While farm to table and farm to market are seemingly popular catch phrases of the day, the truth remains that urban cities as a whole continue to decline, buildings are razed and often development focus is on city centers over the prime, tax base of the surrounding residential neighborhoods and jobs decline.
In cities like Troy the development of good paying jobs has not happened, many residents are at or below the poverty line, Lansingburgh School district is rated with over 53% of the students below. Development of diverse business base has not happened and the protection of housing stocks has not happened. Troy continues to push forward on development of new housing, catered around the city center, which has seen much revitalization in the past 10 years.
We reviewed the number of city owned properties available for sale 75% of the are vacant lots. Each lot carries a potential agriculture benefit of $1,000,000 of production a year. We are not talking livestock other than maybe a few chickens, a goat or two or even an aquaponics center, then the numbers can increase two fold, but actual fruit and vegetable production.
As a co-operative model TUFI looks to take those currently unused lots and transform them to working farms. Allowing individuals to develop and build solid urban farm businesses that will help the economy of the individual, the neighborhoods, the city and other businesses that need produce. It will redefine farm to table or farm to market to what it is meant to be, fresh inexpensive produce, eggs and fish.
Our goal is not to compete with groups like Capital Roots but help them with supplying more fresh local farm items to our residents and to incubate job creation in the world of urban farming.
