Urban Farming

[Raellus]

I've long thought that urban farming as described in T2K modules like Ruins of Warsaw and Armies of the Night to be a little far fetched but I heard a piece today on NPR's Marketplace radio program about just such practices currently taking place in Detroit, Michigan.

With the decline of the U.S. automotive industry, the city's been in a state of economic depression for years now and it's only gotten worse the last couple. There are hundreds of empty lots there and, recently, folks have started planting various vegetable crops in these plots. They're even clearing rubble-filled lots and transforming them into large garden plots.

One of the problems that urban farmers in Detroit face is the high levels of toxic lead in the soil from its decades as an industrial center. To surmount this obstacle to farming, urban farmers have been creating raised plots by building large planters and filling them with soil and compost trucked in from outside the city. Using this method, folks are growing safe, healthy food crops.

Anyway, it seems to be somewhat of a trend and if it can work in urban detroit, with its somewhat toxic soils, it could probably work in nuked or otherwise devastated cities.

Food for thought (pardon the bad pun).