Every community has several food clusters or everyone would have left looking for someplace to eat. They have been unwinding the past century or so for consolidation, labor-savings (food processing used to be high skill, high wage work with considerable creativity while dumbing it down to scale up production and force down wages has been a pressure Upton Sinclair was noticing in Chicago a century ago and Eric Schlosser wrote about so well last decade in “Fast Food Nation.” Local Food addresses that to some extent since communities used to produce 60-80% of their food in the immediate region due to lack of refrigerated boxcars and warehousing.

Something missing from the article’s referenced cluster analysis is “stuff to make food with” which are at least two additional clusters that are more often regional, national, or international in their market scope but still need other related local firms clustered with them.

Stuff to make food for example would be greenhouse mfg., seed companies, fertilizer plants or processors, handtool mfg, ag implement mfg., pesticides mfg and research, herbicide mfg and research, large animal veterinary service, breeding stock/semen/eggs, feed mills, fence mfg., chicken coop bldg., irrigation equipment mfg. and installation, farm pumps mfg., etc..

I live in a regional center for that and it’s continually surprising how significant and sizable the firms who make stuff to help make food are. Bull semen, bee phermones, specialty herbicides, sugar for candy bars, cookie baking process lines, coffee bean roasting, John Deere service, farm lending, etc. have all turned out to be sizable clusters here that we only stumbled across and virtually none of the political leadership or most ED folks were even aware existed here (I know I wasn’t aware of them.)

The transportation clusters to move food from farm to table are ever growing employers and an absolutely critical cluster…lots of varying sized trucks, railcars, ships, aircraft cargo spaces and almost anything can be viable, minimal transportation even the most obvious needs fall apart as markets just to service them.

By Al Jones on 02/06/2012

It depends on how you define success, which could mean something different in each case. Scientific analysis aside, the potential for local impact (and publicity) seems higher in Detroit. We’ve got more land and we’ve got more at stake so I like the potential for better innovation in Detroit. Local demand will be important, but so will our ability to export new concepts we develop here to other cities around the world.

By BT Irwin on 02/13/2012

Im sorry what do you mean by food cluster ? Do you mean having resturants in a certain area???

By David J. Costa on 02/13/2012

Detroit would certainly benefit from food clusters due to it’s land rich market and significant urban population. Unless zones are created within the city to encourage food cluster, the private sector will have a difficult time establishing the practice despite there being an abundance of opportunity. So the question is how can it best be facilitated?

By Michael Jones on 02/13/2012

I don’t think you can power an industrial giant like Detroit city by farming. How would the wages from a Detroit farming job differ from the wages that Mexican workers now earn on American farms?

By One Iam on 02/13/2012

How do the wages of union workers differ from a McDonald’s worker, restaurant kitchen crew worker, lawn and snow care professional, store cashier, etc… Yet, there are as many or more of those service industry workers at the bottom of the pay scale in industrial Detroit than there are industrial union workers. How would urban farming undermine the industrial base of Detroit?

By Michael Jones on 02/13/2012

Why argue any positive suggestion that can add to improving and helping the people of Detroit? This city needs more than one great idea. It needs the ideas of many. Most importantly it needs the right people to execute these ideas into positive results.

By Karen LaGreca on 02/14/2012

I think urban farming ties up valuable city land while adding more underemployed people(slaves) to the work force. It would produce more working poor as Michael Jones has pointed out above. If you have vacant land to be used in a city, it’s best to get it right from the start with ideas and land use that produce gainful employment and great benefits.

By One Iam on 02/14/2012

One- Don’t go putting words in my mouth or willfully misreading my posts to serve your purposes. I have worked as a bank teller, a short order cook and a teacher… and I am slave to no person or ideology. I am a Detroiter. Further, as an appraiser I have seen many successful farm operations throughout Michigan, and have had the opportunity to appraise several. Land that produces crops (income) is more valuable (generates a tax revenue for schools, fire, police, etc.) than that which has little prospect of development within a 7-10 year time frame- like blighted areas of Detroit and other urban centers.

By Michael Jones on 02/14/2012

Hi One, I think you are mistaken. We have fresh markets in my town and surrounding towns. The fresh produce cost 50% less then in the regular grocery store. This allows families to buy healthy choices like vegtables and fruits that in a regular grocery store is not affordable. It is a community effort. Forget the theory of slave labor and think bigger than that. Minimum wage is also in McDonalds. The difference is fast food that is cheap and not healthy and real food that is healthy. It is a mind set as well. It would be a positive result if handled with positive reason . Again I can not stress enough that good , honest , leadership is what is needed in Detroit and through out this country. The politicians and their self serving agenda is hurting us all. It is time to take charge as a citizens and work together to build back what we have lost. This is one way that can provide jobs albeit not high paying, but also educate , good health, and survival skills. Growing your own food. Selling it to your own community.

By Karen LaGreca on 02/14/2012

Michael it was you who said “Yet, there are more of those service industry workers at the bottom of the pay scale in industrial Detroit than there are industrial union workers.” Perhaps you don’t fully understand what you wrote.

Karen we have fresh produce markets in Detroit and the Detroit area already, farmers markets. Detroit has the famous Eastern Market among others. We have several community farms up and running already. Farming is not going to raise the medium income level in Detroit city and bring hundreds of thousands of people back in. I think a battery operated car plant with three shifts would be better use of city land than growing corn on it. That’s just my opinion.

By One Iam on 02/14/2012

One- I site examples the benefits of farming through increased land values and taxes, and purport the benefits of economic diversity. Your opinion is that manufacturing and industrialism are the answer to Detroit’s economic problems, suggesting that urban farming would promote slavery through under-employment (”...urban farming ties up valuable city land while adding more underemployed people(slaves) to the work force.”). Your premise that a change in city land use from vacant/abandoned industrial to farming would reduce the land value is faulty as I have already shown. Further, at such time that industrial demand rises in the city, market demands would dictate a change in use back to industrial with redevelopment. Perhaps you don’t fully understand economics.

By Michael Jones on 02/14/2012

In fact, Detroit may be an early adopter of a food model some urban planning experts expect to become the norm as the 21st century unfolds. Have you ever stopped to really think about how food gets to our table? It is a long and perilous journey when you consider just how much food transport depends on an intricate balance of geopolitics, government subsidies, oil prices, the weather, etc. The cities that achieve the strongest standing in the future will be cities that can sustain themselves—and that especially includes the most basic of human needs: food. Farming is the original human economy, the oldest method for societies to grow and sustain themselves. It has stood the test of time and so deserves serious consideration here in Detroit. A city is only as great as its ability to sustain the way it supports it citizens. Farming is an important step for our city.

By BT Irwin on 02/19/2012