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2013-11-25 Economy
Urban decay to be replaced with farmland in Detroit
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Posted by Fred 2013-11-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ]  Top

#1 I agree with New School's Nevin Cohen. Farming is actually the root of the problem, not the solution. Had we learned to pick our own cotton in the first place, none of this would have happened.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-11-25 00:32||   2013-11-25 00:32|| Front Page Top

#2 Then the next problem is how to protect the crop so the folks from the 'hood come down at harvest time and go through the farm like a blight of locusts.

Got to think these things through.

First thing to do is to raze all the abandoned buildings, then dig up the streets you don't need. You are going to have to look into hazardous waste sites, too. Get all the abandoned buildings out right up to the occupied ones.
Posted by Alaska Paul 2013-11-25 01:21||   2013-11-25 01:21|| Front Page Top

#3 That's the ticket!

That's all we need: more food!
Posted by badanov 2013-11-25 01:27|| http://www.chriscovert.net  2013-11-25 01:27|| Front Page Top

#4 Raising vegetables instead of welfare recipients---sounds too good to be true.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2013-11-25 03:50||   2013-11-25 03:50|| Front Page Top

#5 Nevin Cohen says "Replicating a community farm is not as important as addressing issues of race and class concerns -- which underlie Detroit's problems,"

Yes. If only Detroit had a black mayor and blacks as heads of all the public utilities, safety departments and school positions. If only that had happened, Detroit would be paradise today.
Posted by lord garth 2013-11-25 06:09||   2013-11-25 06:09|| Front Page Top

#6 Farms tend to attract vermin. Pest control is a big problem. Thgat's why most farmers own .22s. Almost huntin season here. Soon they'll have white tail rats in the Detroit farms. Need .30s them. Soon Detroit will be civilized again. Going back to the farm. Makes me think of Garrison Keiler.
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2013-11-25 06:49||   2013-11-25 06:49|| Front Page Top

#7 
Posted by Snavise Cholurt4299 2013-11-25 06:49||   2013-11-25 06:49|| Front Page Top

#8 Zoning will not permit crops and cultivation. Rats and mice will do the rest(no kill traps). Use only Monsanto approved genetically enhanced seed also. No seed of your own variety. No unauthorized sprays or fertilizers. On and on. Tax on estimated product value. Only politically connected will be approved upon submission of proposed agricultural effort in approved format. The welfare people must be given a percentage of product produced.Only approved hauling of product but never out of city limits.Sites will be monitored for compliance and strictly enforced. No weeds over 2 inches.OH my, my, my all the new laws. Removal of any toxic soil contamination.
Posted by Dale 2013-11-25 07:02||   2013-11-25 07:02|| Front Page Top

#9 During desperate times agriculture becomes an easy target. Kitchener and Roberts had studied General Sherman's handling of rebellion not 40 years previously. Insurgencies and armed resistance subside rather quickly on empty bellies.
Posted by Besoeker 2013-11-25 07:28||   2013-11-25 07:28|| Front Page Top

#10 ...so zero out the EBT cards (just don't do what Walmart did in Louisiana). Then fire'm back up in areas you want the herd to move out to. You'll be amazed how many will find the means to get to 'free stuff'. Cap the area's overall authorization to prevent too many squatters in one place. They'll figure it out soon enough.
Posted by Procopius2k 2013-11-25 09:03||   2013-11-25 09:03|| Front Page Top

#11 A fair amount of the population has moved out of Detroit. The abandoned houses are not fit to live in and not needed anyway. Raze them. Soon, deer, wild turkey, pheasants will return. Open up the area to hunting.
Posted by JohnQC 2013-11-25 09:20||   2013-11-25 09:20|| Front Page Top

#12 If they start by planting trees they'll never be allowed to farm - I'm sure there would be fights over every tree they'd want to cut down to make way for crops (ignoring the fact that trees can be crops).
Posted by JonC 2013-11-25 10:53||   2013-11-25 10:53|| Front Page Top

#13 Farms don't cause stability, farms are the result of stability. Was true with the first agrarians, true with Athens' olive groves, and true today. To have an actual farmland these lands will have to be patrolled and maintained or else there will be packs of ferel dogs and pigs, as well as bandit hideouts and weed farms, gypsy camps.

