Santa Barbara Horticultural Society will present a conversation with Michael Ableman, a local farmer, environmental activist, and urban and local food systems advocate, 7 p.m. Feb. 5 at Trinity Lutheran Church, 909 N. La Cumbre Road.

Ableman is the founder of the Center for Urban Agriculture at Fairview Gardens in Goleta. He has been farming organically since the early 1970s, and is considered one of the pioneers of the organic farming and urban agriculture movements.

He has led projects in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the Caribbean focused on hands-on approaches to improving food security.

Abelman’s pioneering work with under-served communities and in developing innovative agricultural systems has been profiled by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, National Geographic, and National Public Radio.

He is the subject of the award-winning PBS film “Beyond Organic,” narrated by Meryl Streep, and his work in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is featured in the feature-length documentary “A New Economy.”

Abelman is the founder/director of Sole Food Street Farms and the charity Cultivate Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia; and founder/director of the Center for Arts, Ecology and Agriculture based at his family home and farm on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia.

Abelman is the author of four books:
“From the Good Earth: A celebration of growing food around the world” (Abrams 1993); “On Good Land: The autobiography of an urban farm” (Chronicle Books 1998); “Fields of Plenty: A farmer’s journey in search of real food and the people who grow it” (Chronicle Books 2005); and “Street Farm: Growing Food, Jobs, and Hope on the Urban Frontier” (Chelsea Green 2016).