that methane.

- After we pull out all that energy from that food waste, we're left with essentially something called digestate, which is really, really nutrient-rich compost.

And that digestate goes to Urban Growers Collective, our nonprofit partner that runs urban farms throughout the Chicago land area.

- [Tim] The compost produced at Green Era Campus now returns to the South Chicago farm by the truck full, keeping Malcolm Evans and his team busy.

- We create our own heat, so what we're doing is bringing fertility and we put it on the sides of the hoop house and we put wood chips to keep it warm in the winter when it's 15, 20 degrees outside.

In this hoop house, it get up to about 50 to 60.

When we get that in from the digester, I like that fertility and it's real strong and rich.

It allows my crops, I say, get bigger, delicious.

- We also, by growing food, we're limiting food miles.

So if you're buying an apple that's being grown in Oregon, that apple has to be transported on trains, trucks, then more energy's used to refrigerate it, to transport it, to get it to the stores.

And it may get to your plate or it might go back to the landfill if it's not consumed.

So all of that energy can be mitigated if we're growing more locally.

Growing locally also helps ensure that we will continue to be able to have these kind of food secure environments where we can feed our community.

It's directly contributing to climate change mitigation and food security at the neighborhood level and creating futures for young people and for folks to see that things can transform.

And all of those things can happen when we are thoughtful about how and where we put resources.

(woman laughs) To have this kind of infrastructure was a collective vision.

It was something that didn't happen overnight.

It's taken us over a decade to develop, and we're still not finished.

It was really difficult to do.

It's still kind of raw, because it is, there's a lot of opposition, I think, to creating something that is really emerging out of the community.

- Anytime you try to take on an entrenched part of the economy that has a lot of investment at stake and a lot of self-interest, for sure, to preserve the status quo, you're going to get a lot of pushback.

- [Tim] Chicago Native Sam Kass knows firsthand about bucking convention.

He's been working on reforming food systems for nearly two decades.

Today he's a food tech investor, but early in his career, he served as a senior policy advisor for the Obama administration.

He met Erika Allen while working on the First Lady's Let's Move!

campaign.

Remember the White House Garden?

That was Sam.

- Welcome back to the White House Kitchen Garden.

It is now starting to get a little warmer after a long winter.

And so we are excited to do a harvest of our winter planting.

We're going to be expanding our garden this year at the request of the First Lady.

The intersection of food system and of climate and change is deeply intertwined on a number of different levels.

On the problem side, food and agriculture is the number two driver of greenhouse gas emissions globally.

It's the number one driver of deforestation and land use change.

So every time you see like the Amazon getting cut down, that's to clear forest to put cows on.

It's the number one use of the world's fresh water.

70% of the fresh water on the planet goes into agriculture.

So in terms of like environmental degradation around the world, food and agriculture is by far the biggest source.

- [Reporter] The rainforest destruction this year, historic.

More than 2 million square miles.

The so-called lungs of planet Earth, responsible for 20% of our oxygen, now, say scientists, at a tipping point.

- It's also on the front lines of climate.

- [Reporter] Most of the bad weather this week has affected the Midwest, including historic flooding that damaged farming communities.

- What's remarkable to think about is, that just last week, all of this, hundreds of acres of soybeans, and over here, hundreds of acres of corn.

What's also remarkable to consider is how much we Americans depend on these crops.

- [Sam] We're seeing major disruptions in crops and in species decline because of climate.

So, a couple years ago, we lost 90% of Georgia peaches because of volatile weather.

- You've got peaches here, and that variety has nothing.

- Not one.

- Not a single peach.

- [Reporter] His 1,500 acre peach crop, nearly a total loss.

- The snow crab fishery in the Pacific Northwest was closed entirely for two years.

The wild salmon fishery as well has been entirely shut down because of climate.

- [Speaker] Those salmon that spawned in those drought years were impacted.

The juveniles that were out migrating, low survival rates due to warm water conditions.

- [Sam] Chocolate prices last year were up 200% because of extreme drought.

- The climate change started to come in, things became different.

- Why?

- It was like hell for cocoa farmers.

The yield dropped, reduced drastically.

