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Igniting a Farmland Commons Movement with Kristina Villa
299 Plays9 months ago
Today we are joined by Kristina Villa of the Farmers Land Trust who is confronting one of the most intractable challenges and deepest inequities within our food system today: Land access and tenure.
Kristina shares her remarkable journey that has culminated in launching her own organic farming business and founding an organization that enables emerging regenerative farmers to gain access to arable land that then can be held in community for generations rather than going back into a commodity market that favors traditional development.
In this episode, we cover:
- Kristina’s story and how her childhood reliance on food banks led her to organic farming and launching the Farmers Land Trust
- The importance of thinking about land transition to help aging farmers pass on their legacy
- Why we’re meant to farm in community
- Layering enterprises to get more people back on the land
- Crowd-sourcing land acquisition
- Addressing inequity in land access, ownership, and tenure through a farmland commons strategy
- How anyone can start their own community land trust
- Kristina’s advice for getting into farming from a non-farming background
- And much more...
More about Kristina and the Farmers Land Trust:
Kristina Villa is the Co-Executive Director of The Farmers Land Trust, and is a farmer, communicator, and community coordinator who believes that our connection to the soil is directly related to the health of our bodies, economy, and society. With over a decade of farming, communication, and fundraising experience, Kristina enjoys using her skill sets to share photos, stories, and information in engaging ways which help to inspire change in human habits and mindsets, causing the food system, climate, and overall well-being of the world to improve. Kristina has spent the last several years of her professional career saving farmland from development and securing it in nonprofit land holding structures that give farmers, stewards and ranchers long-term and affordable access and tenure to it. Most of her work in the land access space has focused on equitable land security for BIPOC growers, addressing the inequities and disparities in how land is owned and accessed in this country.
Find the Famers Land Trust on social media at: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Youtube
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.
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Transcript
The Flaws of the American Dream in Farming
00:00:00
Speaker
This American dream mentality is killing us. We are not meant to farm in isolation. We are meant to farm in community. And so I really believe that if we were gonna be there at some point, that we were all gonna be growing our food and being sustainable and living off the land, that it would have to be done in a more collaborative community effort than we have been accustomed to thinking about in our Westernized culture and doing it more collaboratively in the way of like,
00:00:27
Speaker
You know, some people grow some things, others grow others, and we rely on each other and we do it together instead of feeling like we have to do everything ourselves.
Introduction to Agrarian Futures Podcast
00:00:44
Speaker
You are listening to Agrarian Futures, a podcast exploring a future centered around land, community, and connection to place. I'm Emma Ratcliffe. And I'm Austin Unruh. And on the show, we chat with farmers, philosophers, and entrepreneurs reimagining our relationship to the land and to each other to showcase real hope and solutions for the future.
00:01:14
Speaker
Welcome, Christina. We're super excited to have you here today. As you know, our podcast is called A Grand Futures. As part of that, we've been talking to a lot of young people that want to go into farming. In that process, the issue of access to land always comes up as an enormous barrier and challenge that they face.
00:01:36
Speaker
We're really excited to talk to you today about the work you're doing in that space and your story and experience working with so many next generation farmers. To get us started, do you want to just begin with like a small intro of yourself, how you got into this work and what you're doing at the farmer's land trust now?
Meet Christina Villa and the Farmers Land Trust
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Thank you. Totally honored to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. So my name is Christina Villa, and I am the co-founder and co-executive director of the Farmers Land Trust, which is an organization that works to decommodify land by taking it out of private ownership and by placing it into the ownership and control of local communities.
00:02:18
Speaker
and then giving next generation farmers long-term, secure, affordable, equitable tenure to that land to grow food using regenerative agriculture practices. So trying to address many of the issues that we're all facing here on earth through this work.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, I live here in Middle Tennessee on the ancestral lands of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Shawnee people. My partner and I have a farming business. We grow vegetables using organic and biodynamic methods, and we sell to restaurants and grocery stores and other CSAs, and we also have a small herd of dairy cows. We hand milk a few cows at a time. We have a herd share, so we supply raw milk to the people around us who
00:03:02
Speaker
really value it, which is really fun. And we don't own any of the land we farm on.
Christina's Journey to Farming
00:03:08
Speaker
So I am one of those people that you all are talking about and talking to who was a young farmer who struggled with land access. So that's really what brought me to this work. I didn't grow up farming. I don't have a farming background. I didn't come from a landed family or a land rich family at all. I grew up in an urban area that
00:03:30
Speaker
with really no connection to land myself.
