How Local Farming can End Hunger

Watch the Urban Roots film trailer

Have you heard of urban farming? That’s the question posed by Urban Roots, to everyday people on the streets of Detroit. Urban Roots is a documentary produced by Tree Media, about the urban farming phenomenon in that city. It’s a revolution that is taking abandoned, blight-ridden tracts of land in the inner city and turning them into urban farms, which are then used to feed people and combat poverty and hunger. The film defines urban agriculture as:

The practice of cultivating, processing and distributing food in or around a village, town or city.

Detroit has lost more than half its population since the 1950s, going from close to 2 million to around 900,000 people in the space of decades. With the urban flight and relocation from the rust belt came thousands of abandoned buildings and vacant lots – more than 100,000 of them. Urban food pioneers have transformed many of those into farms to feed the community.