earthrise

The New Wave

A community-based urban farming revolution is getting the city of Detroit back on track after decades of decay.

After decades of urban decay, Detroit is getting back on track. Inner city investment has totalled over $9bn since 2006, as entrepreneurs hustle to stake a claim in the city while it is still going cheap. The last 10 years has seen a 59 per cent rise in young graduates moving into the city’s core, some of who have been drawn by prospect of life as an urban farmer.

One of them is Carolyn Leadley, the founder of Rising Pheasant Farms.

In the last part of our earthrise special on urban agriculture in Detroit, Russell Beard joins Leadley on a dawn bike ride to take her produce to the city’s bustling Eastern Market, which attracts 45,000 shoppers every Saturday.

Leadley sees urban farming as a way of preparing the city for the future: “Our whole society is based on the fact that oil is cheap – so once that one element isn’t so cheap any more, everything will change. When you are living in a low-resource economy you have to support each other, you have to work together, you have to share resources – and that is what Detroit is doing.”

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