The Common Council is being asked to spend $425,000 to help finance the project, which would be administered by Milwaukee's own Growing Power.

The plan, to build hoop houses and transform blighted or vacant land in the the city into farmland, would ultimately provide 150 jobs in Milwaukee's central city - where the unemployment level among adult black males currently hovers around 27%.

The proposal was submitted by a task force created by the Common Council last year to tackle the high unemployment rate in the central city but this plan offers a significant added benefit - increased access to healthy, locally grown food. You can read more about this proposal here.

A half million dollars is a lot in this economy - and Will Allen tells a Journal Sentinel reporter that his organization will probably have to raise an additional three times that amount to fund the project, but providing jobs and meaningful training whilst also tackling the problem of food deserts in inner city neighborhoods make this a pretty appealing idea.