00:03:34
Speaker
I grew up going to food banks regularly as a child and really relied on that as food for myself and my family. And as I grew up, I think that the focus on food, food security, food access was always really central to me and really important to me and something that I not only struggled with, but tried so very hard to understand. And as a young adult, when I was like 18 to 20, I was
00:04:04
Speaker
spending a lot of time volunteering in food banks and soup kitchens and food pantries. And I was really struck by how we would see the same people over and over again and really saw that
00:04:17
Speaker
this lack of food access was a cycle that perpetuated poverty and really oppressed people. And obviously food relief organizations are so critical in that moment of hunger for people, but I was really struck by like, how can we move beyond this? How can we not just be using this Band-Aid, but like really solve this food system? And at that time,
00:04:43
Speaker
I remember really believing and thinking that if we could just solve hunger
00:04:49
Speaker
Like if we could just make nourishing food available to people, like that would solve everything. Like we would be in that state of utopia if we could just solve this one issue. Cause I really thought it was like the root of all the other issues. But then, you know, I would go into grocery stores and I would just feel like everything in a grocery store was plastic and not real. And like nothing felt nourishing to me. The produce didn't feel real and all of the package stuff, like it all just felt so fake and icky.
00:05:19
Speaker
And it was really in that moment that I was like, I have never done this in my entire life, but I feel this food paradigm is oppressing me and everyone around me and I am just gonna opt out of this and start a garden. And so I started growing food and was just like overwhelmed with the abundance of such a tiny garden, even though I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know anything about growing food, even just what I was able to produce in such a small space was
00:05:48
Speaker
It gave me the sense of this hope that we could just all do this. We could all just grow food and give it to people. We could just solve all the issues. And so from that, yeah, I just spiraled out of control. So I just moved to the oldest and largest farm in Tennessee. And I was like, I'm going to learn to farm so I can feed the world and teach everybody else how to farm too. And then that'll be the end all be all. We will have reached where we need to be.
00:06:16
Speaker
So I spent eight years there learning how to farm and I like really learned how to farm. Not only did I learn how to build soil and grow food, I also learned how to live like a farmer, how to eat like a farmer. I learned all about like canning and freezing and fermenting and
00:06:34
Speaker
really how to eat from the land and with community instead of relying on grocery stores or instead of relying on these conglomerate people that in these global food systems that we are told are the only way to feed the world. Like I really learned how to live outside of that and thought I am at that place where I thought would be the end all be all ready to go be a farmer on my own. And then that's when I feel like my life really started.
00:07:04
Speaker
Because at that point, I couldn't afford land. I was never going to be able to afford to buy a farm.
Land Access Challenges
00:07:13
Speaker
And at that moment, that's when I was opened up to all the inequities and disparities around land access, ownership and tenure in this country, and all of the injustices surrounding land access. And all of a sudden, all these thoughts that I had about like, food being the end all be all or like food being the way to solve everything, that all shattered and fell to the floor because
00:07:33
Speaker
then I realize it's actually land. People cannot grow food for themselves if they don't have land. And land, people have been pushed off of land and taken from land and kept from land. The systems around land are so oppressive and unjust and like, actually, it's not about food. It's deeper than that. It's the land.
00:07:53
Speaker
And so that is really what has led me to this work now of co-founding the Farmers Land Trust and really addressing all of these systems at the root, which is land. People need to be reconnected with land. They have to have secure land tenure and access to be able to grow food, have food sovereignty, but also housing and safety and cultural connection.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, thank you for sharing that awesome story. So many issues I would love to talk about more, but maybe to start, could you talk a little bit more about, for people that don't really understand the land issue and why it's completely unaffordable to farmers, what did that look like when you went out and you were looking for land? What's the cost of land? How does that relate to how much you could have made? Could you have gone alone to pay back the land? What does that situation look like for a farmer?
00:08:45
Speaker
So land prices are completely out of touch with reality. The amount of income that farmers make is so low and the prices of land are so high because we're basing land value and land prices on the development potential of that land, not on the regenerative agriculture food production potential of that land.
00:09:05
Speaker
land prices have appreciated by over 40% per decade in this country. So that means that previous generations were able to afford land much more cheaply than young farmers can today and that young farmers are pretty much shut out of access to land and capital. There is just no
00:09:21
Speaker
way for young people to afford to buy land. And that is including people with generational wealth who have come up in like wealthy families. Then you start talking about oppressed marginalized communities who have been historically disconnected from land and capital, like there is no entry point. The landscape of land ownership and access is so incredibly unjust in this country. 98% of land is owned by white people.
