Former Football Field Becomes Thriving Farm Feeding Dallas Food-Desert Community
Paul Quinn College transformed its idle football field into an organic farm that now produces tens of thousands of pounds of food for the nearby food-desert neighborhood.
In 2007, Paul Quinn College president Michael Sorrell cut the football program, saving $600,000 annually, and redirected the empty 146-acre field toward agriculture. Launched in 2010 as the "WE Over Me" farm, it now cultivates more than 50 vegetable varieties, produces over 30,000 pounds of harvest each year, and includes a chicken coop, beehives and an aquaponics system for tilapia. The farm supplies local restaurants, grocery stores and farmers’ markets, returning at least 10 % of its yield to the surrounding federally designated food desert.
Student workers earn $10 an hour through a work-study program that reduces tuition costs, and the initiative has helped restore the college’s accreditation and earn national recognition. Corporate partners such as PepsiCo’s Food for Good and the Dallas Cowboys’ Legends chefs provide funding and a market for high-value crops.
Why it matters
The farm turns unused campus land into a sustainable food source and job training for a disadvantaged neighborhood.
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