Want to get involved in the environmental justice movement in Erie?

This community farm is a grassroots effort to grow our city’s food sovereignty and spark social and economic transformations from a place of love and care. Groundwork Erie is an environmental justice organization partnering with a local soup kitchen (Emmaus Ministries), several urban farms and food producers, a neighborhood revitalization organization (BEST), and Erie’s Food Policy Advisory Council to break ground and collectively transform these five vacant lots on East 4th Street.

Erie’s East Side faces food apartheid and top-down efforts that have not changed the underlying issues of disconnection, disinvestment, and scarcity, and the structures of oppression, poverty, and injustice.

The new 4th Street community farm will expand upon Erie’s existing urban agriculture and local food movement into a community urban farm designed for food production, education, produce distribution, and economic opportunity and personal development for young people.

This farm will serve nearby Emmaus Soup Kitchen and a network of neighborhood-based Pay What You Can farmstands that freely share food grown in and for the city and inspire new home and community garden projects, communal meals and gatherings, and movement building for a sustainable, resilient, reciprocal local food system. Programs will focus on youth from Emmaus’ Sister Gus’ Kid’s Cafe, Groundwork Erie's Green Team, and neighborhood families. 

Through Groundwork Erie's Green Team program, students will have the opportunity for paid work directly within Erie's food system. Students will assist in planning the farm, planting, harvesting, and distributing produce through the Pay What You Can Stands. These paid positions not only provide income to students and their families while providing meaningful work for young people in our community, but their work also furthers our shared community goal of food sovereignty through mutual aid.