- The last 10,000 years on planet Earth have been the most calm, serene, beautiful years that the planet has ever seen.

We've just gotten really lucky.

And we've had abundant natural resources, namely endless fresh water and plenty of soil and cheap energy.

And so we've built a system that's been based on stability and plentiful resources.

(thunder rumbling) (rain pattering) And now we're moving into a time where we're seeing extreme volatility of weather.

- The storm called a Derecho brought hurricane force winds of up to 130 miles an hour.

It caused billions of dollars in damage to homes and farms.

- [Sam] And dwindling resources, lack of fresh water.

We've lost this enormous percentage of the world's soil.

- America's bread basket is taking a beating.

Soil erosion is causing serious problems for farmers all across the Midwest.

- And energy prices are going to continue to go up.

- Your electric bill is soaring quicker than inflation.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the price of power went up 5.5% over the past year on average.

- And we do not have a food system that is prepared to deal with that volatility.

We have, basically, about 70% or so of calories comes from 12 plants and five animals.

And it's just not a diverse enough system in terms of what we're producing to deal with that kind of extreme volatility.

we essentially have all of our eggs in a few baskets.

- [Tim] Despite this evidence, Sam believes our food system holds a key solution to the crisis.

- It's the only system on planet Earth that has the capacity to sequester enough carbon in the time horizon that the science says we have.

Over 80 years of our current global footprint of emissions were once in our soils.

- [Tim] But modern agricultural methods have released those emissions into the atmosphere.

- We have technology and tools and practices that could farm in such a way that works with the plants and the microbiology of the soil to start putting that carbon back into our soil and using nature-based solutions to mitigate the worst of climate.

- [Tim] Sam also found food as a compelling tool to explain the impacts of climate change.

He began hosting dinners he called "The Last Supper."

- This menu has been put together with ingredients that experts and models predict will not be around for our kids and our grandkids.

I think words like two degrees warming, even, you know, from a kid from Chicago, that doesn't sound bad to me at all.

It's like, let's warm this place up a bit, you know?

So I don't think people had ability to emotionally connect with the issues around climate and environmental health and why they should care.

If and when we hit two degrees, about half of the regions that are currently growing coffee will no longer be suitable for coffee production.

If I can't start my day with a cup of coffee and end it with a glass of wine, I don't know why, what's the point of being alive?

So that's, you know, enough to get me very motivated to try to solve climate change.

It is fundamentally our ability to pass to the next generation a better life than we were given, a life that is as rich and delicious as the one we've been lucky enough to have.

That is truly at stake now.

- [Tim] He expanded on this work in his new book, "The Last Supper: How to Overcome the Coming Food Crisis.

- We have the tools and possibility to change course and solve these challenges, or at least solve the worst parts of the challenges.

But then if we don't act with much greater urgency, we're going to lose our ability to solve these problems in the time that we have left to do it.

- [Tim] For Urban Growers Collective, change begins with the community.

Much of the produce grown on its farms is distributed through Fresh Moves Mobile Market, a converted airport bus that makes stops at social service centers, schools, and health clinics.

- Farm fresh, locally grown.

♪ Fresh Moves Fresh Moves Yeah.

This year at Urban Growers Collective, we already harvest over 30,000 pounds of produce just through this site and another site and, you know, distribute out through the community.

- I think it's awesome.

There's not really a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables around the area, especially affordable.

So it's nice to know that you can stop right in your own neighborhood and get that.

- We all hear this from our doctors to eat better food.

And if you don't have access, if there's not affordable and beautiful produce for you to do that, how are you going to actually be compliant with your medical advice?

So the bus brings it to you.

And on top of that, it's pay what you can.

- [Tim] Fresh Moves accepts public benefits and gives community members paying with Snap the option to double their buying power.

- Most of the south side doesn't have a lot of genuinely healthy food.

So the fact that they've promoted, especially here, and given parents and their kids ways to actually get healthy food, that's pretty cool.

- Our mission is really to develop and create an equitable food system and to heal.

You know, the healing piece is really critical.

It's challenging to live in a society that doesn't value people's health with so much food.

And there's a lot of food, but there's not enough of this kind of food.

There's just so much that can be shared and distributed.

