Rob: I am with Ron Finley here
and we have got an apricot
from his Gangster Garden
mmm!
Now, this pit right here,
this is going in the suit.
So I got a Ron Finley apricot pit in the suit.
Everything is better now.
So I got a question, Ron.
Ron: Yes, sir.
Rob: Was there ever a time when you
first realized the power behind food,
or is it something you always knew?
Ron: I did not know because it was food.
Even organic food was not organic.
It was food back in the 1800s
when I was a kid.
And so it was not this distinction
between commercial and organic.
But I did know that the food got real bad,
especially in the fifties and sixties,
with a lot of the convenient food.
The food was manufactured.
It was not grown.
Rob: Was that a gradual realization
or was it kind of all at once you saw
the disparity and the destruction?
Ron: It was pretty gradual.
And one of the things that...
and I stopped eating that stuff years and years ago.
One of the things that really set me off
was I picked up tomatoes
and they said may be...
and they all were the same.
Every tomato looked identical in this pack
and it said, “May be coated with shellac
to preserve freshness.”
And it took me back to junior high school
because I used to work in wood class
and there it was like put shellac on the wood
to preserve it,
to protect it from the rain and everything.
And I am like, I do not really need
shellac on my tomatoes.
And so that was like, okay.
Ron: It is super obvious from your work
that you see that we need to
radically change this system.
We need massive change.
Ron: It needs to be burned down
to the ground and rise like the Phoenix.
We need a new system.
It does not work for us.
Yeah, it works perfectly and
that is what most people do not get, Rob.
The system works like a well-oiled
machine of dysfunction.
But it works.
But it just does not work for us.
So for it to work for us,
we have to change it
because we see they are
not going to change it.
To me, gardens equal freedom.
Every day.
You know, people say, “Oh, it is laborious.”
No, it is not. It is freedom,
because now you have
the toold to change your whole life,
literally, and to change your health
and the health of your neighbors
because you can not eat all the food
that you are growing.
It is impossible.
That would be your new job
is to eat all your food.
Rob: Once you are growing,
it just becomes abundant.
So there are so many people out there
who want to get started.
There are so many people
that are learning about food sovereignty,
food freedom, and wanting to
burn the system to the ground.
For people that want to get
their community starting growing,
do you have any thoughts of some ways
that people can get started
with taking back the streets?
Ron: Take back the street.
Just like I did with the parkway.
I got the law changed in L.A.
where you can plant food on your parkway
and you have been to my parkway
where there is apricots, plums, pears,
oranges, bananas, bananas,
apples, blueberries, blackberries,
growing right on the street.
So just plant.
Yeah just make sure your soil
is not contaminated
or remediate your soil.
Plant sunflowers or something like that,
which is also a beautification project,
for a season.
Just plant sunflowers.
It pulls a lot of the toxins out of the ground.
There are a lot of things that we can do
to change our environment.
and that is what we need to do.
Because we see they are not going to do it.
And I think one, to me,
it starts with our whole education system
having us live in the future.
Everything you do.
You do not go to school for right now.
Everything we have been trained to do
is for the future.
We do not have the future.
We have now.
This is like I tell people,
I do not want to get on a spaceship
and go to another planet.
We have the opportunity to fix this one
if we have the people in charge
wake the hell up and see that
this affects you, too.
This affects your kids, your grandkids.
Is this what you really want to leave them?
What are some of the plants
that you would recommend as like
some of the first easy plants
for beginner people to start with?
Any favorites?
For kids, I think it is radish
because it is a fast growing plant
and they see you get to show them
the alchemy and the magic
and the beauty of this planet where it has
you take a seed that you can barely see,
you put it in the ground,
in a month or so
you have something that you could eat.
I mean, that is magic.
And show them that that is value.
Show them, teach them that you can not buy value.
I do not care
if you own that car or that house.
It does not give you value.
And that is what I think we need to learn.
But far as the plants
and it depends on where you are.
One of the things to me,
why not grow bananas everywhere
that you can grow them?
Or make the conditions wherever you are
where you can grow them.
Because it is healthy as hell
and they are beautiful
and they provide shade.
Rob: And they just keep on getting
bigger and duplicating.
Ron: Exactly.
And I think more people need to know
about the things that are
happening in these cities
around the world and around us
and how people are
taking back their power.
And growing your own food is power
and it is contagious.
But I think the way we change it,
Rob, we got to make it sexy.
How do we make this just as sexy as weed
and alcohol and fast food
and all these designer clothes?
How do we make soil that sexy?
Rob: Well, I would say that this is pretty sexy.
Ron: Yeah, I would say.
You are in my office.
Rob: Again, I feel like the really good news
is that I think just since you really got
involved in this, what,
a decade or so ago?
Ron: Yeah
Rob: It is a lot sexier now than it used to be.
I feel like today there are
so many young people out there
and older people who just think
gardening is sexy
and that is why they want to do it.
Ron: Yeah, it is.
and I am proud to have beena part of that,
that it has spread around the world
and people say, “Oh, maybe I should.”
And I think it was helped, I mean,
with the pandemic, where a lot of people
were fighting over food and
I think people woke up and saw,
“Man, maybe I should be growing
some of my own food
because this could happen."
There are no food shortages.
There are distribution problems
and some of those distribution
problems are by design
and that is what people need to realize.
All this bad food, all these cancers;
it is by design.
Who benefits from it?
Who benefits from us being sick?
Rob: One of the main missions
of the Ron Finley Project is to transform
food deserts into food oases and paradises.
Do you see that, do you feel hopeful
about the decade ahead? Ron: I do not have hope.
I do not do hope.
I see opportunity.
And I always like to say I will take
a cup of opportunity
over a boatload of hope every day
because what can you
do with hope but hope?
Hope something does not happen.
No, give me the opportunity
to make some shit happen.
And people have it.
It is called air.
You are up and you are here
you are breathing.
That is magic.
So now how do we get people
to see the opportunities around them?
People do not look at soil
as an opportunity.
How many people become billionaires,
trillionaires with soil?
But we have a negative view on it.
Which works for who?
It works for them.
Life comes out of it.
Life goes right back into it.
Rob: The Earth provides us with our needs.
I tell people, "be the forest."
Not the force, the forest.
What happens in a forest?
Study it.
Rob: Right on! Be the forest, my friends.
Ron: And go plant some shit!
Rob: I was hoping you would say that!
Rob Greenfield Films