#GivingTuesdayNow

Support our farms and farmers so we can continue to grow fresh, safe food for our community.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed many inequities within our communities. This pandemic has exposed how vulnerable and inequitable our food system is and our under served community is feeling the effects.  Access to fresh, healthy food is now more limited than ever. There is an increased demand for safe, local food.

ECO City Farms grows chemical free healthy food in Prince George’s County, particularly for distribution to the communities surrounding our Edmonston and Bladensburg farms.  As part of our mission as an urban farm, our purpose is to grow food close to people who need it and make that direct farm to consumer connection. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up production to meet the demand. In response to the pandemic, we’ve taken extra measures to ensure the health and safety our food and staff and this has significantly impacted the efficiency and cost of our operation.

Impact of COVID-19 on our farms

• Added strain on staff capacity to meet the high demand: Our farm is heavily reliant on labor from our farmer trainees volunteers. Fewer people can work at any one time and the added risk has resulted in a dwindling workforce. We’ve lost about 90% of our support team.
• Harvest and processing takes 40% longer to complete: To implement social distancing, fewer people can work on the farm at one time. Normally a team of 12 people would help with harvesting and processing and that’s been reduce to 3.
• Additional costs and time incurred for packaging produce: Our CSA is now pre-packaged in bags to minimize the need for handling food and allow for contactless pick-up.
• Loss of farmers market sales due to limited staff capacity and increased risk of exposure.
• Insufficient unrestricted resources to support our response to COVID- 19: ECO’s general support sources support our farm operation (including utilities, supplies and staffing) and our ability to subsidize our produce to keep it affordable. ECO requires consistent income to pay for staff capacity and ensure the healthy and safety of our food and staff. We’re struggling to fill this gap due to changing funder priorities.

We need your support!

In the next couple months, our goal is to increase production to continue to meet our CSA and in addition donate shares to seniors in our community. In order to reach this goal, we need to increase staff capacity by hiring farm staff and secure more sanitizing, packaging and farming supplies.

• $15 supports the donation of 1 weekly farm share
• $50 supports the cost of cleaning and packaging supplies
• $100 supports the cost of seed, tools and amendments
• $150 supports the donation of a 10 week CSA season
• $600 supports the donation of a CSA to 4 families/seniors for the season