The point I was trying to make wasn’t that you can’t farm in the state of Michigan. There are farms all over there.
But what I was getting at is that the soil is soo polluted, even in the areas were homes resided, to turn it into safe farm land would be a very expensive and longterm undertaking. Just burying everything under a few feet of soil isn’t going to fix this.
And don’t even get me started on the Detriot river/West coast Lake Erie situation. Shorefronts, beaches, and still large portions of the lake are still “no go” zones. Not so long ago, a large portion of the lake was considered “dead” and unable to support any aquatic life.
And while the 2001 establishment of the Detriot River Wildlife Refuge has helped, about the only thing it’s done is land acquisitions and basic garbage cleanup on the coastlines and islands around there so far. With soo much of the industry around there now shutdown, some wildlife is returning, but the man based and mother nature based cleanup would take decades.
While I think a longterm vision of turning this area into tree and plant farms is one of the better ideas, it will take deacades of careful planning to see started.