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 […]
The 100 Year History of the San Pedro Commons
2018 marked the hundred-year anniversary of the privatization of the San Pedro Land grant, the place where I was born and still call home. It is an arid piece of high desert, covered in piñon and juniper, located in the eastern and northern foothills of the Sandia Mountains in central New Mexico. It was an anniversary no one marked publicly, not even the heirs to the land still living in San Antonito, the village just down the road. It is part of a story lost, for the most part, to so-called progress.
Land in Common: A Bold and Patient Model for Agrarian Reform in Maine
Land in Common is a Community Land Trust in Maine, born out of a community-focused, land justice centered living space that has evolved over the past twenty years. Officially founded in 2008, Land in Common is a nonprofit organization that removes land from the commodity market and places it into a member-run trust where it can be stewarded by residents. Its goal is to create “a multi-generational land base for sustainable livelihoods that supports communities working for just, cooperative, and resilient futures.”
Using Multiple Community-based Land Trusts to Save Farmland
Agrarian Commons closely resemble community land trusts, but they are unique in that they work collectively to provide long-term affordable and equitable access of small and mid-sized farms.
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. […]
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 […]
Truthout: A Green New Deal Must Prioritize Regenerative Agriculture
“Agrarian Trust, a nonprofit committed to supporting land access for the next generation of farmers, is experimenting with community-controlled land commons to collectively and democratically own the land, while giving 99-year leases to regenerative farmers. This model prioritizes broader community involvement and investment in local farms, while giving farmers long-term land security and equity interests so that they can fully commit to restoring the land over many decades.”
Video: Regenerative Agriculture: What does the land want?
Our founding board member Severine von Tscharner Fleming inspires us to consider the question, “What does the land want?” in her latest talk as a Fellow with the Edmund Hillary Fellowship based in New Zealand.
Woodland Community Land Trust: An Antidote to Extraction in Rural Appalachia
The Woodland Community Land Trust was incorporated in 1979, making it one of the oldest Community Land Trusts (CLTs) established in the United States. Located in the Clearfork Valley of northeastern Tennessee, a low-income Appalachian community dominated by extractive industry and concentrated land holding, economic, and political power, Woodland recently marked its 40th year in operation. Today, Woodland’s vision of community ownership still resounds in possibilities for Appalachian people and confronts the realities of peasant land dispossession throughout U.S. history and worldwide.
FaithLands Pilot Project in North Carolina Welcomes Our New Coordinator, Josie Walker
We’re thrilled to welcome Josie Walker to our team as our Eastern North Carolina Project Coordinator for FaithLands, a coalition-led initiative that supports faith communities in making lands available for sustainable, agroecological farming, especially to those in society marginalized by virtue of class, race, gender, economic status, and other factors.