Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim
  • Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 05:12:20 -0700


http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/12/07/9842990

In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim

By KATE STOHR

Published: December 4, 2003

DETROIT- PAUL WEERTZ lives less than 10 minutes from
downtown, but the view from his window is anything but
urban. On a warm day this fall, the air was ripe with
the smell of fresh-cut hay and manure. In the alley
behind his house, bales of hay teetered and listed
where garbage cans once stood. Chickens scratched in
the yard, near a garage that had been turned into a
barn. Mr. Weertz drives a Ford — not a sleek sedan but
a rebuilt 1960 tractor.

"My sisters and brothers gave me a pig for my
birthday," Mr. Weertz said, referring to his newest
barnyard resident. "I am not sure what I am going to
do with it."

After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are
being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this
139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and
dilapidated buildings. Satellite images show an urban
core giving way to an urban prairie.

Rather than fight this return to nature, Mr. Weertz
and other urban farmers have embraced it, gradually
converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40
community gardens and microfarms — some consuming
entire blocks.

Mr. Weertz, a science teacher, turned to farming 10
years ago to give his students a hands-on
understanding of the food chain. Other Detroit farmers
work for food banks, churches and community
organizations hoping to sow seeds of urban renewal.

Staking claims on abandoned lots, they produce about
six tons of produce a year, said Ashley Atkinson, head
of the Detroit Agriculture Network, a loose coalition
of 230 growers and volunteers.

"People really don't believe it until they see it,"
Ms. Atkinson said. "I have friends who say, `You are
joking me, right? This doesn't really exist in the
city.' "

Actually, it exists in nearly every major city. The
population here has dropped to less than a million
today from nearly two million in 1950. After the 1967
riots destabilized the city, families left in droves,
leaving 40,000 lots vacant. The Department of Public
Works says it spends $2.2 million a year clearing
debris and weeds from the lots, which are periodically
auctioned for as little as $250.

"Detroit has been abandoned by everything, including
grocery stores," Ms. Atkinson said, suggesting that in
a city where many do their shopping at "party stores,"
liquor stores that sell some convenience items,
community farms are more than a symbol of
environmental awareness.

Mr. Weertz has scattered his farm over 10 acres in
seven locations. It churns out not only hay but also
alfalfa, honey, eggs, goat's milk, produce and the
occasional side of beef, which is butchered at a
vocational school. About 100 students work as
volunteers.

On three vacant lots in northern Detroit, 500
volunteers are helping the Capuchin Soup Kitchen to
plant, pick, pack, can and distribute a ton of produce
a year: tomatoes, kale, cabbage, wax beans and more
than a dozen other vegetables, leafy greens and herbs.
Proceeds from sales, roughly $2,000, barely cover
irrigation and other expenses, said the Rev. Rick
Samyn, who coordinates the operation.

Urban farmers face a number of challenges, from
finding water (renegades tap into fire hydrants,
Brother Samyn said) to eliminating broken glass,
concrete and unsavory contaminants like lead from the
soil. Hayfields, mistaken for "ghetto grass," have
been mowed down by the Department of Public Works just
as they are ready to be cut and baled. Greenhouses are
sometimes claimed by the homeless, and pilfering is a
fact of life.

None of the farms are profitable, and all depend on
students and volunteers — more than 1,000 citywide,
Ms. Atkinson said. Members of her network have
received about $300,000 in grants and donations, she
estimated, including a few grants from the United
States Department of Agriculture normally aimed at
rural growers.

Advocates often say profits are secondary to building
a sense of community. "It's a means for people to take
control of their neighborhoods and get tangible
results that they can see and eat," said Yamini Bala,
coordinator of Detroit Summer, a youth gardening
group.

In 2000, frustrated by stadium-building and other
traditional means of drawing business downtown, a
group of growers, architects, urban planners and
activists collaborated on an alternative city plan
focused on neighborhoods called Adamah (Hebrew for "of
the earth"). Drafted by architects and students at the
University of Detroit Mercy, it proposed converting
four and a half square miles on the east side into a
self-sustaining village, complete with farms,
greenhouses, grazing land, a dairy and cannery. For
irrigation, Adamah proposed tapping an underground
creek (now used as a sewage main).

Some of Adamah's elements are already taking shape in
northeast Detroit, where John Gruchala, an
electrician, and his neighbor Tris Richardson, a
carpenter, began farming nearly an acre of vacant land
six years ago.

Today, working with neighbors, they produce a ton of
tomatoes, cabbage, kale and peppers a year. They are
converting an auto body shop into a community center
with a cafe, a cannery and a greenhouse.

Mr. Gruchala says such a center could encourage other
small businesses to invest in the neighborhood.
"Growing vegetables is just a vehicle for other kinds
of change," he said.

He and others would like farming to become a permanent
part of the Detroit landscape. But much of what they
do falls below city officials' radar. The chief city
planner, George Dunbar of the Planning and Development
Department, was surprised to learn that some farmers
had claimed plots as large as an acre.

"Outstanding," he said. "If that's the case, then I
commend the individuals who do that, but I tell you,
if we advertise the property and it's city-owned land
that we can get a housing development on, then I'll
take that. I am always trying to increase the tax
rolls to keep city services going."

In fact, earlier this year the city tried to use
eminent domain to build an athletic field on nine lots
farmed by Mr. Gruchala and Mr. Richardson, only six of
them owned by Mr. Gruchala. The farmers worked out a
compromise that will enable them to continue farming
on all nine of the lots.

Others have been less fortunate. Three years ago Kami
Pothukuchi, an assistant professor in urban planning
at Wayne State University, dug a garden at a busy
corner in southwest Detroit owned by a community
group. A year ago, the group sold the lot to a
developer. A convenience store is now planned for the
site, Ms. Pothukuchi said.

In the absence of a citywide vision of a new kind of
Detroit, of farms perhaps entwined with new
businesses, nature continues to run its course.

As frost settles on Mr. Weertz's farm, it's not
uncommon to see rabbit warrens or pheasants. "It's a
totally surreal experience," Mr. Weertz said. "You are
in this urban area, and you are seeing this whole
natural transformation that you'd normally have to go
miles away to see."




  • [Livingontheland] In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim, Tradingpost, 12/08/2003

Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page