Media - Agrarian Commons

AGRARIAN TRUST & AGRARIAN COMMONS MEDIA

FEATURED VIDEOS

For more Agrarian Trust videos, check out our YouTube channel.

WEBINARS

Check out our events calendar for info on upcoming webinars.

The Creation of Local Agrarian Commons

In the next two decades, it’s estimated that over 400 million acres of farmland will change ownership in the United States. The Agrarian Trust is a nonprofit organization that works to ensure that tomorrow’s farmers have access to this land, and that the opportunities to farm remain economically viable. In this webinar, Ian McSweeney, Director of the Agrarian Trust, talks about the Agrarian Commons model co-created by Agrarian Trust and many partners. The Agrarian Commons will purchase farmland and enter into fair long-term leases with new farmers, while protecting the land with easements and restrictions supporting ecologically restorative agricultural practices.

Watch the full webinar above (for fullscreen, click to watch on Youtube).

All presentation slides can be viewed here.

Who Will Own the Land? Recommoning Farmland via an Agrarian Trust

Little Jubba Central Maine Agrarian Commons Webinar, June 2020

On June 5th, 2020, Ian McSweeney, director of Agrarian Trust, presented on the Little Jubba Central Maine Agrarian Commons.

PODCASTS

Featuring interviews with Agrarian Trust staff and board members

Land Healing through Young Farmers (E24)

Charles Eisenstein · Land Healing through Young Farmers (E24)

Next Gen Farmers: A Land-Loving Story | Severine von Tscharner Fleming

Abundant Edge | Podcast

Bringing farmland back into the hands of our communities, with Ian McSweeny One of the biggest challenges that I’ve heard repeatedly both in the interviews in this series on regenerative agriculture as well as with peers and clients that I’ve collaborated with, is the difficulty for aspiring farmers to get access to land.

In this interview Ian speaks about farmland transfer, conservation, secure tenure, and fundraising models across the US. He also gives inspiring examples of the first handful of members across the country that are blazing a new trail for communities invested in their agricultural future and the diversity of people who steward their farms.

Investing in Regenerative Agriculture | Podcast

Ian McSweeney, 400M US acres will change hands soon, how to make them regenerative?!

Facilitating the transition of the best regenerative soil to the next regeneration of regen farmers: an interview with Ian McSweeney, director of the Agrarian Trust. Some highlights of our conversation:

Great wealth has been accumulated in this country through extractive industries. We need to collectively realise that the returns and wealth we got used to are based on extractive and exploitation.
We need to get used to negative return, we need to return wealth to the soil, the ecosystems and communities we extracted for so long.
We need to look at ways to compensate for sequestering carbon in soils.
The prices of the leases of the Agrarian trust are directly connected to the soil building of the farmers.

ASHES ASHES | Podcast

Episode 26 - Barrier to Growth

There seems to be a perfect storm of factors that threaten to completely reshape who owns farmland here in the US and globally. 400 million acres of farmland in the US alone will change hands in the next 20 years, farmers are retiring and there is a much smaller generation of young farmers to replace them, and global investment for agriculture land is on the rise, which will push family farmers off the land in favor of industrial consolidation. Beyond that, farmland is being lost to competing land uses. In the United States, that's between 1 and 3 acres of farmland lost every minute. To help navigate some of these issues, and as an example of solutions that are being developed and implmented to fight against these trends, we are joined by Ian McSweeney, organizational director of Agrarian Trust.