City Seeds

City Seeds is an intensive educational program that trains future farmers; provides youth from urban areas with hands-on farming, gardening and cooking experiences; and produces and distributes regionally-adapted and open-pollinated seeds while sharing knowledge about seed saving.  Through City Seeds, young people have opportunities to engage in meaningful, skill-building work while learning to:

• grow food
• save seeds
• make a difference in their communities and the food system

City Seeds is three overlapping projects:

Farming for the City provides vocational training for young adults who aspire to become farmers, farm educators or community food organizers in order to increase their technical competence in sustainable agriculture, while simultaneously increasing their political awareness of and social engagement with urban food access issues.

Seeds of the Food System provides learning opportunities for at-risk teenagers from urban areas through hands-on farming and cooking experiences and provides opportunities to apply learning about:

• where food comes from
• how it is produced and distributed
• the implications of the food system for the health of themselves and their families, their community and the environment

Young adults and teens actively collaborate to create the Community Seed Project, which produces and distributes regionally-adapted and open-pollinated seeds while sharing knowledge about seed saving with the community through an active seed garden and seed bank hosted on our working farm in Poughkeepsie.