Community Crops Becomes Part of Family Service Lincoln,
continues work to ensure food security

The Community Crops Program of Family Service Lincoln provides education, advocacy, and experiences to grow local food. Crops help people build household food security (ensuring they have consistent, adequate access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate foods to live healthy and productive lives) and community food security (ensuring a greater supply of food grown locally creating more resilience against disruptions in the food supply chain).

For the 2023 growing season, Community Crops will operate twelve community and special project gardens, two farm sites, an urban agriculture plot, and two production greenhouses.  Crops will also offer two new educational series, one focused on business and marketing for small farmers and the other focused on teaching sustainable agriculture skills. The growing season starts early with the opening of their greenhouses in February. Greenhouses allow gardeners and farmers to extend the Nebraska growing season to maximize their productivity. The garden and farm sites follow soon after, opening in March and April. Families can apply for garden plots through their website or by contacting the office to request a paper copy. Gardens are typically full before the end of March, but a waiting list is available to help Community Crops continue to stay in touch with families in need of growing space.

Gardeners receive a low-cost rental plot, free water, seeds, plants, access to tools, and technical support from the Crops staff throughout the season. Gardening is a great way to access more healthy food, get exercise, and connect with your neighbors.

The work Community Crops does alongside local farmers helps to grow the availability of healthy and culturally important foods in our community. Crops provides technical support and market access to beginning, refugee, and immigrant farmers while ensuring produce is affordable to all

This year Crops will support multilingual market tours and will be helping to grow the Hub Farmer’s Market by supporting neighborhood outreach and bringing a SNAP token program to the market. Keep an eye on the Union Bank and Trust Veggie Van schedule for up to date information on pop up events and markets were Crops will be.

You can support Community Crops in a variety of ways:

• Support the annual Crops Plant Sale and get veggie, herb, and pollinator plants for your garden this season.  
• Donate to Community Crops through to help maintain and grow all of these amazing programs and more.

Community Crops accomplishes their work with the support of many amazing volunteers. If you are interested in getting involved, contact them today!