00:09:45
Speaker
That is disgusting. The fact that we're not, like, rioting and protesting in the streets over that is shocking to me. At the same time, like, we are losing 2,000 acres of land, of agriculture land, from agriculture every single day. Like, the amount of farmland loss that's happening, land that could be used to grow food, but instead we're just selling off to developers, and we're never going to be able to use to grow food ever again.
00:10:14
Speaker
And then you look at the farm business sector and we have 37 mid-sized farms are closing every day. Where is our food going to come from in the future? We need to start thinking about conservation in a very different way. Yeah.
00:10:29
Speaker
And I think one very cool thing about your model, so again, for people that don't understand, like let's say you're a farmer, you wanna become a livestock farmer, you need a minimum of a few hundred acres, that's gonna cost you a few million dollars minimum, that already is prohibitive. But even if you do somehow find a way, find a parents that are willing to buy it for you or pay it back over a 30 year mortgage or something,
00:10:56
Speaker
At some point, you're going to reach retirement age and you are a farmer, so you made very little income. You have equity in that land. You want to retire.
00:11:06
Speaker
but all of the equity is in the land. So then you face this conundrum where you would like a young farmer to come onto your land and continue to steward the land in the same way that you did, but they can't afford the $3 million. So you're in this perpetual revolving cycle where you're stuck, whereas like you guys by holding it in this trust that isn't tied to that specific farmer can more easily facilitate transition from one generation to the next.
00:11:31
Speaker
I really, really love how you just spoke about that because that is such an issue right now. Land access is the buzzword that everyone talks about. It's the hot topic commodity that gets all the attention and all the funding.
00:11:45
Speaker
It's really land access and tenure and also it's land transition. Yes, new and beginning farmers need land access. Of course, like we are all on the same page about that. But aging, retiring farmers need a way out. Right now, our system is so broken on both ends of the spectrum. Land is too expensive for new and beginning farmers and exiting aging farmers have no other way out other than to sell their land on the open market to pay for their retirement.
00:12:13
Speaker
They have spent their entire lives building soil, building markets, building communities, building infrastructure. And now they're just supposed to let it all go, sell it off to development, have it bulldozed over for strip malls. So heartbreaking and sad. They need another option. And so many retiring aging farmers that we talked to,
00:12:35
Speaker
They so badly want another way forward for their land and for their business but they don't know that other options exist because right now what they're presented with is sell it on the open market or you can put this conservation easement on it but it's still just going to be like bought and sold to the highest bidder. Like there are no other options and I just think it's so interesting how so much attention is put on this land access incoming farmer when really all the power
00:13:04
Speaker
lies with this aging population who are the current landowners who hold all the power and control.
00:13:12
Speaker
If we could just figure out how to give them a different way out and how to let them transition their land in the way that they actually want to anyway, that would solve all this land access issue. Let's give them some support and attention and like figure out how to help them transfer this land in a more just, eco-conscious way. And I think that there are so many landowners in this country who
00:13:35
Speaker
don't care as much about getting top dollar for their land as they do in transitioning their land to people who will care for it and steward it as much as they have and in the ways that they want to. But yes, so the way that our model works, the Farmers Land Trust is who we are and we use this farmland commons model that takes land off the private market into these farmland commons which are run
00:14:00
Speaker
Managed and owned by that local community and so land either comes into those farmland Commons through full donation or through significant discounted bargain sale and we do that because Aging farmers do deserve to retire with dignity
00:14:17
Speaker
Some of them are in the position where they can donate their land fully and that's really wonderful and great and we need more of that. There is such a mentality right now around donations for conservation but not donation into this type of work that we're doing with putting land back into community for regenerative agriculture.
Farmers Land Trust: A New Model
00:14:37
Speaker
So we really need to build awareness.
00:14:39
Speaker
a cultural mindset shift around donations and gifts to this thing that we all talk about valuing, which is like local food and regenerative agriculture. But right now all of the donations and gifts are going towards protecting natural resources and bird habitats instead of land for food for people. But yes, so sometimes land comes in
00:15:02
Speaker
And we do a fundraiser as the farmer's land trust with that community to make sure that aging exiting farmer has enough money that they can retire comfortably and with dignity because they deserve that in their exit too. And then that land is held by that local farmland commons.
00:15:21
Speaker
And then next generation farmers given a 99 year lease at very, very affordable rates that have equity building components, they can pass this lease on to the next generation. And then when it's time for them to exit, they pass that lease on to someone else or they can sell their equity in the lease to someone else. And so it really, it takes the land out of the equation where the land can't be bought or sold anymore.
