Man With a Big Red Truck Proves Organic Vegetables Can Grow Anywhere

Is Mobile Farming the Next Big Thing?

In a country experiencing an epic disconnect from their food with food deserts scattered along our landscape, a man with a big, red pickup truck is teaching people – even kids – that organic vegetables can be grown just about anywhere.

Thousands of people living in urban environments, or even rural areas without access to a grocery store, don’t have access to healthy, nutritious food. According to a report written for Congress by the Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture, about 2.3 million people (or 2.2 percent of all US households) live more than one mile away from a supermarket and do not own a car.

The problem is mostly a socio-economic one, but Larry Moore has already traveled more than 450 miles to visit farmers’ markets, schools, and community events around Louisville, Kentucky, in his 1995 Chevrolet truck that has been converted into a garden on wheels, proving there is another way.

Jamie Oliver famously made a nation aware that entire first grade classes couldn’t name a single vegetable when shown carrots, tomatoes, potatoes and other nutritious staples. He’s also pointed out that sugar intake is double what it should be in kids – likely because they don’t even know what healthy food should look like.

Moore’s pick up truck garden is a way to teach an entire generation of kids lost in a dysfunctional food culture, that they can grow their own.

“People want healthy food, but they may not know what it is or where to get it,” Moore said. “But if people see that they can grow stuff in a truck, they can grow it anywhere. They can make better decisions about eating healthier. It’s just about basic awareness.”

His red truck is part of The Food Literacy Project’s attempt to make a difference in some of the most food-barren landscapes. Carol Gunderson, the Executive Director of FLP calls Truck Farm an “edible, mobile, learning garden that is really an extension of FLP’s mission which is to inspire a new generation to build healthy relationships with food farming and the land.”

The truck allows people who might not have access to a farm or farmer’s market to see first hand that growing vegetables is available to anyone.

Sure, the Truck Farm is no Garden of Cosmic Speculation, a 30-acre garden seeded on private property in Scotland, but its certainly one of the most unusual places to grow healthy food.

No doubt, the mobile truck farm stands out when it travels along city streets in Louisville, Kentucky. So too, do other mobile gardens that seem to be popping up around the world. You can find gardens now on CTA railcars, on the back of trailers, on pedestrian bicycles, and even in ladies’ handbags.

Make no mistake, the world is going to grow some good organic food, no matter how difficult biotech companies try to make it.

Image credits:

YesMagazine

Tree Hugger

The Mobile Garden