Mr. Smith breaks into urban agribusiness (and he may have to go to Washington).

[jonb]

social activism, i don't even think projects like this can turn a profit, not enviromentalism either, the only effects I can picture would be improved air quality for the neighborhood, and besides would you want to eat food that wa grown in the most polluttted neighborhood on earth?

if I were to start a farm it would look like this:

Those images show a way of thinking that would turn, the notion from a good green project, into the worst most debilitating scheme that could be imagined. The infrastructure needed to support them would pull in so many resources that could be used elsewhere that it would not make anything better, but would in fact mean that those resources could not be used to help people directly. On the point of pollution, what sort of pollution? A very good way of removing even radio active pollutants is to grow plants that have been shown to absorb it and then remove the plants, this method was used over large parts of farm land after Chernobyl.
Of course what crops you grow would depend on what pollutants are present. But in truth as an ex-garden designer the biggest problem I had was dealing with townies that have no idea. I was always being asked to design a bit of the garden as a plot to supply the kitchen and I found myself having to advise people against it. Not because there was anything wrong with growing a few herbs and vegetables, but because people in towns are now so divorced from nature they have no understanding whatsoever of how things grow, and although they may grow a few carrots they never use them. Why? This is what I found in garden after garden. I would come back after setting up a nice little veg patch and see all the plants gone to seed. I would ask why they had not been used, and the owners would look all sheepish and try not to answer the question. Eventually I would find out they had seen a cat or similar crapping near the veg and it had put them off eating it. This is typical, of townies thinking, they eat meat, but do not want to know about how an animal is killed, they understand in a field all sorts of things crap all over the plants, but once washed and put in a supermarket they don't have to think about that stuff, but in the back garden, they can't avoid the knowledge.
However knowledge can be taught, and people can learn, even if growing things in towns never produced one item which was eaten, if it was just used to educate it would have worthwhile effects, so much so It could be worthwhile for money to go from agriculture, into teaching townies about the business of which they are so ignorant.

Lastly, as part of a beautification scheme, no it won't stop international drug barons, but it does have an effect, small, but enough to make these sort of schemes potentially pay for themselves.