To create the actual solution, like, this is how we've done it.

- [Tim] Erika also plans to continue to develop Green Era Campus to include an education center and a vertical farm.

But at the South Chicago farm, they are decidedly low tech.

- It's a really important, accessible and climate mitigating way to grow food.

Small scale, but it's community scale, and it provides that food security.

It's also replacing chemicals and petro fertility with just the byproducts of the food that we grew, that you ate, that came to the digester, that now we're growing more food and to infinity, right?

So the idea is to have this true circular growing economy, which is a reflection of nature, 'cause nature is circular.

And then to be able to, on top of that, build and innovate.

- I learned this very much firsthand in the White House that there's no policy that's really going to fix our food system.

In the end, policy matters, but most of the decisions we're making about, like, what actually ends up on our plates at dinner every day is rooted in our culture and our cultural values.

If we don't have values that say we want food that is good for us and good for the planet and good for future generations' ability to feed themselves, then we're not going to see policies that meet the moment.

We're not going to see businesses making the changes that we need them to make.

To fully affect transformation here, you're going to have to affect an entire value chain, which starts in agriculture, that has trillions of dollars of investment, you know, built up over decades and decades of systems, and culture, by the way, in agriculture about, "This is what we grow, this is who we are, this is how we grow it, because that's who we are."

There's no one policy you can do to change that, or even 10 policies you can do to fundamentally change that.

It's going to take attacking the problem from all angles over long periods of time to really see a food system that is nourishing ourselves and doing in a way that does not mortgage the future of our kids and grandkids.

Food is generational.

It's traditional.

We eat what our parents fed us, and that shapes who we are, and those traditions are passed down.

The question is, "What are we passing down to our kids?"

"What are we leaving for them?"

"What values are we giving them?"

"What opportunities to nourish themselves are going to be available?"

That's the opportunity, but it's also, you know, the concern, is that, for my kids, I have two boys.

I worry about what is going to be available to them, like, how rich their lives are going to be.

And that's the most fundamental thing to the human condition, is to try to pass down to the next generation a better life than you were given.

That is fundamentally at stake.

- All of us are here because we're passionate about the ability to change these circumstances and to transform ourselves.

So everybody is on a journey.

This is not easy work.

It's physically demanding and intellectually demanding, it's a lot of problem solving.

We're really still trying to illustrate the complexity of the food system, but the accessibility of how everybody can be involved.

And when you're dealing with a city like Chicago, which is pretty complex, a lot of politics, this may not seem like the thing that's going to transform lives and impact climate change or create climate economies, but it does.

And most importantly, it saves lives.

So being able to have spaces where people can come, especially folks who need a second chance, who may not have had the things that we take for granted, solid family systems, schools, like, all the things that a person needs to thrive, some of those things can be sort of experienced through this work.

- Erika Allen is a hero and a real inspiration for me.

She's an example of the real work.

Like, in the end, what really matters is house to house, meal to meal, block by block, community by community, actually making the real change.

How do you shape individual's lives and communities' lives to get them better access to foods that actually nourish them and nourish the planet and do it in a way that empowers them to make that the way that they live for their whole lives.

And that's what she's doing.

And it's going to take work like that across the country if we're going to really see a fundamentally better food system.

There's a lot of barriers, but those champions like Erika, relentlessly pursuing better lives for people through the food that they eat, that's the game.

- This is generational work.

We didn't get here overnight.

It's going to take some time to undo it, but I can say within 25 years of my life that there's been a radical transformation.

(optimistic music) - Agriculture is key to our economy and our survival.

It produces the fuel that powers our country and offers the opportunity to address the impact of the climate crisis.

It's going to take time to change the system that we've built, but visionaries like Erika Allen are laying the groundwork for a way of setting our tables while simultaneously nourishing the Earth.

For "Sacred Ground," I'm Tim Daly.

Thank you for joining us.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - [Announcer] "Sacred Ground with Tim Daly" is made possible by Patricia and Edwin Matthews through the New York Community Trust Progress Fund, by Glenmede Private Wealth, by the Murray and Susan Haber Charitable Foundation, and by the following funders.

(lively music) (bright music)