WHY

By David Hanson, writer, Michael Hanson, photographer

WhyHunger is partnering with the Breaking Through Concrete media team of “three men and a short bus” for a cross-country tour of American urban farms. Michael Hanson, photographer, Charlie Hoxie, videographer, and David Hanson, writer, will visit over fifteen urban farm projects from Seattle to Santa Cruz to New Orleans, Brooklyn, and Chicago.

It’s sunny and ninety-four degrees and the pavement steams after a thunderstorm rolled sideways through north Philly. Mary Seton Corboy wears a full-body, white bee suit. She stands atop a small trailer’s grassy roof on a vacant city lot. Smoke puffs from the antique-looking box in her hand and the bees calm down.

By Brooke Smith

As the New York City summer heat began to rise from the pavement, the school bus rumbled through Manhattan and roll call accounted for all nine organizations and seven states represented by the 2009 WhyHunger Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Award grantees. In collaboration with the Harry Chapin Foundation, the annual Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Awards (HCSRA) program distributes capacity-building grants to outstanding grassroots organizations in the United States that have moved beyond charity to creating change in their communities. Organizations selected are judged outstanding for their local and innovative approaches to fighting domestic hunger and poverty by empowering people and building self-reliance.

By Brooke Smith

“Let me give you a tour,” is the standard and gracious greeting from Jackie Hunt, Assistant Farm Manager at D-Town Farm in Detroit, MI. Jackie’s pride in the farm, as well as the accomplishments of her other affiliation, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, come through in the stories told at each stop on our tour of this 2 acre farm in Rouge Park. It’s a pride in community, in the sheer force of teamwork, and in a beautiful, useful product (organic food!): her daughter-in-law’s grandmother’s husband plowed the field with his tractor to ready the overgrown wooded parcel for transformation into a working, active farm; the Farm Manager, Marilyn (Nefer Ra) Barber, is a dynamo partner in the creation and running of the farm; the kale, watermelon, bees, mushrooms, lettuce, and more are growing strong under the hot summer sun and in the new hoop houses.