By Dan Hill
Voices

Detroit has become fertile ground for a growing urban farming movement.

About 80 gardens dotted the city’s landscape in 2004. By 2009, the number jumped to 875, according to the Garden Resource Program, which keeps track of Metro Detroit’s agrarian activity.

Advocates claim urban farms address problems facing Detroit – which the USDA labels a a “food desert” – by providing nutrition and empowering local residents. But the city is at a crossroads as members of the local urban farm movement discuss the future.

“What happens at the grassroot level is some push and pull about, ‘Should it be a big conglomerate who does it or a neighborhood association that does this work?’” said Alice Thompson, chairperson for a task force created by Mayor Dave Bing to address how to use the abundance of unused land in Detroit.

Independent farmers look at the movement as a way to build a healthier community.

Chickens cluck in conversation and ducks wander a pen as the occasional car rolls past Spirit of Hope Church in Corktown, a Detroit neighborhood founded by Irish immigrants about three miles north of downtown.

Spirit Farm started when the urban farm movement was germinating but has witnessed a surge of interest in recent years, said Kate Devlin, head gardener. Adult and youth volunteers visit Corktown each summer to work the soil. Devlin gives half of the Spirit Farm’s produce to volunteers and the church’s food pantry, which supplements groceries for 160 families. She sells the rest to pay for supplies that cannot be attained through donations or grants.

However, members of the urban farming movement in Detroit must work under the radar, Devlin said, because some of the gardens violate city land use laws. Chickens squabbling in the pen at Spirit Farm are breaking the law — farm animals are not allowed in the city — and the tin roof over the oven made of clay, sand and straw is not up to code.

The Garden Resource Program and other nonprofit groups provide resources to community gardens in part because the city does not have funds, Devlin said.

For these reasons, Michael Score, a former agricultural educator at Michigan State, said  large-scale agricultural production can better serve Detroit. Score is president of Hantz Farms, a company based in Detroit that plans to plant 2,000 acres of trees on the city’s east side.

“The city has 40 square miles of vacant areas for growing,” Score said. “Even at the exponential growth of the gardening program, the gardening program isn’t designed to make a significant difference in the inventory of foreclosed properties, which is a huge drain on the city’s budget.”

Hantz Farms is in the center of a debate over the future of urban farming Detroit. Commercial farming could bring commercial pesticides to neighborhoods using organic methods, Devlin said.

“Sustainability is going to come from communities and neighborhoods building their own
food sources,” said the Rev. Matthew Bode, who launched a Lutheran and Episcopalian congregation in 2002 at the 130-year-old building housing Spirit of Hope Church.

“My greatest concern is creating a commercial environment that discourages people from growing their own food.”

Yet Score said Hantz Farms can function alongside Detroit’s independent growers by distributing crops through local farmer’s markets. A focus on large-scale production and wholesale will prevent the business from interfering with local neighborhood markets while expanding Detroit’s economy, Score said.

Regardless of whether neighborhood associations or private firms drive the future of urban farming in Detroit, Bode said he thinks Detroit will lead the nation in food issues and “conversations about economic justice.” Although outsiders offer views for rebuilding the city, Bode said he visions a future where solutions are home-grown.

“Detroit has a lot to teach people,” he said.

Follow Dan Hill @nudhill.