MUD (Manchester Urban Diggers CIC) is a social enterprise, working to create food system change and empower communities. Improving our Food Sovereignty is the overarching theme of everything we do. We are determined to promote & develop disused urban areas as a small but important part of the means of production.
We do this through creating grassroots, people-led farming projects across Greater Manchester where we can grow food to share or to sell.
Our working model provides three main benefits: improving the environment, improving personal wellbeing, and strengthening communities, achieved through the universal right to grow, cook and eat food.

We are working towards a fairer, greener and more sustainable food system for Greater Manchester. To this end, we turn underused land into community spaces, places where people can come together to grow, prepare and eat food grown using low impact regenerative farming methods. Our main site is a former bowling green in Fallowfield, South Manchester: Platt Fields Market Garden (PFMG). PFMG is a member of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) network. On this site we’ve produced over 900kg of food on just ½ an acre of land in 2021, in addition to improving the soil health, air quality and biodiversity of the area and - central to our aims - providing over 3000 hours of health and wellbeing provision in the form of Green Prescribing in 2021. At PFMG, we work with the community by hosting volunteer days & where we provide free cooked food, facilitate & organise free events, fundraise / promote local community groups, we offer a space to hire, we work with local businesses - it is both a community hub and a working market garden.

We know our work positively impacts our communities. We conducted a survey of our volunteers and project participants in December 2021: of 27 respondents, 98% said their mental wellbeing had improved as a result of volunteering with MUD.