The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative

The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that seeks to engage members of the community in sustainable agriculture. We believe that challenges unique to urban communities like Detroit (e.g., vacant land, food security) present a unique opportunity for community-supported agriculture. We hope to empower urban communities by using agriculture as a platform to promote education, sustainability, and community while simultaneously reducing socioeconomic disparity. The Michigan Urban Farming Initiative is based in Detroit's North End community. Our mission is to use urban agriculture as a platform to promote education, sustainability, and community in an effort to empower urban communities, solve many social problems facing Detroit, and potentially develop a broader model for redevelopment for other urban communities. Our primary focus is the redevelopment of a three-acre area in Detroit's North End, which is being positioned as an epicenter of urban agriculture. This space is heavily themed by "adaptive reuse of the built-environment" in which we are hoping to demonstrate everything from best practices for sustainable urban agriculture, Effective strategies for increasing food security, cost-competitive and scalable models for blight deconstruction, and Innovation in Blue and Green infrastructure.