Financial Group Plans To Convert Almost 10% Of Detroit's Surface Area To Farms - Business Green

[hatrack]

A Michigan-based financial group has announced ambitious plans to turn large swathes of crime-ridden Detroit into urban farmland. In the long term, Hantz Group hopes to develop up to 10,000 acres of underutilised and vacant land in Downtown Detroit - almost a tenth of the city's 143-square-mile area - and turn it into a mixture of cash crop land, ornamental gardens, and riding trails.

The ambitious scheme will begin with a 70-acre purchase on the city's Lower East Side. Matt Allen, senior vice present for Hantz subsidiary Hantz Farms, who lives close to the proposed "phase one farm", said that the land has been targeted for its low density, and currently supports between zero and nine residents per acre. Under the proposals, the land will be sourced from privately held parcels, along with foreclosed land currently owned by the city, state, and county. In addition to buying some land outright the company is also looking to enter into partnerships with local communities to help develop other parcels of land.

Hantz will be working with researchers from Michigan State University to select the types of crop that can be grown on the land, Allen explained. Where possible, edible crops will be grown, but where soil will not support them - if, for example, it has been degraded by industrial use - it will be used for non-edible crops. "We hope to put in several hundred acres of Christmas tree farms, and also wood veneering projects or long-term sustainable growing operations where we can harvest wood and non-edibles," Allen explained.

The purchase price for the initial land is roughly $3,000 per acre, he added. The Group hopes to purchase 5,000 acres over the next five years.

EDIT

http://www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2239954/financiers-plant-farm-downtown

[madrchsod]

1. excellent idea...

10,000 acres could help sustain the entire metro detroit area with goods, services, and jobs. in some ways it`s ironic

[roguevalley]

2. awesome. green things will be good for local people. it will be beautiful.

[Barack_America]

3. Fascinating.

As the urban sprawl creeps outwards, the city itself begins to revert to farmland.

[starroute]

4. Except for the 'giant agribusiness' and non-organic parts

I'd really like to see stuff like this coming to pass -- but I want to see it done right. And this sounds a couple of notches less than than.