The Farmland Commons is a community-centered equity and autonomy focused model to support farmer, community, and farmland, and to help to reverse extractive and exploitative practices and return wealth and health to the land and the community.
A single or multiple nonprofit organizations with local, regional, and national focus use a nested affiliate entity to hold title, convey lease tenure, and share stewardship on land.
The Farmland Commons Then Ensures:
Land Decommodification
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Decommodification and transitioning of farmland into community control in the form of community led Farmland Commons.
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ï‚·Making farmland accessible to all, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status, while acknowledging and aiming to address the specific injustices inflicted on communities that historically have been displaced and excluded from land access.
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ï‚·Recognizing that humans are only one species in a network of life, and that Farmland Commons help address balancing the needs of humans and the rest of the ecosystem.
Food Sovereignty and Community Control
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Supporting local food systems through providing communities, schools, organizations, businesses, and aligned farms with the financial and legal resources to acquire and hold farmland.
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Advancing a democratic model of land governance that places control of the land in the hands of communities and small farmers.
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Combatting corporate land grabbing through permanently removing land from the marketplace.
Long-term, Affordable Land Access
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Providing long-term land security for farmers, ranchers, and stewards in the form of low-cost 99-year equitable leases.
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Freeing farmers from the burden of rent and high-rate mortgages, and enabling communities to prioritize building a liveable future.
Ecological Stewardship
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Protecting human and non-human health through ensuring that chemical-free, organic agriculture takes place on land held in the Farmland Commons.
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Prioritizing land projects that use agroecological and Biodynamic growing practices.
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Building climate resilience through supporting regenerative methods such as cover-cropping, rotational grazing, crop rotations and composting.
Regenerative and Reparative Investment
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Investing in the future of the earth through financing pollinator habitat design and implementation, improving existing farm infrastructure, building new farm infrastructure, and investing in renewable and clean energy sources.
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Repairing historical injustices through investing in land access for communities that historically have been displaced and excluded from land ownership.
Land As Dwelling Place
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Honoring the cumulative knowledge of all elements of the ecosystem in tending to the land.
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Supporting transitions of generational wisdom that builds and supports ecological, spiritual, and community health.
Decolonization and Reparations
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Acknowledging the harm of settler colonialism and the violent displacement of Indigenous people from their lands.
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Recognizing the historical and current leadership of Black and Indigenous land stewards in articulating, and championing community land ownership.
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Seeking to repair historical injustice and inequities in land ownership through expanding community land ownership and the Commons into communities otherwise barred from access to farmland.