How to Win Land Justice in a Decade
By Neil Thapar, Food and Farm Director, Sustainable Economies Law Center Originally posted on the Sustainable Economies Law Center blog This is part two of #DemocratizeDecolonizeDecarbonize, a three-part essay series exploring the Law Center’s work on housing, land, and energy. ICYMI, click here to read the first essay, “Social housing is the only way forward.” This is the […]
Struggles and Strategies of the Farmland Trust Movement Across Europe
In September, I participated in a convening on land access alongside a group of 90 participants from 16 European countries in Chaussy, France and presented on our local Agrarian Commons model. The event was facilitated by Access to Land, a grassroots network of organizations that secures land for agroecological farming. Participants from across Europe attended the […]
Sweet Land: The Story of a Collaborative Farming Model that Saved Two Dairies
This is the story of the revival of two dairy farms as a result of regenerative farming practices, savvy marketing, and an openness to sharing land and cows. It’s written from a series of conversations at a farmer’s market in Roanoke, Virginia, where the author and Sweet Land farmers are neighbor-vendors. Rob and Erin Lisenby […]
For a Greener New Deal and Cooler Climate, Focus on Food and Agriculture
A successful Green New Deal will integrate what we know about carbon, emissions, and pollution into policies related to agriculture and land use.
Nos Robaron La Tierra / They Stole the Land From Us
by Vanessa García Polanco What do you want the future of your land to be? “Nos robaron la tierra,” they stole the land from us, exclaimed my great aunt Tia Amantina with sadness. She was the first of my great aunts and uncles to be forcefully evicted and to migrate to the United States. In […]
Certified Naturally Grown Matches the Stewardship Practices Faith-Based Institutions Are Looking To Adopt
By Jillian Hishaw, Esq. According to a 2015 Consumer Report, 67 percent of Americans are willing to pay more for sustainable meat products raised humanely. At the same time, desire for cheap meat unfortunately has given us what we pay for in environmental, social, and health improprieties on the part of merging agricultural and feed […]
Let’s talk about the land!
by Vanessa García Polanco When you’re driving in rural America and pass a farm, do you ever wonder how it came to be or do you just assume it has been there for generations and will be there for generations? I think that is the biggest distinction between some of our rural and urban farms. […]
Elders are the Trees in the Garden
Some of the influential elders who shaped sustainable agriculture before modern times have left their mark on this world and still offer much inspiration to newer generations of land stewards across the globe today. Editor’s Note: This article is the third in a new series from Agrarian Trust and our contributors exploring the human side of […]
How Making Reparations Can Remake This Land
Republished with permission from The New Farmer’s Almanac (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2019) by Jean Willoughby and Douglass DeCandia The cause of reparations is having a moment of resurgence in the United States. Author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates reinvigorated the idea in a sweeping and influential essay, “The Case for Reparations,” published in The Atlantic in […]
This Land Is Your Land
June 16th-23rd is #RefugeeWeek and June is Immigrant Heritage Month #CelebrateImmigrants by Vanessa García Polanco Imagine arriving in a new country as a refugee after spending years in a refugee camp in another country as an asylum seeker and then being given three months to achieve “self-sufficiency” in your new host country. Your hands and […]