Detroit Free Press: Urban Farming a cash cow in the Motor City?

[marmar]

Is urban farming Detroit's cash cow?
2010 may yield profit as efforts reap jobs, tax base

BY JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER


Community gardeners in Detroit harvest a good deal of fruits and vegetables each year, but not much of that other type of green: profit.

This year, though, Detroit's small-scale, volunteer urban farm movement will see the most dramatic steps yet toward making urban farming an economically viable industry.

These steps promise that within the next few years, urban growers in Detroit will produce jobs and a tax base along with their salad greens.

Among those efforts are RecoveryPark and Hantz Farms, two proposals to farm Detroit's vacant spaces at a scale unknown now, up to 2,000 acres or more each -- that's twice the size of Belle Isle.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit Greening of Detroit this year plans to open Market Garden, a two-acre site near Eastern Market to train would-be career urban farmers how to operate like a business. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20100321/BUSINESS04/3210433/1318/Is-farming-Detroits-cash-cow?