As a student at East High School, Adam Brock couldn’t have cared less about the natural world.
“I was into longboarding and playing in bands,” said Brock, 29.
But nearly a decade later, as people celebrate the 45th anniversary of Earth Day with week-long festivities, he’s working at the cutting edge of green living, considered
Soft-spoken and sharp-minded, he’s an urban who works at both grassroots and policy levels. He’s strategic planning adviser at the in the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood, where the mostly Hispanic community members speak with him in Spanish about running , their market that offers residents healthy, organic foods at a fraction of retail costs.
He’s also a member of the , on which he’s known for his ability to listen to all voices at the table.
“He’s one of the people who brings some of the disparate groups together around food, because in Colorado they’re not always the same people, or in intersecting circles,” said Stacey McConlogue, program director of Denver Healthy People at the Denver Department of Environmental Health.
Those different groups include food justice activists, industrial and organic farmers, slow-food fans and officials from such groups as the Denver Housing Authority.
Behind the scenes, when not working on sustainability projects, he cultivates simple living.
“He found out a way to make his hobbies his lifestyle,” said long-time friend Coby Gould.
Brock is part of Sleep Tight, a collective house in Lincoln Park where members share the same values of creating community — a place that has a greenhouse, chickens and an edible food forest in the backyard. Residents grow such things as
Jerusalem artichokes and golden berries, which need very little water and make delicious food that Brock has learned to cook. It’s all part of the bioregional cuisine movement, which he illustrated during while he crunched on a salad made from bison, sorrel and nopales.
“To really change and heal Colorado’s food system,” he said, “we have to start listening to the land we live on, and using that understanding to completely change the way we grow our food, and even what food we eat.”
Driven by curiosity
Growing up in Denver, Brock watched his parents grow their own vegetables in the backyard, but it made little impression. He has no treasured memories of pulling carrots fresh from earth, and doesn’t really remember what food they grew.
He was a kid propelled by intense curiosity, and changed passions like he changed clothes.
“I remember him being fascinated by a project for a chunk of time,” said Gould, who’s known Brock since their preschool days and is now executive director at the GrowHaus. “Like he didn’t care about music at all, and I really did, and then one day he heard a Beatles album and suddenly he knew more about music then I ever knew. He’d get fixated on things like that.”
In high school, they played together in a grunge-rock band, and kept in touch after Brock went off to study at where he became increasingly interested in environmental issues.
“I remember him getting really freaked out about climate change,” Gould said. “He was scared about what we were doing to the environment and developed an interest in doing something about it.”
Brock helped start , which worked to improve the university’s environmental performance: Its efforts won an award from the American Association for Sustainability in Higher Education.
Then he discovered permaculture design, a field that advocates for stable human habitats that heal the environment over time instead of harming it.
“That was profoundly inspiring to me,” said Brock, “and I began learning about projects around the world.”
After studying with some of the top permaculturists in the country, he graduated with a degree in ecological design in 2008, a time when sustainability issues were heating up across the country.
He could have stayed on the East Coast, hunting down a prestigious eco-job in a hipster city like Brooklyn or a policy-oriented town like Washington, D.C.
But he was rooted in his native soil.
“I felt very nourished by my childhood in Denver, and felt that it raised me,” he said. “The more I was away, the more I appreciated and respected Denver, as a city, and its culture.”
Sustainability group
He moved back in 2009, and immediately connected with leaders in the sustainability movement such as Dana Miller, who then spearheaded meetings at the Mercury Cafe for Transition Denver, a grassroots movement working in cities around the world on such environmental issues as climate change.
She was struck by his quiet confidence.
“When Adam Brock speaks, people listen, because he’s not just speaking to hear himself,” she said. “It’s something he’s thought through. He’s a natural leader. He’s kind of shy — not terribly outgoing — but once you start working with him you realize he’s really wise for his years.”
About that same time, developer Paul Tamburello had just visited , a nonprofit urban farm created by Will Allen, who won a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant for his innovation. on land he’d bought at East 47th Avenue and York Street.
He sought Miller’s advice on hiring an operations manager, and she immediately called Brock to gauge his interest.
“Even then he was brilliant,” she said. “It was obvious he was a rising star.”
He took the job, and kept growing his networks.
Last year, he became co-chair of the new of the , which is working with different city agencies to find vacant public land where community members can grow food.
The goal is beyond ambitious: to have 20 percent of the food eaten by Denver residents grown or processed in Colorado by 2020, up from the current level of less than 1 percent. It’s not easy work, especially now when vacant land is hot property for developers in the thriving real estate market.
“He’s so good because he’s really focused on how we move a particular idea or project forward,” said Wade Shelton, project manager of the who serves as co-chair. “He’s not thinking about his own ego. He’s all about having a big tent that includes everyone. He’s a fantastic guy and we’re really lucky to have him working on this.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or twitter.com/coconnordp
Learn more
Sustainable living: Check out the Denver Permaculture Guild, which meets April 23 at 5:30 p.m. at Baere Brewing, 320 Broadway.
The GrowHaus: Join its farm-to-table fundraising dinner May 8 from 6 to 10 p.m. Tickets range from $20 to $50. Grow Haus, 4751 York St., 720-515-4751.