00:15:46
Speaker
equity cannot be taken out from the land but the business income or like the infrastructure improvements and that sort of thing can be used as equity from land.
00:15:56
Speaker
So if I'm a farmer and I want to get onto the land, if I'm able to access land through a farmland commons, I might be looking at let's say $100 per acre or something like that for a 99 year lease rather than the 500 or 1000 or in this area, multiple thousands of dollars that it would cost to pay for like a mortgage on a land because you're having to buy the whole value of the land. It really reduces the amount of money that someone would have to pay
00:16:24
Speaker
to get access to this land. And when I'm ready to retire, I don't have the equity in the land to sell, but I don't care because I didn't have to pay all that money in order to get on the land to begin with. Is that correct? We don't think land should be a commodity. Land should not be bought and sold. Land should be a resource that is used for the benefit of all. So we are taking that land out of that commodity loophole that keeps land prices getting higher and higher and available to fewer and fewer people.
00:16:53
Speaker
You've thrown out some prices, but we also in our model, we as the National Farmers Land Trust, we also should not be the ones making decisions about land. It should be the people who are closest to that land and connected to that land. That's why in our model, we as the Farmers Land Trust do not hold the land.
00:17:13
Speaker
in the ownership and control of that local farmland commons. So they're the ones who make the decisions about that land, including what the rental price is. And so whoever is the lease holding farmer is also on that local farmland commons board and is part of making the decision about how much their lease rate will be. So what we have are these national template documents that are used in the creation of farmland commons. And within our template documents, we suggest
00:17:42
Speaker
that the rent for leasing land in a farmland commons is just the cost of taxes and insurance. But that could be decided on by that local... Maybe that farmer already has a business that they feel good about and is profiting and they want to contribute more. They can say, I'm willing to pay more rent and any revenue generated from lease payments
00:18:12
Speaker
Stays in that local farmland Commons it does not come back up to the farmers land trust it does not go back up to the parent 501c3 it stays in that local farmland Commons and is Reinvested into the land or into that farmer or into that farming business so that's a decision that they can make whether they want to be paying more and
00:18:30
Speaker
But the whole point of this model is that who are the ones closest to the land? They should be the one making decisions about the land. All of our work is around how can we empower the farmer and give as much autonomy and equity and control to the farmer who's actually stewarding the land. So in the model itself,
00:18:48
Speaker
that is baked in there are ways in which obviously the farmer is on the board so they have power and voice in that and the legal structure itself like our model utilizes either a 501c25 or 501c2 which by IRS standards are limited scope land holding entities that are not allowed to engage in the day-to-day operations of the farm business like the model itself
00:19:15
Speaker
gives the farmer as much autonomy and control over their business, over the land as possible. And then even more deeply within these template documents that we have, we've tried to create and curate them in ways that give the farmer even more leverage and control. So for instance, they're on this board with these other local community members that own the land together.
00:19:38
Speaker
And for instance, when a unanimous vote cannot be achieved, when everyone cannot be on the same page, and some people are voting no, if the farmer is on the no side, even if there are more people on the yes side, if the farmer's in the no side, it cannot be passed.
00:19:53
Speaker
I want to step back to something you said earlier. Let's assume the Farmer of Land Trust, it's allowing these young farmers or farmers in general to step onto the land and steward the land regeneratively. You talked about learning how to farm and discovering that there was so much abundance when you did that. I'd be curious to hear a little bit more about your thoughts there because often what you hear in the media
00:20:17
Speaker
is this question of if everyone is farming organically, could we feed the world?
Sustainable Farming and Economic Conflicts
00:20:22
Speaker
Would we produce enough food? So how does that sit with you? Having also talked about how when you start to farm yourself, you kind of realized that there was so much abundance.
00:20:34
Speaker
Do I think that if everyone started gardening and growing their own food, that we could all be sustainable? Yes, I do. I really think that everyone, we could all grow our own food, we could work collaboratively in community and farm and grow food together, and that would be sustainable. But that is not what our global economy is set up for, and that is not what big lobbyists, big people are talking about, like back with Earl Butts. Get bigger, get out. That is not the direction our system is headed.
00:21:01
Speaker
And do I think that people have enough grit and hard work ethic to actually do that? No, I don't. My experience in farming is that it takes serious grit. It is hard work. It's not comfortable. You get put in situations that are painful and difficult. You're doing things in the pouring windy rain. You're out in
00:21:26
Speaker
crazy extreme hot and cold temperatures, the death and life cycle like the hours. Here we don't run the land we farm on but we're growing food and you know spend like all of our time and thought and energy into building soil and rotating crops and growing wholesome nourishing food and
00:21:44
Speaker
You know, we've been seeing new living beings being reintroduced to the ecosystems here, even in just the short amount of time that we've been able to steward this land. And I think about that all the time. Like we have to file taxes.
