DETROIT (WXYZ) — On Detroit's east side, city blocks were once filled with houses in disrepair.
Co-founder of Sanctuary Farms Jon Kent, an eastsider himself, is now helping lead the change in his community cleaning up city blocks and putting them to good use.
"We can create an environment that not only revitalizes the community but also the earth that is around us," said Jon Kent, co-founder of Sanctuary Farms. "We're going back to our roots in a sense of going back into the ground to get the food that is needed and helps with climate change and other things."
Founded two years ago, Sanctuary Farms is a small organic and composting farm.
They've done a lot to help revitalize city blocks by turning them into urban farm oasis to provide affordable organic food to those in the neighborhood.
"Sanctuary Farms is about closing the food loop," Kent said. "It's really providing a food sovereign space for people to have access to food because we live in a food apartheid because of the long history of the lack of food here."
Sanctuary Farms makes their own compost which they sell to landscapers, and growers who are interested in farming at home. They also use a portion of that to make nutritious food on the farm.
Urban farming in an industrial area can be difficult especially with all of the pollutants. Sanctuary Farms teamed up with nonprofit Eco Center to track air quality.
"And the air sensor is right here attached to this utility poll and this is what is able to pick up pollutants in the air," said Peter Bridge with Eco Center.
"We put that up and we've been tracking our air quality. We do this in partnership with other farms," Kent said. "The whole goal of that is to source our data together."
The monitors have three types of senors that are monitored. The data is then used to educate students and community members. The goal is to help create better air quality policies.
"This work is cleaning the air through our planting of native plants making sure we can create great soil and through great rooted plants you're able to clean up some of that toxicity in the air," Kent said.
