Sitting at the helm of a billion-dollar financial firm, with a personal net worth of more than $100 million, John Hantz isn’t the Detroit everyman featured in newspaper stories about the decline of the Rustbelt. But neither has he fled the city, as more than one million of its residents have. An incurable businessman, Hantz is a staunch defender of both the private sector and capitalism’s “invisible hand,” and he’s set to bring market forces to bear on an unlikely project: an urban garden. Or rather, the largest urban farm in the world.
Hantz realized not long ago that Detroit sprawl–much of it now blighted or abandoned–might be best dealt with through agriculture. He’d like to shrink the city by revitalizing population centers downtown and buying up massive tracts of land to raze and reshape as urban farm “pods.” The resulting scarcity of land will create property value, he says, and the farms will provide local jobs (unemployment is more than 25%), fresh produce, and new tourist destinations. Hantz intends on using experimental, technology-intensive growing techniques, including hydro- and aeroponics, to create a replicable model of “vertical” cultivation. Apples, lettuce, and tomatoes are to be among the first crops.
With test plots being tilled this summer, Hantz Farms will operate as a for-profit venture, creating backlash from some residents and urban gardeners who worry that it’s a glorified “land grab.” But Hantz is prepared to lay tens of millions of dollars on the line to make the farms operational and hopes to see them in the black within five years. He spoke to The Atlantic about why shrinking the city is important and how a for-profit farm serves the public interest.
You’ve proposed taking a several hundred-acre swath of blighted homes and abandoned lots and turning it into a proving ground for large-scale urban agriculture. Not exactly your schoolyard or community garden.
You have to think about Detroit in a different way. A lot of times people think about urban farming and say, “There’s not even an open piece of property within two hours of my house,” or, “I don’t want to lose that park.” But this farm takes into account the reality of Detroit–it’s a city with 200,000 tax-delinquent parcels, controlled by one of the state’s three land banks, and upwards of 30,000 abandoned acres. Given the sheer size of Detroit, you could fit multiple big cities inside.
There’s just an excess capacity of land. How do you come up with a positive way to dispose of it, but in a way that attracts people? The farm starts with that basic concept. Now it’s not cows, pigs, and chickens. It’s almost all produce. But it also isn’t just tomatoes or lettuce–it includes forestry and different beautifying techniques.