00:21:58
Speaker
schedule F for farming and where do we get to put the dung beetle on there? How do we get to say like we brought back the dung beetles? Like that's not on a tax form but that the amount of equity or like benefit to community and to the ecosystems and the soil health that we're providing that we are not, not that we need credit for but like it's not being thought of as part of like the business we're running and also
00:22:23
Speaker
I really don't think that we are meant to farm in isolation. Like this idea of this nuclear family growing food by themselves and like fulfilling their whole full diet. Like that's crazy. Farmers have one of the highest suicide rates. This American dream mentality is killing us. We are not meant to farm in isolation. We are meant to farm in community. And so I really believe that if we were going to be there at some point that we were all going to be growing our food.
00:22:49
Speaker
being sustainable and living off the land that it would have to be done in a more collaborative community effort than we have been accustomed to thinking about in our westernized culture and doing it more collaboratively in the way of like, you know, some people grow some things, others grow others, and we rely on each other and we do it together instead of feeling like we have to do everything ourselves.
00:23:11
Speaker
Well, I mean, the most successful farmer groups now are the Amish, I think, or the most resilient, I would say, is the better word, because of that community structure, I think. That community of people, like the Amish and specifically, they haven't just figured out how to farm. They have figured out how to transition the farming. I think that that is a big thing that is lacking in a lot of the other ones is that they are very much into transitioning the land, transitioning the business, transitioning the farming to the next generation and letting go.
00:23:41
Speaker
when it's their time and then just moving to the house out back. And even that infrastructure that's set up in those communities to house multiple generations on one piece of land or one sort of farmland, that is very different than what we see nowadays. We see that idea of nuclear family, one family, and they want it all to themselves, whereas the Amish typically have that intergenerational support and transition that they're willing to
00:24:05
Speaker
let go, they're willing to let the next generation in.
Passing Farmland to New Generations
00:24:07
Speaker
And that transition part is so key to all of this. That is the most sensitive, precarious position is when land is ready to be transferred. Like that's when it is the most, most likely to fall out of farming.
00:24:21
Speaker
Well, and I think there's one more element here. You mentioned development pressure, taking land out of agriculture. But there's also farmland consolidation in a lot of areas. So we work with a farmer in rural Minnesota. And there, any land that comes up for sale is snatched up by the biggest corporate farmer. And every single farmer in that area is in a situation where it's get big or get out. Unless they get that extra acre, they're going to go bankrupt.
00:24:50
Speaker
And the farmer we work with, he was from a farming family, but he couldn't take over the land from his dad because his dad needed to continue to farm it to be able to make an income for himself. In the commodity model of agriculture, you couldn't support two families on 600 acres of land, which is crazy, obviously. But so the industrial model and the farmland consolidation, I think, is also a big piece of this and why
00:25:17
Speaker
It's so hard to transition the land. Yeah, fully. I mean, the economics do not make sense right now. And that is a big part of our work. We need to remove the high cost of land and the barrier of that mortgage and payment that's needed on land as just taking away one of the financial pressures of farming to try to help it be more sustainable and economically viable for farmers.
00:25:45
Speaker
There are so many issues that farmers are facing, and we're just trying to address one of them, which is the barrier to land. But there are so many. Our country, our society, our culture is not focused on supporting farmers or food production or regenerative agriculture or any of these things that are so clearly necessary for the viability of our futures.
00:26:06
Speaker
One of the things that makes this conversation particularly interesting to me is that I come at it with the lens of agroforestry and wanting to see more people get into agroforestry. But by its very nature, agroforestry is a multi-generational investment in the land. Because when you plant trees, most likely you're not going to get anything off of them for five, 10, 20 years, depending on what kind of trees systems you're integrating.
00:26:33
Speaker
And a lot of the people that want to get into agroforestry are young, and a lot of them don't come from farming backgrounds. And so to reap the benefits of these complex long-term agroforestry systems, if you had to acquire the land and pay market price for it, and then you're making the investment in the tree systems as well,
00:26:56
Speaker
you're not going to get anything off of for multiple years. That's just, it's a non-starter to get into these systems. And we know that agroforestry systems have a lot to offer in terms of resiliency to climate change, but then also being able to
00:27:11
Speaker
equestricarbonate and address climate change directly. So without some more creative land access models, a lot of people are going to be shut up entirely from agroforestry. Like maybe someone who's young and wants to get into farming can do a market garden on an acre. But to get onto, let's say, a 50 or 100 acre silver pasture, it's just impossible for most people in most conditions where you'd have to pay market price for everything.
