Our first morning in Detroit greeted us with a stark climate contrast to DC. It was 30 degrees with strong wind gusts. This challenging climate to farm will eventually warm up, creating a short growing season that a vast variety of crops can thrive in. Michigan has the second most diverse Ag industry after CA. Ashley Atkinson, Director of Urban Agricultre - The Greening of Detroit, introduced our class to the opportunity that exists in Detroit for communities to produce their own food within their own neighborhoods. Ashley and her staff support 1351 urban gardens, supplying Detroit with 2% of their foods needs. She took us to a few gardens allowing us to see the additional positive effects of increased community involvement.
We left Eastern Market to visit Hantz Farms where we were greeted by Mr. Michael Score who is the president of the operation. Over one third of the housing properties in Detroit are vacant thus leaving the city with a heavy burden of not only lowering property tax base, but also neighborhoods full of blight. Their vision is to take some of these areas and clean them up and transform them into urban farming operations. Talking with Mr. Score you can sense a strong entrepreneurial spirit of wanting to help bring some hope and self pride back into some neighborhoods. They are not the silver bullet from an economic stand point. However they will help clean up some of the rough neighborhoods raising city tax base helping them pull out of their 160 million dollar city budget deficit.
We ended our eighth day in Detroit's historic midtown with a panel discussion led by native "Detroiter" Lee Gaddies. The discussion was held at the Michigan State University center. Dinner was provided by Capuchin, a local catering company that supports one of Detroit's many soup kitchens. In attendance were 16 fellows from the Great Lakes Leadership Academy. This gave us an opportunity to talk with many Michigan leaders from around the state and gain their perspectives on Detroit's current woes. The post dinner panel discussion was a lively one and featured panelists from HOA's, Transit Authority, and an activist for immigrant rights. All three panelists gave us their versions of the issues facing Detroit and solutions to fix the problems.
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