On Detroit city’s east side, where auto workers once assembled cars by the millions, nature is taking back the land. Cottonwood trees grow through the collapsed roofs of homes stripped clean for scrap metal. Wild grasses carpet the rusty shells of empty factories, now home to pheasants and wild turkeys.
This green veil is proof of how far this city has fallen from its industrial heyday and, to a small group of investors, a clear sign. Detroit, they say, needs to get back to what it was before Henry Ford moved to town: farmland.
“There’s so much land available, and it’s begging to be used,” said Michael Score, president of the Hantz Farms, which is buying up abandoned sections of the city’s 139-square-mile landscape and plans to transform them into a large-scale commercial farm enterprise.
“Farming is how Detroit started,” Score said, “and farming is how Detroit can be saved.”The urban agricultural movement has grown nationwide in recent years, as recession-fueled worries prompted people to raise fruits and vegetables to feed their own families and perhaps sell at local farmers’ markets.
Large gardens and small farms -- usually 10 acres or less -- have cropped up in thriving cities such as Berkeley, Calif., where land is tough to come by, and struggling Rust Belt communities such as Flint, which hopes to encourage green space development and residents to eat locally grown foods. In Detroit, hundreds of backyard gardens and scores of community gardens have blossomed in recent years, and helped feed students in at least 40 schools and hundreds of families.
Yet it is the size and scope of Hantz Farms that makes the project unique. Although company officials declined to pinpoint how many acres they might use, they have been quoted saying that they plan to farm up to 5,000 acres within the Motor City’s limits in the coming years, and raise everything from organic lettuces to trees for biofuel.
The project was launched two years ago by Michigan native and well-known financier John Hantz, who has invested an initial $30 million of his own money toward purchasing equipment and land. It will start small. Next spring, the farm is expected to begin growing crops on about 30 acres of land, Score said.
Because it has been difficult for Hantz and his team to purchase large contiguous parcels, much of the acreage has been grouped into smaller “pods.” Each will grow different crops, depending on the condition of the soil and what buildings remain on the land, Score said.
They envision a city where green fields and apple orchards flourish next to houses and factories, and forests thrive alongside interstates and highways. The team is still figuring out what will grow where: Tree groves could be planted in places where the soil is too contaminated to grow food, while empty factory buildings may be converted to house hydroponic fields to raise specialty vegetables, fruit and cooking herbs.
The idea of turning this former American manufacturing capital into an agrarian paradise is not that far-fetched. At least not with history as a guide.
The city, one of the Midwest’s oldest, began as an agricultural settlement in the early 1700s with “ribbon” farms -- long, narrow stretches of land -- carved out along the edge of local rivers. And up until the industrial boom of the early 20th century, this swath of southeastern Michigan was covered in apple and peach orchards and miles of grape vines.