“Give us Liberty and give us Land”
DRINKS + land rights discussion at Jimmy’s 43 Friday November 21st, 6-8 pm
Join us for a short talk by esteemed author and Chicago Urbana professor of Law Eric Freyfogle
Today, we face an unprecedented inflection of farmland ownership, with 70% of farmland owned by those 65 and older. An estimated 400 million acres will change hands in the next 20 years, which is just about the size of the Louisiana Purchase. Retiring farmers need to cash out, and entering farmers struggle to cash in, while economists predict massive consolidation in ownership as a result. What are the implications of this moment, what are the political and economy consequences of financialization and how can we impact the decisions on the ground?
We face this cultural, economic, and environmental dilemma from a landscape perspective, with ownership-regimes at its root. Join us as Eric Freyfogle, Swanlund Chair at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, helps set the context of our current predicament, and inform our collective work supporting a shift to a new food paradigm. Eric’s books include: The Agrarian Reader, Wilderness Law, On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land (Beacon Press, 2007; paper ed. 2009) and The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good (Island Press, 2003; paper ed. 2011), along with two law school casebooks, Natural Resources Law: Private Rights and Collective Governance (Thomson/West, 2007) and Property Law: Power, Governance, and the Common Good (Thompson/West 2012.
Eric will be joined by North Carolinian board member of Agrarian Trust, Jean Willoughby. Jean previously directed the Agricultural Reinvestment Fund at the Rural Advancement Foundation International and served as the organization’s Communications Manager. As well we’ll hear about land reform efforts in NYC with Caroline Woolard, artist and organizer of Tradeschool.org and Ourgoods.coop. She is working on commons based solutions for affordable housing for artists and low income New Yorkers. Moderating the session is Severine v T Fleming, founder of Greenhorns, board secretary of Farm Hack, and founding board member of Agrarian Trust.
Speakers include:
▪ Eric Freyfogle, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
▪ Severine von Tscharner Fleming, Agrarian Trust
▪ Ann Marie Rubin, Agrarian Trust
▪ Jean Willoughby, Rural Advancement Foundation International
▪ Caroline Woolard, New York Commons project
We’ll have Agrarian Trust manuals, 596 guides to community land, model lease agreements, and other printed materials on hand. Come join us in learning about land access, land transfer, land reform. For background, here is the video of Severine’s land access presentation at Slow Money’s National Gathering last week in Kentucky.
This event presented by Agrarian Trust, in partnership with Slow Money NYC and friends.
