Commercial farming to start in Detroit with 1,000 trees

Source: Detroit Free Press

Two years after it was proposed, the Hantz Farms project is evolving into Hantz forests, at least for now.

Detroit's first proposed commercial farming enterprise will plant about 1,000 trees, mostly oak saplings, this fall on 3.5 acres of land purchased from the city. The land is behind the Hantz Farms headquarters at 17403 Mt. Elliott on the city's east side.

The tree planting is a much smaller project than the 2,000 acres of food crops Hantz proposed two years ago, a plan city officials have yet to approve. Michael Score, president of Hantz Farms, said talks continue over a variety of possibilities, including getting larger tracts of land on which to plant more trees or fruits and vegetables.

Read more: http://www.freep.com/article/20110808/BUSINESS04/108080324/Commercial-farming-start-Detroit-1-000-trees

There is an area in Detroit (one of many) that has many vacant lots. People that live there want to use these lots for vegetable gardens. Now they (the city) have put all kinds of restrictions on them. I see no point to this at all and then they wonder why people feel defeated. It's a mess.

Thanks to the Hantz proposal there are others who were inspired who are working on similar ideas in other communities with better preparation and testing of the political waters.

lots of heavy metal pollution in Detroit.

Older Houses used Lead Paint. Fortunately, most plants won't take up much if any, but root crops need to be scrubbed well or peeled and washed before cooking.

living in a city so devastated it will be wonderful to see. Go, DETROIT! I hope more stuff happens for the people.

"The Detroit City Council approved the sale of 3.5 acres -- about 35 house lots -- to Hantz Farms this year, but barred the company from growing food or selling products from the land."

:wtf: So instead they're planting Oak Trees that won't mature for 20+ years. Why is it that so many cities resist the idea of community gardens run as a cooperative?

"Why is it that so many cities resist the idea of community gardens run as a cooperative?"

Boy, how many reasons do you want?

They are bad for the economy. All that food people grow is food that people don't buy, nor do they drive to the stores to get it. If they buy anything, it's durable goods like tools, not services. And if you eat too much food from gardens, your consumption of medical services goes down - another hit on the economy.

They are bad for culture. They teach people to work with each other, to disregard authority and work cooperatively, to ground their solutions to problems in the physical world, to observe closely, to care for other living things.

Gardening is a pleasurable activity. Therefore it should be restricted from the general public, and made very expensive. It's both unprofitable and encouraging of addiction to offer people pleasure without making them work for it. And it's wrong to offer high-level pleasures to lower-class people.

more available on request...


This is DU - I suppose I need the :sarcasm: flag.

the most fertile agricultural land in the state is underneath Detroit and the surrounding areas. This from a paper I wrote so John Engler could graduate from MSU!

Generally speaking, settlers would come in and establish farms in the most fertile areas first. Towns would spring up in the middle of those fertile areas to serve the farmers. As more settlers moved in, additional farms would be established further out, where the ground was less fertile or less friendly to farming. As the towns expanded into major cities, the most fertile land was paved over, leaving only the less fertile outlying land for farming.

This is easily true for half of the major cities in this country.