Orchards, greenhouses could fill abandoned streets of Detroit

Michael Score gazes at the ramshackle houses and weed-ridden vacant lots in decrepit Detroit neighbourhoods and envisions a solution to the Motor City's woes: Apple orchards, Christmas-tree fields and other large-scale commercial farms replacing acres of abandoned slums.

Garbage-strewn, broken-windowed industrial plants, long idle, would get a second life housing state-of-the-art indoor growing systems where disadvantaged city residents would cultivate delicate, profitable crops like strawberries, salad greens and mushrooms.

Residential streets pockmarked by neglect and violence would become access roads for tractors and plows.

"The farm becomes a tool to reignite Detroit's economy," said Score, a veteran of the state's agricultural school and now president of Hantz Farms, a commercial firm formed by longtime Detroit businessman John Hantz.

Mr Hantz has pledged $30 million dollars of his own funds to finance year-round, for-profit farming within the city limits.

Other urban agriculture plans are under way in the city, sponsored by non-profits or public-private partnerships, but like Hantz are on hold awaiting approval from Detroit's bureaucracy.

Demographers estimate that there are 40 square miles of abandoned residential property within the city limits - about the same as occupied by the entire city of San Francisco. About 33,000 houses on 1/10-acre residential lots are abandoned or ceded to the city through tax foreclosures.

Even good food is scarce: No major supermarket chain operates an outlet within Detroit's 138 square miles, leaving residents to eat processed goods from convenience stores or travel miles to suburban grocers for fresh meat and produce.

The first crops would come from apple orchards planted at the cost of $30,000 or $40,000 per acre, on trees espaliered for easy care and harvest, Score said. Contaminated land unfit for edible crops would be planted with trees, flowers, hay and other non-consumables.

"Rather than wasting resources to recreate Iowa in the middle of Detroit, let's see what we can grow in the city as it exists," he said in a recent interview.

"You don't have to plow an orchard every year, for example."

Gary Wozniak, chief development officer for SHAR, aims to establish for-profit farming via a worker-owned cooperative system, much like Spain's famed Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa.

Despite the enthusiasm, however, the hope of summer crops this year is quickly fading.

Kathryn Underwood, a Detroit city planner, said her department has drafted new rules, but admits that nothing will happen in time for spring planting this year.

"Right now, there simply aren't the necessary large tracts of contiguous land," she said. "We're not going to make the growing season but we hope by summer the code will be in place."