Urban Farming Guys Transforming Crime-Ridden Missouri City into Sustainable Paradise
In one of the most dangerous places in the US, Lykins neighborhood, Kansas City, where people can’t sell their homes because people are too afraid to live there, the Urban Farming Guys have been hard at work building a sustainable, thriving community from the inside out.
After researching and writing articles on Urban Agriculture, we at EndAllDisease.com are thrilled to present this amazing project by the Urban Farming Guys (UFG), who are actually out there bringing these ideas to life.
In the past 3 years, UFG have purchased and transformed of over 20 vacant lots that were completely destroyed, into beautiful community gardens. They’ve recently purchased and added 18 more to the list, which will be turned into thriving centers of community and growth.
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Project Features and Growth
Their garden community includes an array of solar panels to meet their needs for energy production, and a rainwater collection system which harvests 45,000 gallons of clean rainwater each year to irrigate all of their gardens. As the project continued to grow, and they begin running out of property to work with, somebody came along and offered to sell their house and lot to the project for $1. Following this, somebody else called them and gave them $25,000 to fix up the house and expand their programs. It gets better – for just pennies, they acquired an entire acre of land behind the house, allowing for even MORE growth of their project. Their plan is to install a 150-foot greenhouse on this land.
The momentum cultivated by this urban farming endeavor is already enormous, and on December 23rd, 2014, on what The Urban Farming Guys are calling “by far the biggest and most important day The Urban Farming Guys have ever had”, they purchased a 20,000 square foot warehouse for less than $30,000.
‘Create Space’: The Birthplace of Innovation
The dream that is being materialized with this new building, which they are calling Create Space, is a place where community members can come together to learn, to make, and to grow. “A 24/7 hub of invention, inspiration, incubation, and mentorship”, explains Jason of UFG. “Everything from robotics, to welding, aquaponic gardening, woodworking, to electronics. Photoshop to music, sewing to artwork, and a future commercial kitchen,” will all be incorporated into this building to help incubate locally grown food businesses.
Additionally, nightly classes will be held at Create Space, including everything from entrepreneurship to market farming, from welding certification to beekeeping. The result, is a financially self-sustaining “Makerspace” where genius and talent from across the world can come to utilize the most state-of-the-art tools and resources, and bring to life inventions and ideas which previously existed only in the realm of their imaginations.
Get ready for goosebumps in this incredibly inspirational video of an inside look at the project:
For more information check out The Urban Farming Guys’ Website