Beer may have made Milwaukee famous, but the city's image in the 21st century could be shaped by organic vegetables and free-range chickens raised in urban neighborhoods.
The city is at the center of a growing international movement that advocates urban vegetable gardens, and even livestock farms, to raise food locally and to bring together residents of neighborhoods torn apart by poverty and crime.
The Urban Agriculture Conference at the downtown Hilton Milwaukee City Center, which ended Saturday, drew 250 people from around the world to discuss everything from rooftop gardens to pigs raised in skyscrapers. Organizers said it was the first U.S. urban agriculture conference with an international audience.
"Urban agriculture in most people's minds is a contradiction of terms," said Michael Ableman, an urban farmer, author and educator, and the conference's keynote speaker. "Doesn't agriculture take place on farms, far from cities?"
Rising food prices tied to higher shipping costs, crime in poor neighborhoods and diseases linked to unhealthy foods are compelling reasons to bring farming -- and its values -- into cities, Ableman said.
Academic researchers, city planners, health officials and urban farmers came to the three-day conference from as far as Europe and Africa.
"That was not our design," said organizer Martha Davis Kipcak, a leader of Slow Food Wisconsin Southeast, which co-sponsored the event with the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy. "It shocked us when we started getting calls from other countries. But we had a hunch that the time was right, and Milwaukee was poised to step forward."
Jan Willem Van der Schans, a researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, said he was surfing the Web when he found the conference agenda online and immediately booked a flight to Milwaukee.
He was looking for ideas to develop a rooftop farm with livestock and vegetables over a shopping center.
"We are very into modern architecture in Amsterdam, but our town is not known for being green," he said. "The urban agriculture movement really captures the spirit."
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