8 Principles for Managing A Commons
Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist at Indiana University, received the Nobel Prize for her research proving the importance of the commons around the world. Her work investigating how communities co-operate to share resources drives to the heart of debates today about resource use, the public sphere and the future of the planet. Based on her […]
Just Food? Forum on Land Use, Rights and Ecology
Agrarian Trust will host panels on land issues at the Just Food? Forum on Land Use, Rights and Ecology, a collaboration of the Harvard Food Law Society and Food Literacy Project, March 25th and 26th, 2016, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA REGISTER NOW Early bird rates through February 25th. This year’s Just Food? conference will examine the relationship between […]
Young, Idealistic Farmers Help Keep Land in Production
Read the Associated Press’ November 8th article reporting that young farmers with an interest in growing healthy, local food are helping keep farmland in production. “Organic farms can actually provide a quicker route to profits,” writes the AP’s Michael Hill, “because farmers can fetch higher prices. Premiums paid to organic farmers can range 29 to 32 percent above […]
February Numbers Show Drop in US Farm Value
Reuters News Service Reports: The average price of quality U.S. farmland fell 3 percent in 2014, marking the first annual decline in almost 30 years, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said in its quarterly survey of district bankers on Thursday. “The District’s annual decrease of 3 percent in good farmland values for 2014 was […]
20 Best College Farms
Best College Reviews highlights the top 20 College Farms! Here are the top 5. 1. Warren Wilson College Warren Wilson College is a national liberal arts college structured around values perfectly manifested in the soil. To graduate, students must work through “the Triad” of Warren Wilson experience, including work, service, and academics. Warren Wilson is […]
Farm Worker Rights Battle in the Strawberry Fields
From Civil Eats by Steve Holt For many, a red, ripe strawberry elicits sweet memories of sunshine, summer, and childhood. Glorietta, a strawberry picker in California, has quite a different relationship with the fruit. Hunched over picking for up to 10 hours a day for a mid-sized commercial grower, Glorietta—who asked that we not use […]
Farmers walking away from their leases in the Midwest
A report from Reuters News Service: Across the U.S. Midwest, the plunge in grain prices to near four-year lows is pitting landowners determined to sustain rental incomes against farmer tenants worried about making rent payments because their revenues are squeezed. Some grain farmers already see the burden as too big. They are taking an extreme […]
Feeding the 1 percent
From grain.org: Since the global food crisis of 2008, there has been a massive wave of private sector investment in agriculture. More money flowing into agriculture means more innovation and modernisation, more jobs and more food for a hungry planet, say the G8, the World Bank and corporate investors themselves. But does it? Looking at […]
A History of Property
by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts from Creative Time Reports Recently in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood, two women aged 30 and 23 knocked on an apartment door to gain entry and then demanded at gunpoint that its current occupants vacate the premises. As reported in the New York Daily News, by way of motive one of the women later […]
Is the Farmland Surge just a Bubble Waiting to Burst?
By Danielle Kurtzleben from U.S. News and World Report The auctions are unintentionally silent today at the Pine Lake Country Club. Plenty of farmers showed up on this drizzly fall morning, since it’s too wet to harvest. But as auctioneer Joel Ambrose tries to sell first one, then another field to the 40 or so […]