Michael Ableman

Michael Ableman is the executive director of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens in Goleta, California. Ableman believes the meaning of the word organic has been lost. He prefers to call his methods “beyond organic,” a phrase that served as the title for the PBS documentary about the fight to save Fairview Gardens. Ableman tells that story himself in his book On Good Land; he is also the author of From the Good Earth. These days, Ableman is busy farming a small piece of land on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada, and working on a new book, The Hands That Feed Us.

— From June 2003