Will Allen is the son of a sharecropper, a former professional basketball and an executive for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Procter & Gamble. After he realized the local area was a food desert with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to serve the needs of local residents, he cashed in his retirement fund for a two-acre plot a half mile away from Milwaukee's largest public housing project.
Despite huge odds, Allen built the country's preeminent urban farm-a food and educational center that now produces enough vegetables and fish year-round to feed thousands of people.