00:27:39
Speaker
I mean agroforestry is definitely a multi-generational thing but it could also be one of those layered enterprises like that is another facet of how to access land more creatively is like be more collaborative and creative about how you're going to utilize the land.
00:27:55
Speaker
And so having layered enterprises on one piece of land that enables multiple people to come together and profit and grow food and make produce and also get paid from it, that is another way to address all of these issues that we're talking about, like food security, land access.
00:28:13
Speaker
living not in silo, but living in community like this idea that one piece of land has to be yours and yours alone and you have like that's crazy, we should be thinking about how we can all work together and use the same land for different things that will benefit each other like this agroforestry and silver pasture could also benefit other livestock operations that could all work together like there are so many ways to be more creative about how we are using and accessing land in community ways.
Community-Supported Land Access Initiatives
00:28:41
Speaker
I was recently researching, I don't know if you've heard of it, but the community farm movement in the UK. There's about 10 or so farms in the UK that are community owned. And it started maybe about 10 years ago with a farm called Ford Hall Community Farm. And it was this couple that was going to inherit land from their dad, but he went into bankruptcy. The land was seized from them. And they basically, over the course of several years, basically reached out to their community
00:29:08
Speaker
community fund raised and it kind of took off it got into like the media and they got this overwhelming support and were able to raise I think a million and a half British pounds to basically purchase the farm and it's now stewarded in community and since then they've kind of inspired a number of other farms to do that in the country as well but what stood with me which is similar to what you're saying was
00:29:28
Speaker
how it can work in so many different situations. In their case, it was this couple that was figuring out how to transition the land from their parents' generation. There's another example of a couple that raised money before even having land and then used that to find land. Each case, it was very different. They engage with the community in a different way. They achieve different goals. Their arrangements look different. The community is involved in different ways, but through all of them, you see the power of the community.
00:29:57
Speaker
what that can do when you're able to bring them on. Yeah, the crowdsource fundraising is so, so supportive. I mean, to be able to bring in funding to acquire land in that way from so many different people, the amount of money that can be raised is amazing and astronomical. And like we have done that through many fundraiser campaigns to acquire land into this common space structure.
00:30:20
Speaker
People really do want to catalyze around land access and land support for farmers growing food. It is such a rich and exciting story to get to be part of. But what is also so interesting is that in a previous project that me and other staff members of the Farmers Land Trust worked on was
00:30:38
Speaker
We fundraised to bring land into this common structure and it catalyzed such amazing support from all over the country. People from all over the country were so inspired and motivated to help this collective of farmers gain access to land and they were all contributing to this fundraiser. We acquired the land, brought it into this community ownership, then this community of refugee farmers who had relied mostly on food stamps were able to have secure land tenure. They were growing food.
00:31:08
Speaker
They had such a viable, profitable farming business that then they were able to acquire land in private ownership themselves. So then they had access to this community-owned land and then also were building private equity in land that they owned themselves separately, which is amazing for them and so wonderful. But also what we saw from that is that those people who donated from all over the country, who supported the work we were doing,
00:31:35
Speaker
and to acquire land into this common structure, then went on to just be supporters of that farming collective, of that farming business, of that community, long into the future. That community support and getting excitement around a farm, around a farming collective, around a piece of land, then it carries forward. Those people are connected to that farm and those farmers and that land,
00:32:01
Speaker
from then on like they are they feel a part of that and like really building the support for farmers into the long term through these crowdsource fundraisers is such an exciting aspect of what we get to do.
00:32:13
Speaker
Well, this is great. So I want to just flesh this out again with another example. So in our area, land prices are super high. But one thing that we do have is we have farmers in a nearby county or landowners, I should say, in a nearby county.
00:32:32
Speaker
who tend to not be the farmers themselves. It's like old horse money from like outside of Philadelphia. They've made their fortunes probably like in previous generations, like old money. And now they have these sprawling horse farms and whatnot.
00:32:48
Speaker
but most of them are not farmers themselves. And a lot of them are ecologically conscious. And so the typical way of passing on that land, if they pass, and then they want that land to be stewarded well is through kind of a conservation easement, or they're going to donate it to be turned into woods and meadows and whatnot.
