A History of Property
by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts from Creative Time Reports Recently in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, two women aged 30 and 23 knocked on an apartment door to gain entry and then demanded at gunpoint that its current occupants vacate the premises. As reported in the New York Daily News, by way of motive one of the women later […]
Is the Farmland Surge just a Bubble Waiting to Burst?
By Danielle Kurtzleben from U.S. News and World Report The auctions are unintentionally silent today at the Pine Lake Country Club. Plenty of farmers showed up on this drizzly fall morning, since it’s too wet to harvest. But as auctioneer Joel Ambrose tries to sell first one, then another field to the 40 or so […]
The Decline of the Small Family Farm
By Roberto A. Ferdman from The Washington Post “Today’s farms are fewer and bigger.” That’s how the United States Department of Agriculture put it in the agency’s new Agriculture and Food Statistics report. It’s also, pretty clearly, what the chart above — which was included in the report (p. 6) — shows. Peak farm, as it happens, […]
What do you mean when you say . . .
Leasehold Estate: A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal […]
Not Exactly Right, Wall Street
Published by The Cornucopia Institute in response to the Wall Street Journal Article slamming the organic movement. The Wall Street Journal opinion piece “Organic Farming Is Not Sustainable” published May 15, 2014 by Dr. Henry Miller misrepresents the industry and is riddled with factual inaccuracies. Dr. Miller attempts to discredit organic agriculture’s environmental benefits on […]
Iowa Farmer Doubts National Geographic’s “Five Steps”
This article, entitled National Geographic’s ‘Five Steps’ Won’t Feed The World: An Iowa Farmer’s View was written by George Naylor and published by the Huffington Post. The brief article, “A Five-Step Plan to Feed the World” offered by Professor Jonathan Foley in the latest National Geographic magazine, clearly states the stark features of a global […]
Images of Progress – 2014 Our Land Symposium
In April of 2014, the Our Land Symposium brought together farmers, thinkers, land and legal experts and those who do it all or anything in between. See some images from the gathering here and stay tuned for what’s next!
Experience Speaks: Alternatives to Farm Ownership
Alternatives to Ownership: Land Trusts as Land Reform by Robert Swann In those countries where traditional land reform (redistribution of land to private owners as initiated by the central state – examples in Japan, Taiwan, Iran some South American countries, etc) has taken place, redistribution of land has resulted in some cases (Taiwan for instance) […]
Agrarian Trust and Allies in the News
By Michael Levitin from NationofChange.org There’s a new currency here called Bay Bucks that’s helping businesses trade in services and get off the dollar. There’s a new agriculture-tech startup called CropMobster helping redistribute excess produce and cut down on food waste. And a new electricity provider, Sonoma Clean Power, just flipped on the switch May 1 to supply tens of […]
Wood Colony Feels Urban Pressure
From The New York Times by Patricia Lee Brown MODESTO, Calif. — Farmers and other residents of the rural district known as Wood Colony refer to the 110-year-old arboreal landmark in their midst — a gigantic walnut tree of Grimm’s fairy-tale proportions — as, simply, the Tree. To many people in this unincorporated community, settled […]