Southside Macon

Agriculture Initiative

Many of Macon’s most impoverished live in Southside, which includes 4 of the most highly distressed census tracts in the county. 90% black, 40% without a high school diploma, the statistics reflect a community that still struggles to gain equal education and economic opportunities. USDA defines a food desert as a place with no supermarket and no public transportation within a one mile radius. In Southside Macon the distance is over four miles. As recently as 20 years ago, Southside Macon was home to gardens, mini-farms, and multiple options to purchase fresh produce. Today, a couple backyard gardens provide the only source of fresh produce. Led by a third generation Southside resident, the community has galvanized around an effort to combat the blight with green. Forming a Community Development Corporation, they are dedicated to a community farm initiative, transforming underutilized properties into usable farm land. The effort is focused on blighted, uninhabited properties with an unequivocal zero displacement policy. The first phase of ONE South CDC’s initiative is to take a contiguous group of properties at Southside’s core and create an urban farm campus with a focus on arts, culture, education, and heritage. This will be ground zero for the effort to transform Southside Macon.