Michael Ableman

Michael Ableman, the cofounder and director of Sole Food Street Farms, is one of the early visionaries of the urban agriculture movement. He has created high-profile urban farms in Watts, California; Goleta, California; and Vancouver, British Columbia. Ableman has also worked on and advised dozens of similar projects throughout North America and the Caribbean, and he is the founder of the nonprofit Center for Urban Agriculture.

Alongside Street Farm, Michael is the author and photographer of From the Good Earth; A celebration of growing food around the world (Abrams, 1993), On Good Land: The autobiography of an urban farm (Chronicle Books, 1998), and Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it (Chronicle Books 2005). He is the subject of the award-winning PBS film Beyond Organic narrated by Meryl Streep.

Ableman lives and farms at the 120-acre Foxglove Farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.