Reflections from Agrarian Trust on the Coronavirus Crisis & Our Food System
Ian McSweeney “While the crisis brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic is significant, it also simply holds a mirror to truth in our world and society. The pandemic is a symptom of all that the climate crisis and human destruction of nature manifests. So much in agriculture, conservation, and wealth is focused on what is […]
Globalize the Struggle! Globalize Hope! Course Held
A reflection on participation in the U.S. Food Sovereignty Alliance first national Political Education Course By Megan Browning In a recent teach-in hosted by The Rising Majority on Movement Building in the Time of the Coronavirus, Canadian activist and author Naomi Klein was asked, “What is required of us in this moment?” “Our job,” she […]
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 […]
A Landscape in Transition
Frost and early snow over the last month and the last of the brown and yellow leaves are subtly transforming the scene in these Northern Vermont hills. This time of year finds my hands in cover crop seed, filling buckets and casting out the diverse blends like rains over prepared land. This is the first year […]
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.
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 […]
Going Beyond Diversity and Inclusion in Food, Agriculture, and Natural Resources
by Vanessa García Polanco In many of my roles as a food, agriculture, and natural resources practitioner, student, and researcher, I have noticed my uniqueness in the spaces to which I was aiming to belong: nonprofits, higher education research offices, federal offices, agricultural advocacy groups, food policy councils, and others. I was often the only woman […]
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 […]