Cindy Ayers Elliott is CEO of Foot Print Farms, LLC, which is a 68 acre specialty crop vegetable and livestock farm, with a focus on agritourism for community development in the City of Jackson. We grow an array of fruits and vegetables, raising meat goats, chickens, cattle, and horses. Foot Print Farms 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. Living every day to be a catalyst for change, Cindy was just awarded the outstanding Minority Business of Central Mississippi from the Mississippi Minority Business Alliance, Inc., October 2014 and elected chairman of the Hinds County Soil and Water Conservation District September 2014.

What Makes Our Products Great?

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. Having students and others come train at the farm is valuable in improving access to healthy foods and how people look at making healthy options more available.

What makes us most proud of producing Genuine MS products?

Foot Print Farms is the largest urban farm in the state of Mississippi, and its existence is indebted to Cindy Ayers, the founder of Foot Print Farms. They help 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.”

How does buying Genuine MS products make a difference here in Mississippi?

“The whole goal of this is to create entrepreneurs as well as agriculture producers,” Ayers-Elliott says. “We’ll teach them every aspect of the growing, as well as the marketing.”

Why should people seek out and buy Genuine MS products?

“It’s all about what we have access to; one of the focuses on the farm here for us is to bring local, fresh, affordable food to the community for the community to have access."