Honest question: what sort of orchards would be successful in north Michigan downwind of the lakes? Sounds like the chance for late frost and a short grow season would eliminate any fruiting orchards, so lumber orchards?
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 11:33||   2013-11-25 11:33|| Front Page Top

#14 I wouldn't want to own taxable real estate in a bankrupt socialist municipality.
Posted by DoDo 2013-11-25 11:38||   2013-11-25 11:38|| Front Page Top

#15 IIRC the city demands back taxes on any property sold/transferred which has lead to a lot of the abandonment.
Posted by Procopius2k 2013-11-25 11:40||   2013-11-25 11:40|| Front Page Top

#16 Sometimes Farming doesn't work.

At the time of the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza the Jewish greenhouses made up 10% of the Gaza economy. Several monied Jewish people including George Soros bought the Greenhouses from the settler families and donated them back to Gaza, but Hamas destroyed them.
Posted by GolfBravoUSMC 2013-11-25 11:42||   2013-11-25 11:42|| Front Page Top

#17 Honest question: what sort of orchards would be successful in north Michigan downwind of the lakes?

Recollection has it that cherries were grown around the Traverse City area at one time--maybe peaches.
Posted by JohnQC 2013-11-25 11:44||   2013-11-25 11:44|| Front Page Top

#18 IIRC after the Roman Empire fell, the cities became much smaller and both the village and the farms could fit within the old city walls.

The walls kept out the harvest-time plunderers and the larger wild animals. Frequently the dark age inhabitants only occupied one corner of the old city.

Al
Posted by Frozen Al 2013-11-25 11:49||   2013-11-25 11:49|| Front Page Top

#19 http://destination-yisrael.biblesearchers.com/destination-yisrael/2010/08/the-pioneers-of-gush-katif-expelled-in-2005-from-gaza-now-sued-by-former-gaza-employees-yet-they-sti.html

From 2005:

“Before the withdrawal last summer, Gush Katif was a thriving bloc of communities most of whose residents worked in agriculture. In the wake of the expulsion, some wealthy American Jews (and Microsoft giant Bill Gates) bought several of the more successful greenhouses from the Jewish deportees for $14 million. The philanthropists then gave the 1.3 million Palestinian- Gazan victors the greenhouses plus 790 acres of sand dunes that the Jews had turned into fertile farmland. But instead of working the greenhouses to grow the produce which had made Jewish Gush Katif successful, the Arabs systematically dismantled many of them, looting whatever was not nailed down.
Posted by GolfBravoUSMC 2013-11-25 12:00||   2013-11-25 12:00|| Front Page Top

#20 For a second there, I thought this was going to be an article about The Game.
Posted by charger 2013-11-25 12:01||   2013-11-25 12:01|| Front Page Top

#21  Honest question: what sort of orchards would be successful in north Michigan downwind of the lakes?

Marijuana and save in transportation cost with local farm to family model.
Posted by Airandee 2013-11-25 12:02||   2013-11-25 12:02|| Front Page Top

#22 Cherries grow well in Michigan and are delicious.
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2013-11-25 12:18||   2013-11-25 12:18|| Front Page Top

#23 Which with any cash crop requires constant supervision and willingness to protect that cash crop with force, especially around harvest time.

I actually am intrigued at the idea. Nothing grows conservatism like farming and ranching.

150 acres is nice size yet managable. But it requires stability, so the Midieval model of the walled farmland with todays cameras and QRFs to keep out squatters, with the idea of a quick harvest to pre-empt any flash mob raid of ready produce. Of course a-holes are going to do stuff like throw dogs and such over the walls, but the walls would keep ferel dog packs from invading the surrounding neighborhoods. But who will run it? Seems everyone is too good to farm, especially when food shows up in the mailbox every month, so why farm? So does it count as community service? The response from the black community being forced to farm as law punishment will be classic, grouped together with the soft handed suburbanites trading community service instead of jail time.
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 12:25||   2013-11-25 12:25|| Front Page Top

#24 Thank you Nimble, not familiar with the regional agriculture, which does make a difference.

