Webinar This Morning 4/14: Climate Change and The Farm
From the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy: 10:00 AM CST / 11:00 AM EST / 3:00 PM GMT Register now Discussions about climate change often lead to how agriculture is a major contributor of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is also true that agricultural communities are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate […]
Land Gifting Gets a Head Start in Iowa
The Sustainable Iowa Land Trust (SILT), just out of the gates is revolutionizing the was Iowans look at the land. From SILT: You may not know which neighbor has been thinking about the transfer of their land to the next generation, but help us hold social gatherings or speak at a scheduled event and see who […]
Passing on the Farm: The Not So Simple Life
This first hand account of succession shows just what kind of struggles even farmers with a plan may face. From Yes Magazine by Shannon Hayes: I take a tentative step on the woodland trail I’ve been breaking in all winter. The snow is too soft today. I sink to my knees. Sighing, I call to […]
Investing in Our Neighbors
As Agrarian Trust and our partners try to create a new framework where farmland commons are created by investors and worked by farmers in the community, we also are beginning to ask who can invest. Is there a legal framework for small lenders, and if not, how do we create one. From MinnPost.com: In January, new […]
The Human Cost of Food
Late last year, science reporter Liza Gross came to us with a project that examined pesticide use near schools in California. One high school in Oxnard that Gross focused on had the misfortune of being surrounded by strawberry fields that get dosed with a greater volume of toxic fumigants than any other community in the […]
Did the City Build the Farm?
A blogger from zompist.com looks into the legacy and teaching of Jane Jacobs: Not enough people have read Jane Jacobs. Many have; her The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), a celebration of city neighborhoods and a warning that they were being destroyed by the czars of urban renewal, has gone in forty years from […]
The Land of Many Palaces
A documentary by Adam James Smith and Song Ting shows Ordos, China, where thousands of farmers are being relocated into a new city under a government plan to modernize the region. “The Land of Many Palaces” （《宫殿之城》）follows a government official whose job is to convince these farmers that their lives will be better off in the […]
New Case Studies from CA FarmLink
This just out from CA FarmLink!
The Great American Land Heist
This land is our land? By Christopher Ketcham from an article published in Harpers: Cliven Bundy, the notorious scofflaw cattle rancher from Bunkerville, Nevada, was taking his midday nap when I arrived at his spread. One of his daughters — he has fourteen grown children, and they all seemed to have mustered at the ranch — told me […]
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 […]