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Our mission is to create resilient, healthy, sustainable, and empowered communities through a major urban farming and educational system that provides job training, jobs, education, and access to healthy fresh food to underserved populations in the Champaign-Urbana area.

A strong local and healthy food system is at the core of CU City Farms, while its unique collaborative structure is designed to simultaneously address food insecurity, food disruption, job training, and climate change mitigation.

The CU City Farms/Carle Mobile Market was created in 2020 as a powerful first step in the creation of a local food system in the Champaign-Urbana area, allowing urban farms to directly reach individuals who have little or no access to fresh produce. Having fully operationalized the Mobile Market between 2020-2023, the initiative is now solely operated by Carle Health and continues to support local farms. To learn more, click here.

By identifying cash crops that existing urban farming programs and area specialty crop farmers can grow—and by securing buyers for those products—these organizations can more powerfully fulfill their missions while providing fresh and healthy food to individuals who are food insecure. Educational programs in farming, nutrition, culinary arts, restaurant, marketing, and related fields will result in job training and placement as well as improved nutrition among our most at-risk communities.

 

Partners