So leave the walls down, as said the tilled soil attracts vermin, constant weeding, picking off tomato worms, small critters attract predators so then you have bobcats and dog packs roaming about. Predators + Livestock and you will see a first hand example of why the 4 round magazine is a joke. See how many people will just sit back and take losing 2 years put into an animal, or grove. Gonna put five years into a tree just to watch somebody cut it down for free firewood?

Speaking of which, and this is Detroit, what happens when somebody sets this place on fire? Anybody there know wildland fire techniques? I want to be there when one of those massive city pumpers gets off the pavement and on spongy ground. Can't sit there and take it, not with 150 acres, there will be embers all across downwind.
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 12:36||   2013-11-25 12:36|| Front Page Top

#25 "Replicating a community farm is not as important as addressing issues of race and class concerns -- which underlie Detroit's problems," he said.

"If we could only clone Coleman Young," he added under his breath.
Posted by Pappy 2013-11-25 14:35||   2013-11-25 14:35|| Front Page Top

#26 Got it: Oak

Build a 6 foot stone wall castle-style, with the skin being solid and the middle is the crunched debris from the area. This is to keep animals in, put up appropriate signage about the dangers of wild animals put up loud speakers to occasionally make scary will-o-whisp wailing noises. Four lanes width of dirt which is plowed daily after trackers have made the round. The six lanes width of Hedge trees. Everything left is Oak rows, every 100 yards is a six lane road grid. Every harvest is taken from a newly laid six lane road, offset from the last season's grid. Area set aside for harvested and cleaned trees to set for however long. Facility on site to plank the oak and distribute to woodshops located right beside - furniture, veneer, miniature USS Constitutions, whatever, saw dust into wood pellets.

Now, stock the place with boar. They will have acorns to eat, and designated feeder spots where food garbage can be dropped. Maybe some pig friendly wood grids here and there. Let people crossbow hunt, keep the mount and the meat.

The walls are tall enough to keep the pigs in, and most dogs out but not so tall as to be weird. The grid rows work for harvest, utility, and fire breaks. The pigs should keep those people who brave the hedge, out on their own accord. Supply a local industry with both lumber and free range restaurant food.

Besides, it seems only Nevin used the word Community Farm. He can go play in the hedge.

Do that and I am on the investment course, heck maybe good an Oak wood accented Ford down the line.
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 15:11||   2013-11-25 15:11|| Front Page Top

#27 *and by let crossbow hunt, I mean charge them and they have to hire at least one of your guides. Charge for mounting and cleaning, and charge again for food prep such as cuts into sausage. Charge for the mount prep and again for final taxidermy if they want you to do it as opposed to having their own favorite taxidermist.
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 15:15||   2013-11-25 15:15|| Front Page Top

#28 Of course all the work will be done by un-registered aliens.
Posted by Deacon Blues 2013-11-25 15:30||   2013-11-25 15:30|| Front Page Top

#29 Remember "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire"? They were called "the poor man's bread" and were planted all over cities in the 19th C, for the poor to gather. My grandmother ate chestnuts she and her sister gathered in winter from Brooklyn. Blight killed the chestnuts off decades ago. We are finally seeing blight-resistant chestnuts in the garden centers.

I hope this project succeeds. From at least the 1950s, when my mom taught in Chicago, up to now, school kids who come from inner city environments have no idea where food comes from. Mom's class drew cows and chickens the same size because they'd never seen them except in books, and I see that still in the classes I volunteer in. Kids need to see food production up close and personal.

Garden projects in inner cities have helped teach kids valuable work habits. I say, go for it!
Posted by mom 2013-11-25 15:36||   2013-11-25 15:36|| Front Page Top

#30 Why stop at 150 acres? Imagine the paradise if the whole city were plowed.
Posted by BrerRabbit 2013-11-25 15:55||   2013-11-25 15:55|| Front Page Top

#31 Of course all the work will be done by un-registered aliens.

