Detroit Aims for Food Sovereignty
There are 165 acres of urban gardens and farms under cultivation in Detroit, Michigan. In a tour, Ken Weikal, ASLA, co-founder of the non-profit GrowTown and the firm Ken Weikal Landscape Architecture, explained that everyone from Capuchin Monks to non-profit cooperatives, university labs to self-sufficient farmers, corporations to small businesses are involved in using Detroit's vacant lands to produce food. The goals of these efforts are to increase food production "for Detroiters and by Detroiters," generate new sources of income, and build community. The grand, long-term vision: "food sovereignty" for this resurgent rust-belt city.
A few farms we toured downtown were examples of corporate social responsibility efforts — spaces for company employees to volunteer. For example, an empty lot next to the MGM Grand casino and hotel in downtown Detroit was transformed into Plum Street Market Garden, where everyone volunteering the day we went was wearing an MGM employee t-shirt (see image above). The 2-acre garden produces 20 types of fruits and vegetables. MGM has invested some $600,000 in the project so far, and partnered with Keep Growing Detroit, a local non-profit, to hold some 60 community classes there a year.
Another example is Lafayette Greens, a nearly half-acre garden set in the empty lot where once stood the historic Lafayette building. The garden was financed and administered by Compuware Corporation, which has its headquarters a block away, but is now run by the Greening of Detroit, a non-profit. Designed by Beth Hagenbuch, ASLA, a partner at Ken Weikal Landscape Architecture, the market garden won an ASLA 2012 Professional General Design Award. Weikal said the garden helped start the conversation downtown among everyone from policy-makers to school kids and tourists about the opportunities with urban gardening.
Heirloom apple trees line one edge of the garden. "They have ornamental, productive, and screening qualities."
Within the garden, raised beds, with smart benches at the end, grow a range of herbs and vegetables. "The beds are programmed like a museum exhibition: they are programmed for flavor, color. They are vegetal exhibitions."
Lafayette Greens / Jared Green
Sheds made of reclaimed wood house the gardening tools and supplies. Benches scattered throughout attract the employees working in nearby towers and passers-by.
Lafayette Greens / Jared Green
Detroit's bottom-up local food movement was the focus of a session at the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU). Ashley Atkinson, who runs Keep Growing Detroit, explained that urban farming and gardening is not a new thing in Detroit. In the 1890s, Republican Mayor Pinzen Stuart Pingree, who was elected to four terms, encouraged the poor and hungry to grow food. "He was the laughing stock of the country, but hunger was reduced dramatically." Urban farming was seen as "low value, low education work," but decades later, during World War I and World War II, nearly "every major city practiced urban farming."
The mission of Keep Growing Detroit is food sovereignty in Detroit. "We want the majority of food vegetables in Detroit to be grown by Detroiters." Her goal is to transform some 40 square miles of vacant land in the city into productive assets. Keep Growing doesn't differentiate between "family gardens, school or market gardens."
In 2003, Keep Growing Detroit started a garden resource program to grow seeds and transplants. They had to build this whole system from the ground-up, because "no one knew where to get these." They now grow 250,000 organic transplants a year that are given away to the community. "We distribute them equitably" through local educational workshops and training sessions. In every district of the city, local farmers lead these training sessions. There are also tool sheds where hand tools and shovels can be borrowed for free, and compost centers where some 200 tons of compost worth $1.5 million is also distributed at no charge. And "we use shared work days and community events to build community infrastructure. Plus, we eat a lot together."
Her group then formed Grown in Detroit, a collaborative network of some 80 gardeners and farmers who sell their produce at farmers markets and to local restaurants. According to Atkinson, "some $100,000 is made and 100 percent of that money goes to the growers." There is also a network of 1,400 community gardeners who help bring healthy food to the neighborhoods. They are part of an effort to establish healthy eating behavior among very young children. "If we can introduce healthy food recipes and cooking at a young age, we can impact them their whole lives."
In 2013, the Detroit city government finally changed regulations so urban farming is now legal. While Atkinson considers that a win, she has a much broader vision: 25 percent of the 40 square miles of vacant land, which is some 5,000 acres, under cultivation. With that much farming, "we can produce 70 percent of the vegetables and 40 percent of the fruit consumed in Detroit locally and raise local incomes."
Devita Davidson, who heads communications for FoodLab Detroit, made the moral argument for local food production. "If you look closely at the supermarket, it's a facade. The industrial food system is the site of injustice; the food system is failing so many people." While she sees Detroit as the "comeback city," she still sees major issues: 70 percent of adults are obese, and 40 percent of kids are. "Detroit is dying from diet-related diseases." She wants all of those locally-grown fruits and vegetables to be transformed into value-added products like ketchups, salsas, jams, and sauces. Her group's innovative effort — Detroit Kitchen Connect, which was been lauded by Oprah Winfrey — enables local entrepreneurs to use restaurant, church, and other facility kitchens during off-hours to develop their products. Such a smart variation on the sharing economy, with food justice and social equity at its heart.
And Pashon Murray, a co-founder of Detroit Dirt, sees access to good quality compost as central to the entire food sovereignty effort. She said Americans are incredibly wasteful, disposing of $218 billion in uneaten food, which is them dumped into landfills. "Some 52 million tons of food waste is sent to landfills each year, while 10 million tons is just left in the fields." She argues that much of that food waste can be collected and turned into compost, revitalizing soils in the process. Plus, "waste recovery equals revenue and jobs."
She has partnered with GM and Chrysler, collecting their food waste from factory cafeterias weekly and turning it into compost that is then distributed to local gardeners and farmers. She hires ex-cons, "people we associate with dirt, the forgotten and left-behind."
Her dream is to raise enough funds for an "in-vessel composter digester" that will help her scale up her compost production. She hopes to realize this in 2017. "Compost is the root of the soil and soil is the foundation."