Michael Ableman

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Michael Ableman is the founder and executive director emeritus of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens, a non profit organization based on one of the oldest and most diverse organic farms in southern California, where he farmed from 1981 to 2001. At its peak the farm served as an important community and education center and a national model for small scale and urban agriculture, hosting as many as 5000 people per year for tours, classes, festivals, and apprenticeships. Under Ableman's leadership the farm was saved from development and preserved under one of the earliest and most unique active agricultural conservation easements of its type in the country. Ableman has started food gardens at the Santa Barbara AIDS Hospice, an 11-acre farm at the Midland School, and a market garden at the Jordan Downs housing project in Watts. His work as an educator and consultant has helped to inspire dozens of projects and initiatives throughout North America and the Caribbean. In 1984 Ableman traveled to mainland China where he observed the remnants of a traditional system of agriculture that had sustained people and the land for thousands of years. This experience inspired him to travel around the world documenting other cultures culminating in the internationally acclaimed publication of From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World (Abrams, 1993). Called "hopeful and inspiring" by the LA Times and "a compelling photographic essay" by the NY Times, From The Good Earth was one of the first books to visually document the dramatic changes taking place in food and agriculture worldwide. The book has become a timeless classic that challenges us to participate; in the marketplace, in our kitchens, and in our own backyards. Ableman's second book, On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm (Chronicle Books, 1998), is the emblematic story of his fight to preserve a piece of what was once some of the richest farmland in the world, and a paean to the sweet obsession of growing food. The Philadelphia Inquirer stated, "that if Henry David Thoreau had been a farmer, he would have written a book very much like Michael Ableman's On Good Land". Booklist called it "inspiring and utterly absorbing" and the literary book review Kirkus Reviews said that "among a sprawl of books incessantly issued and hyped, this small, wise volume quietly calls us to read and be renewed". The book, graced with Ableman's lush photographs, argues articulately for farmland preservation and provides a blueprint for a farm that thrives in cooperation with its surrounding community. Ableman's photographs have appeared in publications throughout the world and in solo exhibitions at the Oakland Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Field Museum in Chicago. He has lectured extensively throughout the U.S. and in Europe. His work has been covered in National Geographic, on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, in the Utne Reader, Gourmet Magazine, and the L.A. Times. An award-winning film about Ableman's work, Beyond Organic, narrated by Meryl Streep aired nationally on PBS in 2001.

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