00:33:10
Speaker
But it seems to me that because of the inability for most people to afford getting into land in this area and that the close proximity to a lot of landowners that I think would go for this, does that seem like the right kind of ingredients that would be necessary in order to establish a farmland commons that it can then go out to landowners and say, look, here's an alternative. You may have not known that this was even a possibility, but you can put it in your
00:33:40
Speaker
you can arrange so that this land doesn't just get developed or it doesn't just get planted into woods, but it allows people to have access that wouldn't have access in this area at all otherwise.
Innovative Land Donation Models
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Landowners who are able to donate, who are in a position to transition their land and want to see it used for conservation, but also for regenerative agriculture, for land justice, for social justice, for food sovereignty. The farmer's land trust is another way, is a different option outside of the status quo options that have been presented.
00:34:23
Speaker
Conservation land trusts are really great and those are great options and we do very often collaborate with other conservation land trusts on similar pieces of land. So maybe a farm we're working with already has a conservation easement on it or maybe it helps to add a conservation easement onto land we're working with because it helps to bring in additional funding for the acquisition of land which can be great.
00:34:47
Speaker
But like conservation land trust by and large do not address that access ownership and tenure piece and do not address Agriculture or food production and so the problem is though that we are a new and young organization and that people do not know that there is this other option and way forward to donate the land for the future and
00:35:09
Speaker
for preservation, but also for food justice, for land justice, for ecological stewardship. And yeah, I mean, the only reason and way that our work is possible is with aligned landowners who see the reason
00:35:25
Speaker
for the work we're doing, who realize the need for this. And if they don't use their power in these ways, who will? We need landowners who are willing to let go of land, pass it on to the next generation in these ways to ensure that it will be accessible to next generation farmers who want to grow food for their communities.
00:35:47
Speaker
I know a whole bunch of farms that would love to see their land stewarded well by young farmers, in particular regenerative farmers, past their lifetimes. But I'm not familiar with any farmland commons organizations in my area. What would be the process of, say, starting up a farmland commons, working with the farmers land trust?
00:36:11
Speaker
and then being able to approach those farms and getting them into a commons so that that land can be accessed. Yeah, so a farmland commons either starts with farmer who needs land and is ready to start farming, but mostly more often it starts with landowner who is willing to either donate land in or offer land at a very significant discounted bargain sale. And so that's
00:36:36
Speaker
A farmland commons starts with one piece of land and then grows to hold between four and 12 pieces of land so that each farm can share resources and that they can collaborate in other ways and is like regional and scalable to human scale and size. But yeah, that farmland commons would start with one piece of farmland and
00:36:58
Speaker
Would really start with having a conversation about what their hopes and goals and dreams are what land they have access to what they are willing to do and it takes landowners who are willing to transition their land to move that title ownership over from their private control to this community structure.
00:37:20
Speaker
And it's really hard for people who have spent their entire lives stewarding land and caring for that land to then let go and trust the future. But how are we going to move forward unless we do that? We have to be able to trust the future generations to make good decisions and care about that land.
00:37:37
Speaker
if we're gonna
Farmland Commons Flexibility
00:37:38
Speaker
move forward. So along those lines, what do you see as the farmers who are the best types of fit for Farmland Commons? And maybe are there farm types or farmer types where this is not really a great fit? Like you said, yours is not the solution for everybody and for everything. So where does it seem that there's better or lesser fits? Working with farmers who are already farming, who are already growing food,
00:38:07
Speaker
works way better in this model than trying to find farmers who have hopes and aspirations to farm but aren't there yet. Because they just need additional supports than what we as the Farmers Land Trust can offer them. Our work is very much focused on that land piece, transitioning, transacting land, getting it into these secure structures to hold it in perpetuity for regenerative
00:38:30
Speaker
agriculture that is our focus and when farmers need additional support getting started on farming then it is more difficult because they need things that we cannot offer them. Which is really difficult when you think about the historical and current context of black and indigenous people have been kept off of land like how can you expect them to just be amazing farmers right now already when they have been purposefully disconnected from land. So there has to be
00:38:55
Speaker
some balance and mix of we also need to be solving and healing these harms that have been inflicted in ways of letting go of power and control, even if they're not up to the white supremacy status quo of like what a farmer should be. So there needs to be that balance for sure. And then
00:39:11
Speaker
Another way that I've seen this work best is when it's not raw land. Getting raw land as a gift and bringing it into a farmland commons is wonderful. We need to be saving land and raw land is great too, but it's not as great as land that's already a farm, that already has infrastructure, fencing, roads, barns,
00:39:35
Speaker
it's so much harder for a farmer to hit the ground running on raw land than it is an operating farm business that's already in existence. So, but as far as like setting or
00:39:46
Speaker
I mean, it works great in urban and rural areas and really both are so needed for a secure food system. They both rely on each other to meet markets and people and quantities of food needed and connection to land and food. Both rural and urban are needed and offer such different things to the people and land involved.
