MSU proposes urban agriculture project in Detroit

[MSUguy]

Maybe we're not all on the same page here. This is a research project. It doesn't need to be profitable. It's probably not going to be profitable. That's why it's research. That means they're going to be an incubator of ideas, knowing that 99 out of a 100 will go nowhere but that the 1 could change the world.

Are people imagining some kind of pre-civil war era plantation?

No, the platation is bit of hyperbole that came for come some in the non profit gardening/farming community that farm like Hantz would be low wage jobs on for profit farm. This as a reseach project, of course, would not be be for profit. I found a blog post discussing some the criticisms of farm like Hantz, I can kind of see what they're saying, but at the same time the city does need business investment.

A bookstore owner and food activist from Detroit used the word “plantation” in the first sentence of his question once the discussion began in San Jose. Indeed, the proposal is for the creation of a “plantation” amidst several hundred thousand poor and challenged urban residents. The jobs created would be farm labor jobs — transforming Detroit’s neighborhoods into farm labor housing, IF Detroit residents actually got the work. So much for the Jeffersonian ideal of the agrarian freeholder as the basis of democracy.
The presenter talked in broad, moral terms about “creating” a legacy for Detroit. I asked him, “Wouldn’t your legacy be more positive if you helped create 2,000 ten acre farms with community ownership than a 20,000 acre plantation?” He was silent to this question.

http://markmaynard.com/2010/01/would...d-for-detroit/