Earlier in the day, Allen will visit the Franklin Elementary School Garden with the after-school program. He will have dinner at 5 p.m. at the Hillview Greenhouse Life Center in La Crosse. Allen's appearance in La Crosse is being sponsored by the La Crosse Earth Week Coalition.

 After a short career in professional basketball and a number of years in corporate marketing, Allen returned to his roots as a farmer and founded Growing Power, Inc. Growing Power is a non-profit urban farm and foods systems training center in an underserved area of Milwaukee. It is helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Allen's holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting. He recently gained more national attention when he appeared with First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House when she kicked off her childhood anti-obesity campaign. Growing Power provides hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstrations, outreach and technical assistance to enable people to grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner.

 For more about Allen visit http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/magazine/05allen-t.html and http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.4537249/