This project is designed to connect current efforts and encourage conversations that will lead to future efforts the community deems necessary as the city continues to develop. According to a Green Michigan blog post written by Lydia Whitbeck, urban agriculture is defined as the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around a town or city. (www.greenmichigan.org , 2018) The goal of this website is to provide a centralized location for shared information including land and population data, community centers and events as well as registrar of community partners/businesses and social media handles.
The Inception of a life long interest in urban agriculture
discovering the park, the potential, and the progress of River rouge park
March 2018
I moved to the westside of Detroit after my mothers Divorce back in 2009. We bought a house on the corner of Tireman past Southfield freeway towards Evergreen road. I transferred high schools my senior year and had the pleasure of attending Vista Meadows Academy (VMA) High School. When I was at Consortium College Preparatory (CCP) High School from 2010-2013, I always enjoyed visiting the River Rouge Park Baseball Diamond for our season games. I never realized how close I had moved to it. When I started attending VMA, my mother worked on the opposite end of town so most days I had to take the bus home. I would catch route 47 - Tireman all the way home. the last stop was near the baseball diamond which was across from my new high school. When I would get on the bus I would always enjoy the green grass and the volume of trees I saw on the park. While at VMA I co-founded a 4-H club that would allow me to involve myself and my small community in urban gardening. Through our school, we found a volunteering opportunity at a barn called Rouge Barn located on Plymouth. The barn use to be an old police station that was remodeled into a barn and currently sits on the outskirts of the park. While volunteering there, I was able to connect with some of the founding members of D-Town Farms which is now considered the largest urban farm in Detroit. I started doing some research when I turned 17 on the potential of turning all 1,184 acres of land into a community led farm with a wide range farmer's market. Whenever I had a break in college, I would do more research and compile more data to explore the possibility of implementation and the costs to the community and the land itself. I've presented this research at a national level and received a 3rd place award for my business idea in 2016. This year, I will be presenting new findings and developments on the project at another national conference in North Carolina in hopes to place higher. I will also be presenting my research at the University's Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum at Michigan State.