Exploration 8: Zach Powell

I felt the most important idea I saw in the film Fresh is that growing animals and plants naturally is better for everything like humans, animals, plants, and the soil. The film showed lots of examples of how industrialize farming is not how nature intended things to be done. These industrialized farms are using tons of pesticides to prevent diseases for the plants. Michael Pollan said "If you the same crop year after year bugs and weeds become immune to pesticide". Industrialized farms are just making the food we eat riddled with pesticides.  These farms are not growing crops in the way nature intended by letting animals graze the land and naturally federalize it. Soils today is depleting 13% faster than it can be restored. This is caused by the way industrialized farms run, praying tons of pesticides on the soil and not letting animals graze it to naturally replenish the soil.

I found Growing Power created by Will Allen to be very interesting. I liked how much he cared and wanted to spread he's knowledge to everyone. I wanted to do more research on if he did more than just Sunday workshops for his community. I found that Growing Power has set up multiple Regional Outreach Training Centers in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Mississippi. They have also have gotten more farms around the country. Growing Power is now teaching classes to farmers on business planning and how to farm the right way. Growing Power is involved in more than 70 projects and outreach programs all over the US, and also a throughout the world.
http://www.growingpower.org/?page_id=89
http://www.growingpower.org/?page_id=360
http://wordy.pazen.com/?page_id=97

I felt like a lot of people found Will Allen's story to be very interest. What stuck out to me was seeing how healthy and lively all Wills plants were and the aquaponics system he uses. But learning that if that system was ever broken, then all the plants would probably die. Also I learned how challenging it is to maintain these systems. This interested me so much I went home and researched it to better understand how the system works.