The mobbing crowd

Crop mobs descend on small farms

By Culinate staff

March 4, 2010

Once upon a time, there was the flash mob, an urban stunt in which groups of people assembled together to collectively perform something goofy, such as breaking into spontaneous applause. Now there’s the crop mob, in which groups of volunteer ag types show up on a farm to help out for a few hours. As the New York Times described it:

The Crop Mob, a monthly word-of-mouth (and -Web) event in which landless farmers and the agricurious descend on a farm for an afternoon, has taken its traveling work party to 15 small, sustainable farms. Together, volunteers have contributed more than 2,000 person-hours, doing tasks like mulching, building greenhouses, and pulling rocks out of fields.