Benny Bunting on Family Farmers
from the RAFI USA website Benny Bunting has served as RAFI-USA’s Lead Farm Advocate for over 20 years. In the course of his remarkably successful career as an advocate, Benny has assisted hundreds of family farmers. In 2008, Benny was awarded the prestigious Nancy Susan Reynolds Award for Personal Service. The organization produced a short […]
Czech Farmland Prices up 94% in Less than a Decade
From Bloomberg Businessweek by By Krystof Chamonikolas and Lenka Ponikelska Martin Burda gave up managing $8.1 billion of securities for something with better returns: dirt. In July he helped start Cesky Fond Pudy, the first investment company focused only on Czech farmland. Agricultural property in the Czech Republic, says Burda, “is among the least expensive in […]
The Great Migration
PBS Documentary sheds light on a problem that lingers in the land legacy of the U.S. “We were a land based agrarian people from Africa. We were uprooted from Africa and we spent 200 years developing our culture as black Americans and then we left the South. We uprooted ourselves and attempted to transplant this […]
Important Land Event Wednesday in CA
Land access is a serious challenge facing small-scale farmers. Concentration of ownership, increasing farm size, rural gentrification, financial speculation, and rising pressure from residential and industrial real estate developers have made farmland increasingly difficult to get. One strategy for increasing land access that we are seeing with increasing frequency is the development of land trusts […]
Taking on the Big Land Grab
From the Land Stewardship Project by Sarah Claassen: This fall, 19 Land Stewardship Project members traveled to county courthouses across Minnesota and dug through real estate transaction records to help compile data on the state of land consolidation in rural areas. These researchers represent an important first step in a major new LSP campaign to […]
New Rules to Preserve Farmland
From Newsday by Will James Southampton Town is trying to ensure that its preserved farms, tucked amid some of the most expensive real estate in the country, do not turn into manicured lawns or equestrian stables for wealthy neighbors who buy them up. Though the town, Suffolk County and the nonprofit Peconic Land Trust have […]
Report: Innovations in Farmland Access
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Sign on to Urge Governor Cuomo to Help the Next Generation of Farmers Find Affordable Farmland
A bill to improve access to farmland for beginning farmers has been passed by both houses of the New York State Legislature. Now it is up the Governor to sign it into law. Bill A.7002/S.5377 would require state agencies to inventory farmland owned by state agencies, such as the Department of Corrections and the Office […]
Don’t Let Your Children Grow Up to Be Farmers
From the New York Times, by farmer Bren Smith. AT a farm-to-table dinner recently, I sat huddled in a corner with some other farmers, out of earshot of the foodies happily eating kale and freshly shucked oysters. We were comparing business models and profit margins, and it quickly became clear that all of us were […]
Scholarships for Young Farmers!
Every December, hundreds of beginning farmers from across the United States gather at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture to learn from agricultural luminaries, peers, and advocacy organizations at the National Young Farmers Conference: Reviving the Culture of Agriculture. On December 3-5, 2014, Stone Barns Center will host the 7th annual National Young Farmers […]