Michael Ableman is an author, organic farmer, educator and advocate for sustainable agriculture. Michael has been farming organically since the early 1970s and is considered one of the pioneers of the organic farming and urban agriculture movements. He is a frequent lecturer to audiences all over the world and the winner of numerous awards for his work.
Awarded an environmental leadership award from the governor of California, the SUSTIE award from the Ecological Farming Association, a Food Hero award from Eating Well Magazine and the Land Award from the Real Estate Foundation of BC for his work on Vancouver’s Skid Row. Ableman is considered one of the fathers of the Urban Agriculture movement, and one of the early pioneers of the sustainable and organic agriculture movements.
Michael’s early activism earned him a journalist’s title of the “Spartacus of Sustainable Food Activism” and Julia Child referred to him as a “Food Terrorist” for his public speeches demonstrating how the American food system was broken.
As an author, Michael has written and photographed four acclaimed books which have been distributed around the world: From The Good Earth: A celebration of growing food around the world, On Good Land: The autobiography of an urban farm, Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it and most recently Street Farm: Growing food, jobs, and hope on the urban frontier. He is the subject of the award- winning PBS film Beyond Organic narrated by Meryl Streep and his work in Vancouver is featured in the new feature length documentary A New Economy.
Michael’s photographs have appeared in publications around the world and in solo exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Field Museum of Chicago and the Oakland Museum. His work has been profiled in numerous print and electronic media including National Geographic, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, the New York Times, CBC, BBC, Gourmet Magazine, the L.A. Times and many others.
Michael is the co-founder and director of Sole Food Street Farms, one of North America’s largest urban agriculture enterprises established to provide employment to individuals in Vancouver, British Columbia who are managing poverty and addiction. He is the founder of the non-profit Center For Urban Agriculture, the registered charity Cultivate Canada, the Center For Arts, Ecology and Agriculture and co-founder of the Agrarian Elders. He currently lives and farms with his family at the historic 120-acre Foxglove Farm.
Read more about Michael and his work at https://michaelableman.com.