Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
about 20 per cent lack transportation. Few if any grocery stores exist in many districts
for the only places that sell food are convenience stores and petrol stations, and the
food there is invariably of the processed, packaged and tinned variety. The Detroit
Black Community Food Security Network, started in 2006, is a non-profit grass-
roots community organization that has been instrumental in creating Detroit's Food
Policy Council and runs the U-Ujamaa Food Buying Co-operative where members
are able to purchase healthy foods and household items at discount prices. For
Monica White (2011a, 2011b) in attempting to control their own food supply, the
D-Town farmers are articulating a form of active resistance to economic deprivation
that demonstrates agency, facilitates empowerment and proclaims access to decent
food a human right. In fact, a loosely networked food justice movement is emerging
across the United States (Gottlieb and Joshi, 2013) and beyond.
Obesity and poor nutrition is a huge problem in Detroit, as elsewhere in the USA,
and increasingly elsewhere, including India and China where affluence has led to a
change in diet - at least for some. Urban gardeners, horticulturalists and farmers
therefore recognize that developing and tending a plot for the production of local
food is as much about securing social, environmental and food justice as anything
else. This is one of the key messages of Urban Roots as well as in reports and studies
produced by journalists and academics (Gallagher, 2010). In so doing it reconnects
people with the land, the source of their food and the true flavour and taste of
naturally grown produce. Beans grow on vines, potatoes in the land, tomatoes on
a plant, lettuce from the soil. Local food growing connects people with each other
too, activities that help nurture social capital, conviviality and community
development. However, small urban farming either by individuals or groups is not
the only story in Detroit. John Hantz, a financial service professional and entrepreneur,
runs a for-profit organization, Hantz Farms, that has a scheme to commercialize
and industrialize non-organic urban agriculture. In December 2012 the City of Detroit
sold to the Hantz Woodland project 1,500 lots (140 acres) below market value to
plant a hardwood tree farm as part of an urban clean-up and beautification project.
In March 2013 the city changed its zoning rules in order to expand farming by
formally creating a classification for urban farms and community gardens but, as
Detroit Free Press journalist John Gallagher (2013) and others have argued, urban
farming is part of the solution to Detroit's problems but cannot be the sole or
perhaps even the major one. However, the benefits of urban agriculture are significant
socially, environmentally and economically.
There are in the region of 900 plus community gardens or small urban farms
constituting about 500 or so acres in the city. Suitably scaled up to about 3,600
acres citywide with many of the farms somewhat larger than the vast majority of
the existing ones, Gallagher (2010) suggests that the city could produce about 76
per cent of the vegetables and 42 per cent of the fruit the population needs for a
healthy diet. As one of the participants in Urban Roots said, this could mean that
Motown became Growtown.
Righting wrongs
A major achievement of the environmental justice movement, particularly at the
policy level, has been a practice-based critique of expert-led processes of risk
assessment, research and action. For Brulle (2000) and Agyeman (2005), local
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search