Foot Print Farms

Foot Print Farms is the largest urban farm in the state of Mississippi, and its existence is indebted to Cindy Ayers, its founder. Foot Print Farms helps train farmers throughout the state to work with communities and help address the issue of food deserts in Mississippi. Established in 2010, Foot Print Farms continues to impact the community with their work.

“We are very different, a unique type of farm. We do a lot of training of young farmers to teach them how to work with communities on how they can grow some of their own food, to help address food deserts here in our state, and especially in our city. So right now I’m excited to be a farmer here in the city of Jackson and to be able to make a difference. And I feel like we are making a difference in our community.”

Cindy Ayers Elliott is CEO of Foot Print Farms, LLC,(2010), which is a 68 acre specialty crops vegetables and livestock farm, with a focus on agri-tourism for community development in the City of Jackson: growing and array of fruits and vegetables, raising meat goats, chickens, cattle, and horses. She believes that planting seeds in the earth will grow fresh vegetables, however, planting a seed in the minds of young people will create a new universe of scholars.

After working five years as CEO for Delta Foundation, Delta Enterprises in economic development in the Mississippi Delta, she also worked many years in New York as an investment banker. Cindy has traded in her high heels for a pair of work boots. She participates with the United States Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, (NRCS) to ensure her farm is productive and environmentally friendly while she depends on her farms for sustenance, she also wants to use it as an educational tool for people not accustomed to new ways of Farming.