Co. Waterford-based Grow It Yourself (GIY) is on the lookout for up to 50ac of land to expand its farm project.
Founded in 2008, the multi-award-winning social enterprise aims to educate and enable a global movement of growers to help rebuild a sustainable food system.
This year, GIY is hoping to inspire over 1.8 million people to grow, cook and eat some of their own food at home, school, work and in the community.
The non-profit enterprise has worked in collaboration with companies such as Meta and innocent, and national bodies including Healthy Ireland; Bord Bia and Fáilte Ireland.
It has also engaged with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals Advocacy Hub.
Farm expansion
GIY is based in Waterford city where it runs the successful GROW HQ, an urban farm and education centre.
Its ambition is to create an expanded GIY farm which it believes will be “a more complete model of a sustainable food system”.
The farm would have a mixture of food production underpinned by a regenerative organic-agriculture approach.
GIY outlined that the farm has the potential to be a world-leading campus for sustainable food production, education, tourism and enterprise.
“We are looking to acquire approximately 30-50ac of land within 20-30 minutes of GROW HQ in Waterford,” GIY founder Michael Kelly, said.
“Ideally, the land would also include farm buildings that could ultimately become the infrastructure for a farm-education hub that could include a cafe, farm shop, education and food-enterprise hub
“From a food production perspective, the project would be a small, mixed-use organic farm with traditional breed cows, poultry, pigs and field-scale veg production.
“Ideally, we are looking for a farmer or landowner who shares our regenerative ethos and is open to a partnership or collaboration.
“We would like to work with the heritage of the land, and the knowledge of the farmer, while building a model for what a more sustainable agriculture system might look like – more diverse and working with nature,” Kelly explained.
GIY stated that it is open to a partnership that may involve a long-term lease or lease-to-buy arrangement.