I didn't take into account the incentives needed to get somebody to move from Mogadishu to Detroit ;)

Too many don't know how to use a tape measurer or table saw. Others got a pocket of electric gold, draw their pay with an X on the back of a check.

Couple acres for farm and livestock tours, acre for a vo-tec school, acre for arbor science, and technology. But I want to make money, because if I'm making money I am spending money, and if I'm spending money other people are making money. Its why I like the idea of lumber. Less maintenence than fruits or veggies, harvest is a snap with some of those machines out there. Centrally located processing means quick turnaround from cut to deliver; also cut down on noise pollution.

Hantz Group, had to look it up, is insurance, finances, banking, etc.
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 16:20||   2013-11-25 16:20|| Front Page Top

#32 Had we learned to pick our own cotton in the first place, none of this would have happened.

Dang! True, but not the proximate cause. Before the 1930s, blacks voted solidly Republican. Not for the party that supported slavery and the KKK, then bribed them with handouts and fairy tales.

Yes, race and class figure - white leftists own the mess too.
Posted by RandomJD 2013-11-25 16:59||   2013-11-25 16:59|| Front Page Top

#33 #27 *and by let crossbow hunt, I mean charge them and they have to hire at least one of your guides.

And maybe, just maybe, some of us might live long enough to see an ancient Skip Gates in a PBS documentary, having crept right up on the beasts and backed away to safety, backslap his "native guide" and gush, "You're the baddest American I ever met!" (In an old PBS program documenting his family's trip to Africa, he called the paleface guide who got him close enough to some elephants to hear the flies, "the baddest African I ever met!")
Posted by Zenobia Floger6220 2013-11-25 17:24||   2013-11-25 17:24|| Front Page Top

#34 The only crop you can probably turn a profit on in Detroit is pot.
Posted by Guillibaldo McCoy1948 2013-11-25 17:35||   2013-11-25 17:35|| Front Page Top

#35 ...oops, I meant tobacco.
Posted by Guillibaldo McCoy1948 2013-11-25 17:37||   2013-11-25 17:37|| Front Page Top

#36 I had an Uncle near die of the Dutch Elm disease, it was mighty painful.
Posted by Shipman 2013-11-25 17:53||   2013-11-25 17:53|| Front Page Top

#37 An something of an embarrassment to the family for many years.
Posted by Shipman 2013-11-25 17:54||   2013-11-25 17:54|| Front Page Top

#38 It was the only disability he could afford you see and a borderline case at that.
Posted by Shipman 2013-11-25 17:55||   2013-11-25 17:55|| Front Page Top

#39 ..went out on a limb did he?
Posted by Procopius2k 2013-11-25 19:11||   2013-11-25 19:11|| Front Page Top

#40 Thats horrible, I mean once that takes root it never really leaves.
Posted by swksvolFF 2013-11-25 19:13||   2013-11-25 19:13|| Front Page Top

#41 and he was only pretending to be Flemish
Posted by Frank G 2013-11-25 21:30||   2013-11-25 21:30|| Front Page Top

#42 Would you eat anything grown in Motor City? The heavy metal content of the soil around there has to be sky-high.
Posted by Rob Crawford 2013-11-25 21:35||   2013-11-25 21:35|| Front Page Top

23:58 rjschwarz
23:52 Zenobia Floger6220
23:00 Pappy
22:58 Pappy
22:57 Pappy
22:29 Procopius2k
21:44 JosephMendiola
21:41 JosephMendiola
21:35 Rob Crawford
21:31 Rob Crawford
21:30 Frank G
21:28 Rob Crawford
21:28 Frank G
20:34 lord garth
20:25 Glenmore
19:16 Redneck Jim
19:13 swksvolFF
19:13 Redneck Jim
19:11 Procopius2k
19:10 Zenobia Floger6220
19:06 JosephMendiola
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18:39 Flusotch Noodleman9829









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