Mission and Goals

At Youth Farm we utilize food as a catalyst for social change, community engagement, and leadership development – food is our tool to change the world. We farm to educate and train through gardens and greenhouses. We cultivate leadership through year-round programming focused on planting, growing, preparing, and distributing the food we grow.

Our mission is simple. We farm to grow.

We farm to grow food.

From raspberries to radishes we seed, plant, grow, and harvest our food and bring it to our communities’ forks. Our youth are able to assist in distributing the fresh, local produce we grow directly through youth programming such as cooking classes, through plant and produce giveaways to parents and families, and through community meals prepared and served by youth.

We farm to grow community.

We live and work in the vibrant and diverse neighborhoods of North Minneapolis as well as the Frogtown and West Side neighborhoods of St. Paul. These neighborhoods are amazing, but also face numerous challenges related to food access and quality youth development programming.

We farm to grow leaders.

At Youth Farm, assisting youth in their development as leaders is the most important part of our work. We work to engage young people as problem solvers to a variety of systematic issues, from food access to quality education. We are not growing the next generation of farmers, but a cadre of youth leaders who will become amazing teachers, scientists, community organizers, politicians, mothers, fathers, first generation college students and so much more.