No sooner do I post something about how farming will shape the countryside of the future, than I stumble across an article that addresses how farming may shape the cities of the future. I've posted before on the urban blight of Detroit, a dying city that is becoming an empty wasteland of flattened plots as people flee the inner city for less decrepit suburbs. Gaw also put a picture of the 're-naturing' of Detroit up here.

Now I find the following

"Michigan entrepreneur John Hantz invested $30 million in his Hantz Farms project, which takes aim at 5,000 acres of Detroit land for farming everything from organic lettuce to crops for biofuels. There's still a long way to go--Hantz will start working 30 acres next spring, and it is proving difficult to buy big parcels of land for a continuous farm. Instead, Hantz is buying smaller, unconnected parcels that will each grow different crops depending on the soil and surrounding environment."

So it turns out that the future of the countryside might be the destruction and reclamation of cities, the flattening of executive apartment blocks and the growing of potatoes. Which would be a pleasing reversal.