Bear with me on this one. I read an article in the January 18th issue of Fortune Magazine about a wildly intriguing new concept (wildly intriguing to me, as a result of my many years in agricuture.) And this wildly intriguing concept has a nexus (at least in spirit) to our Northwoods with its large concentrations of lakes, which I will get to in a moment.
The article is about a developer in Detroit who has the idea that agriculture within the city limits of Detroit will save the city. Detroit once had a population of about 2,000,000 people, with less than half that now, and is projected to drop to about 700,000 residents. Those 700,000 people will be located within a geography that could accommodate 3 times as many. Already 40 square miles (25,600 acres) of Detroit's 139 square miles (88,960 acres) is essentially abandoned. Real estate values throughout the city have plummeted.
Enter agriculture. Now we come to the genius of the whole idea. By buying up (on the cheap) and farming the excess acreage, scarcity is (eventually) created! And what does scarcity do? Drives up prices! Genius!
Now, just because it is genius doesn't mean it will be easy to put into effect, and the article indicates that there are many hurdles in the path to the realization of a green Detroit. And we are not talking farming in the traditional Midwestern sense of large fields of corn, soybeans, and cereal grains, and giant dairies and feedlots. This is were we get to the nexus I spoke of earlier.
The people working on this envision creating agricultural "lakes" -- that's the term that they use -- of perhaps 300 acres each, each surrounded by its own valuable frontage. See where I am going with this? We are talking lakes of apples, lakes of lettuce, lakes of peaches, berries, and other high-value commodities. Do you think people would be interested in developing around these lakes? I think it quite likely that they would, even before scarcity effects took hold. The area around the lakes would be very suitable for both residential and commercial development. And Detroit would be rejuvenated in a most unlikely fashion. Genius!