In the past decade, interest in regenerative and perennial farming has taken off. But the way Ian McSweeney of the non-profit Farmers Land Trust sees it, if we don’t change the way we own farmland, we’re never going to be able to make these practices widespread.
Ian: Most people who own farmland are not farmers and most farmers don't own or have security on the farmland they're on. And the reality of what that means is many farmers cannot think in the long term.
You can imagine that if you don’t know if you’ll still have access the same land in two years, you’re not going to plant blueberry bushes or fruit or nut trees—the timeline for these crops is way too long and it’s too risky. So the Farmers Land Trust and a growing movement of land trusts the United States are working to buy and hold farmland differently—so that it’s off the open market and owned communally.
Ian: Many land trusts are set up for conservation values, habitat protection, open space conservation goals, but it doesn't have to be limited in that way. And so what we see is using this non-profit land trust and its mission and structure that embeds public good as the avenue and the legal structure to address that farmland ownership.
This is different from a lot of other farmland protections in the U.S. today. Most are conservation easements designed to protect farmland from development. But land with these easements can still be bought and sold and is still subject to real estates market conditions—whereas land that part of the Farmers Land Trust and other similar programs actually goes off the market.
Ian: Land held in a non-profit, we can provide an affordable long-term lease for farmers. We're not reselling it tied to market conditions, we're not leasing it out to generate profits. We are in this for our values and our mission and we're able to hold land for those values, that is getting farmers security and tenure on land.
It's a model that’s attracting both older farmers worried about what will happen to their land and their crops after they pass on, and younger farmers who are just getting started. For instance, Ian says the Farmers Land Trust recently received a donation of land from a young farmer in Wisconsin who’s focused on nut crops—trees that can live for generations.
Ian: He has been devastated to see his mentors who have spent a life—50, 60, 70 years creating these unique and important orchards and life events happen and the first thing that happens is the faem is sold, the trees are cut, and the soil is stripped up, and all of that is gone.
This young man decided that rather than risk his life work, he’d donate his land into the Farmers Land Trust—so that it’s owned by the community, but for now managed by him.
Ian: So he is donating his farm in now, into a farmland commons. He’s going to have a life estate to live there and carry out his work. But he can go about that life work with peace of mind, knowing that what he is creating now will be the foundation for the next generations.
The idea of owning land this way—communally—but allowing individuals to manage it according to standards set by the community might sound new and strange—but the reality is that this has been the most common form of farmland stewardship in most communities throughout most of human history. And while it’s a relatively new model in the United States, land trusts like the one Ian works with have been making a comeback across the Atlantic.
Ian: There’s in the last 3 decades across Europe there’s been this cultural movement of land trusts focusing on farmland ownership in community.
Holding farmland intentionally like this is a different way of thinking about how we organize the land where we grow food—it’s a vision rooted in long term plans and local landscapes—and a practice that Ian McSweeney hopes is just getting started here in the United States.
