Growing Out Loud: Journey of a Food Revolutionary is an uncompromising, unapologetic polemic. It is also a tutorial woven around the memoir of K. Rashid Nuri’s career in agriculture. This book describes the life and times of one food revolutionary, whose food odyssey began during the turbulent 1960s and continued through the innovation-driven new millennium. As an elder revolutionary, I am offering my journey in the context of a set of principles and practices that marked my growth, and the growth of the food revolution.
Excerpt from the Introduction of Growing Out Loud
There is a food uprising happening in America. We live under a commercial food system that is broken and beyond repair. It demands replacement. Urban agriculture is a solution. A paradigm shift is already taking place. True revolution is evolving from the urban rebellions of the 1960s. Social and community structures that were destroyed in urban centers fifty years ago are being replaced with systems that address the essential needs of the people.
Fundamentally, communities need control over their own food, clothing, shelter and education.
Catalyzing the new paradigm of community control is the New Food Movement. In order to have a viable community, you must be able to feed, clothe and shelter your people. All health, all wealth, all life comes from the soil. The New Food Movement takes on the imperative of local control by bringing the production of naturally grown, nutritious food close to where people live. 82% of Americans live in urban centers, according to 2018 data from the Population Reference Bureau. The United Nations 2018 data project predicts that 68% of the global population will be urban by 2050.
Across the nation, urban food revolutionaries are growing crops wherever they can find a patch of soil. Vacant lots, abandoned fields, balconies and prison yards are just a few of the places being transformed into oases and community gathering spaces. Urban dwellers are being reacquainted with the land and the growth cycles of the planet. Likewise, homesteaders, women and small farmers are transforming the rural landscape. Thousand-acre monocropping, with no actual food for miles around, is being replaced with naturally grown vegetable gardens, organic farms and humane ranches. Culinary artists are growing herbs and vegetables in farm-to-table operations that provide a holistic experience for workers and patrons alike.
Rashid’s 2019 - 2021 Book Tour Cities
Atlanta Savannah (twice) Asheville Athens
Los Angeles (twice) Detroit Cleveland New Orleans
New York DC Little Rock Thomasville, Ga.
PRAISE FOR K. RASHID NURI
“Rashid Nuri’s story is one of life, liberty and the pursuit of something greater than happiness – a civic agricultural system for all. From a pioneering Black man at Harvard in 1960s with an endless thirst for knowledge and meaning to a globetrotting farmer across the planet, Nuri's Growing Out Loud takes us on his journey and reshapes our thoughts on the scale and importance of urban food systems.”
– Mario Cambardella, City of Atlanta Urban Ag. Director
Growing Out Loud: Journey of a Food Revolutionary is an amazing work of history, science, business, politics, philosophy, and faith, intermingled, juxtaposed, and extrapolated throughout one extraordinarily well-lived life. I've known Rashid Nuri for 50 years now and thought I had a pretty good grasp of his background, experience, and philosophical underpinnings until reading this truly engaging and enlightening autobiographical work. Rashid has lived a life of discovery and even intrigue that most of us can only imagine or read about, and this book allows us to do both.
— Imam Plemon T. El-Amin
“Growing Out Loud is a book that everyone who cares about our collective future should read and learn from. It's a fun book to read, not only documenting a highly accomplished life, but also taking an unflinching look at what is wrong with our global system of food production.”
– Bill Bolling, Food Well Alliance