Detroit: The next agrarian paradise?

Another media source looks at Detroit and its agrarian potential.Excerpt:One sustainable solution is for Detroit to grow their own food. There is plentiful open land, fertile soil, ample water and a willing workforce. A recent study by a student at Michigan State University indicates that Detroit has enough vacant land to grow 76 percent of the vegetables and 42 percent of the fruits consumed by city residents. The acres of abandoned buildings and property lots make Detroit a hotbed for community gardens and large-scale urban agriculture….Detroit may be in the best position to become the world’s first 100 percent food self-sufficient city…talk about sustainability! Imagine America’s once prosperous, industrial Detroit as the first modern American city where agriculture, not automobiles, is the most vital industry. Mark Dowie, an investigative historian, eloquently portrayed a vision of Detroit in his article, Food Among the Ruins, as one where growing in the city are “chard and tomatoes on vacant lots, orchards on former school grounds, mushrooms in open basements, fish in abandoned factories, hydroponics in bankrupt department stores, livestock grazing on former golf courses, high rise farms in old hotels and waving wheat where cars were once test-driven.”Read the entire article here.