Local Farm Advocates Make Illinois List of '09 Environmental Heroes

At the tail end of 2009, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announced an impressive list of Environmental Heroes.

There are 22 who earned praise from the governor. A couple include community gardening in their projects. But here are two with decidedly agricultural bents:

1. Garry Griffith “is the director of dining at Augustana College and has spearheaded the school’s Farm2Fork initiative, where students work on local farms to produce crops used in the college’s dining system. Also through Griffith’s efforts, over 80,000 pounds of food waste is composted annually into local farmland, and the school’s used cooking oil is converted into biodiesel to power farm equipment.” Link added.

Some of Augustana’s partners include Wesley Acres Produce, Cravers Little Red Barn (CSA), and Illinois Crown Beef. [For some reason, the websites for the last two orgs are offline or acting wonky. I can only read their descriptions on cached pages.]

More on Augustana’s impressive green initiatives here: “Blue & gold make green.”

2. Debbie Hillman “is a co-founder of the Evanston Food Policy Council and lobbied aggressively for the passage of the Food, Farms, and Jobs Act of 2007. She is also a coordinator on the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force. Hillman was a professional gardener for 32 years.” Links added.

Here’s the full press release at this link.