Urban farming a high-cost venture

Monday, December 7, 2015

Soil-testing is a hidden cost to urban farming, a Michigan State University Extension (MSUE) article reports.

MSUE recently heard that a city was offering vacant land for urban farming at US$100 per acre. While this seems a very good bargain, urban farmland usually needs to be tested for contaminants like cadmium, arsenic and lead, among others. This need has led several groups to improve the tests and protocols used.

Wayne State University (WSU) in Detroit improved its recommended testing protocols so they now have a 95 per cent certainty of detecting lead in urban soils. As well, Pennsylvania State University (PSU) offers environmental soil-testing services to potential urban farmers.

Curious about how this necessary testing would effect the cost of urban farming, the researchers at MSUE combined the protocols from WSU (180 samples per acre recommended) with the price of PSU's lead-testing service (US$27 per sample). MSUE found it would cost prospective farmers US$4,860 to test that one acre was lead-free. As a specific area of land may be at risk of multiple contaminants and anything found would have to be cleaned up to bring soil health to acceptable standards, the costs of urban farming become far greater than the listed price of US$100 per acre.

MSUE pointed out that urban farming is a high-risk, low-return venture that shouldn't be started without careful consideration, and that anyone planning to go ahead with it needs a good understanding of the cost before beginning. BF