Farming To Save Detroit?

Something sort of cuts across the grain for me when thinking of this as progress. Throwing large amounts of subsidies into farming in the heart of Detroit doesn't strike me as progress. And I'm thinking that's got to be part of the angle here. Making the land arguably productive because the people have fled might be worthwhile. But people still have to work to buy food, ... today, anyway.

Then one day about a year and a half ago, Hantz had a revelation. "We need scarcity," he thought to himself as he drove past block after unoccupied block. "We can't create opportunities, but we can create scarcity." And that, he says one afternoon in his living room between puffs on an expensive cigar, "is how I got onto this idea of the farm."

Yes, a farm. A large-scale, for-profit agricultural enterprise, wholly contained within the city limits of Detroit. Hantz thinks farming could do his city a lot of good: restore big chunks of tax-delinquent, resource-draining urban blight to pastoral productivity; provide decent jobs with benefits; supply local markets and restaurants with fresh produce; attract tourists from all over the world; and -- most important of all -- stimulate development around the edges as the local land market tilts from stultifying abundance to something more like scarcity and investors move in. Hantz is willing to commit $30 million to the project. He'll start with a pilot program this spring involving up to 50 acres on Detroit's east side. "Out of the gates," he says, "it'll be the largest urban farm in the world."

Comments

[BlogDog]

In the country, you can kill the vermin who are stealing your crops. Is that going to be allowed when the vermin are human?
I see another epic fail coming out of De-twah.

[Lisa Graas]

For a second there I thought I was at The Onion. Seriously???? What is this 'we need scarcity' garbage? These people hurt my brain.

[Rich K]

This reminds me of the movie with Will Smith where he lives in a city being blanketed by vegatation after the apocolyptic calamity that befell it. Only in this case it wasnt a straine of plague but Democrat control which caused the downfall. How poetic is that,,LOL

[WAHOO WILLIE]

What better way to turn ours into a third world country than a return of mostly agrarian society. I've got tipis cheap!

[Mikey NTH]

I am sure the Dept. of Agriculture and the EPA (and the Michigan Agriculture and Environmental departments) are going to look closely at any food grown in Detroit going to market. This was a late nineteenth - early twentieth century industrialized area. There is going to be some interesting things in the soil.