00:40:10
Speaker
I really want to make it clear too that everything we do is open resource. All of our legal templates and all of our documents and all of the bylaws and leases and structures and everything we do are open resource. We do not want to be the ones holding on to this information and these ways of being. We want them to be available to everyone. Land should be held as commons and social knowledge and resources.
Advice for Aspiring Farmers
00:40:34
Speaker
It's not just us that can create Farmland Commons. You can take this to your community. Like you can start a Farmland Commons on your own too. You can do it. People around, they're so smart. They're so innovative. They have resources. They know how to do it. They just need to know that this is an option that they can run with on their own. And obviously we are here and want to support you and want to be part of this cool stuff too. But just know that you can do it without needing us. You can do it on your own. You can make a Farmland Commons too.
00:41:03
Speaker
I appreciate it. I love it. I'd be curious maybe as a last question, considering your background coming from an urban setting and also learning how to farm, spending eight years learning how to farm, what would be your words of encouragement or what would be your advice for someone that wants to get into farming that doesn't come from that multi-generational farming background?
00:41:24
Speaker
Not everyone is going to be in the position where they can just like drop everything and move to a farm. I totally get that. But finding ways to be close to or next to or learn from other people who are doing it is a really great way to just start immersing yourself in the sort of lifestyle that you want to live. Find your local farmer.
00:41:46
Speaker
go there. Farmers love when people go to their farms, see how they're doing it, and then baby steps. It's so interesting because this didn't happen overnight. I didn't get to where I am right now overnight. Like you said, it took eight years just at that farm, and then it took several years to get to the farming business that we're out now. It takes time to develop
00:42:07
Speaker
the skills and the knowledge and the resources and to build the community and to build the infrastructure. All of these things take time. And so to give yourself grace and to go with baby steps, but to really put yourself in uncomfortable positions where you don't know everything and where you are going to learn and really offer to help. Go to farms, not just to observe, but like help.
00:42:29
Speaker
Insert yourself into those situations where you can be actively harvesting or moving manure or doing things that are not super fun and beautiful, but that show the farmer that you are interested and that you do want to learn and they'll be more willing to open up to you after that too. Like they'll be more willing to share with you and teach you things than if you were to just come and watch.
00:42:53
Speaker
Absolutely. That hands-on experience is invaluable. You can't get it from textbook. You can't get it from reading. You need that hands-on experience. And even if you're volunteering or working on a conventional farm that is not producing the way that you would like to produce, there's still so many farm skills that someone needs to know in order to farm.
00:43:13
Speaker
being able to back up a truck or fix a tractor or just basic things like how to fix a fence that you're going to need to know if you're going to farm. So getting that hands-on experience with your boots on the ground is absolutely critical. I just think really to be purposeful in it though to go where you want to be going
00:43:34
Speaker
Like, you know, I at that time lived in Georgia when before I had any farming experience and of course there were farms around there I could have gone to but none of them were doing farming the way I thought I wanted to do farming. None of them were living the farming lifestyle of like
00:43:49
Speaker
freezing and canning and fermenting and doing all it like living like a farmer and so that wasn't enough for me to just go visit there and work on their farms like I wanted to go somewhere that would teach me all the things that I wanted to know about the life I wanted to live like I think it's so important to be purposeful with where you put your energy and attention and yourself like what you need to do it and Like where do you want to be going like that's where you should go
00:44:16
Speaker
Yeah. So, Christina, thank you so much for joining us here today and having this conversation.
Closing and Acknowledgements
00:44:22
Speaker
You're an inspiration to me. The work that you're doing is really inspiring. To me, it feels like this is a very necessary piece that's missing as my personal goal is to get more and more people into agroforestry and that requires long-term land access and
00:44:41
Speaker
what you and the Farmers Land Trust are developing is so key in addressing that problem. So I thank you so much for your work and best of luck as you continue to resource folks all around the country and get more land into the Commons and make that accessible to more and more people. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. So honored.
00:45:05
Speaker
Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexander Miller, who also wrote our theme song. If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave us a comment on your podcast app of choice. As a new podcast, it's crucial for helping us reach more people. You can visit agrarianfuturespod.com to join our email list for a heads up on upcoming episodes and bonus content.