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About
The Montana Agrarian Commons is a statewide partnership that brings together a community land trust, an organic grain and crop farm, a stewardship education institute, and Agrarian Trust to support affordable and secure land access for regenerative food production, ecological stewardship, and education opportunities.
We aim to prioritize secure land tenure and equity building for diverse groups of people, including beginning farmers who would otherwise not be able to access land for agriculture due to prices, discrimination, and other socioeconomic barriers. The Montana Agrarian Commons is working with organizations, institutions, and governmental agencies in Montana to create opportunities for food-focused regenerative agriculture and financial stewardship throughout the state.
Interactive Map of the Agrarian Commons Get the full experience on Google Earth
Land Acknowledgement
The Montana Agrarian Commons is located on traditional and ancestral lands of the Assiniboine, Blackfeet, Chippewa, Cree, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kootenai, Little Shell Chippewa, Northern Cheyenne, Pend d’Oreille, Salish, and Sioux peoples who have lived in relationship with these lands since time immemorial. We honor their elders, past and present. Much of this land is unceded, and in many cases, these territories were stolen, seized, or otherwise acquired through genocidal actions of the state, colonizers, and settlers. As an organization primarily of settlers, we are committed to renewing our relationships with Indigenous peoples, and supporting Indigenous sovereignty through word and action. Please visit native-land.ca to learn the names and histories of this land.
The landownership structure that currently exists in Montana has come about through generations of genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples, including federal policies like the Homestead Acts (passed between 1850 and 1916) and the Allotment Act of 1887. The Montana Agrarian Commons recognizes the importance of the history of Indigenous peoples in Montana and aims to work with tribal governments and other local community leaders. We strive to address the injustices of the past, and to this end, will work to ensure farm projects are beneficial to all the surrounding communities.
Legal Statement
The Montana Agrarian Commons is organized and shall be operated exclusively for the purpose of holding title to property, collecting income therefrom, and turning the entire amount, less expenses, to the AGRARIAN LAND TRUST within the meaning of Section 501(c)(25) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (the “Code”). Agrarian Land Trust, the parent corporation of Montana Agrarian Commons, is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation exempt from federal income tax under Section 501(a) and described in Section 501(c)(3) of the Code.
Community
The Montana Agrarian Commons will own and preserve agricultural land and associated agrarian assets in Montana for the purpose of making land accessible to people otherwise excluded from the real estate market.
We aim to fill a specific niche by holding between 4and 12 farm properties, and prioritizing properties that are at risk of being taken out of production and those that could enable the launch of new land stewards. Ensuring that arable land is made accessible to ecologically minded farmers and ranchers will support farm viability and local agrarian economies, and will further our mission to provide permanent affordability for farmers and ranchers.
FOUNDING MEMBERS, VISION & PRIORITIES
The Montana Agrarian Commons was established by three organizational board members: Agrarian Trust, Trust Montana, and Vilicus Training Institute.
Agrarian Trust protects farmland for sustainable agriculture and preserves its affordability for new and disadvantaged farmers. The Trust buys farmland and accepts donations or charitable discounted sales of land, real estate, and property; it transfers land and real estate to local Agrarian Commons, allowing local stakeholder control to take priority.
Trust Montana works to ensure land is accessible and affordable from generation to generation. Their mission is to promote community land trusts and hold land in trust to facilitate workforce housing, farmland affordability, and the preservation of vital community assets that keep rural and urban areas livable for Montanans of varied economic means. Holding land in trust and entering into long-term leases with farmers and ranchers who would otherwise not be able to access land, Trust Montana aims to increase regional food production and ensure that more producers can operate without entering a never-ending cycle of debt accrual and repayment.
To balance the need for both housing and agricultural land in the state, Trust Montana prioritizes projects built on nonagricultural land and supports municipal policies that incentivize dense development to lessen sprawl, which too often removes prime agricultural soils from production.
Vilicus Training Institute is a nonprofit agricultural organization with a mission to inspire significant increases in the scope and scale of organic and biodynamic land management across the Northern Great Plains. The institute cultivates new land stewards, who, in turn, will grow the capacity of the land and improve the rural communities in which they live.
This collaborative establishment of a 501(c)25 Commons entity leverages each of the founding members’ resources and expertise to steward land and make it accessible to farmers and ranchers in Montana. This stewardship must include ensuring the land is permanently affordable for producers and adequately preparing and supporting the producers to promote their success.
ORGANIZATIONAL EXPERTISE
Trust Montana is experienced in deploying legal mechanisms to preserve the affordability of land, housing, and other community assets;
Vilicus Training Institute brings expertise in organic dryland crop farming, supporting new and beginning agarians, and implementing a system of land stewardship in the Northern Great Plains;
Agrarian Trust brings wide-ranging expertise from a national network of staff and board members. Agrarian Trust supports and leverages the work by providing a national platform and bringing capital for land acquisition and stewardship.
Land, History & Community
Montana is part of a region with some of the most stunning landscapes in the world, but it is also a land of catastrophe. For decades, more than 20,000 abandoned mines across the state have leached arsenic, cadmium, sulfuric acid, and toxins into the land’s soils, rivers, and streams. In the early 1900s, organizing and striking miners often met with violence and death at the hands of companies and state officials.
Butte has been the epicenter of some of Montana’s worst environmental and economic injustices. One of the largest mines, and the site of a well-known massacre, was the Anaconda Copper mine in Butte, from which 94,900 tons of copper were extracted before it closed in 1947. The Berkeley Pit, a massive open-pit mine, later overtook the old mine’s location and is the site of what has been described as a “poisoned lake” containing extremely acidic, heavy-metal-laden water that often kills wildlife unfortunate enough to visit its shores. Containing 50 billion gallons of contaminated water, the pit has been classified as a federal Superfund site since 1987.
Montana’s state constitution is unique in that it provides that each Montanan has the right to a clean and healthy environment. The Commons will work not only to preserve farmland as farmland but also to prioritize projects that promote ecologically based farming systems that sequester carbon and mitigate climate change impacts.
Although the Montana Agrarian Commons will be able to hold land in any region of the state, the current projects being considered for Commons land acquisition are in Western Montana and the Hi-Line (north-central) region of Montana.
URBAN FRINGE: WESTERN & SOUTHWESTERN MONTANA
The fast-growing western Montana cities of Missoula, Kalispell, and Bozeman are burgeoning markets for local food. They are also surrounded by patches of prime agricultural soils. As the popularity of these areas increases, land prices rise beyond what most beginning farmers can afford.
While advocacy for farmland preservation policies continue, the Montana Agrarian Commons aims to be an alternative mitigation tool—one that approaches the land-affordability challenge as well as the preservation challenge via land ownership instead of policies or regulations. The Commons will partner with local community groups to identify priority farmlands and ranchlands to bring into Commons ownership.
HI-LINE
The Hi-Line region of north-central Montana presents different challenges for producers. Dryland farming on the Hi-Line is more endangered by a shrinking population and lack of support for beginning farmers than by development pressures, which is why Vilicus Training Institute’s involvement in the Commons is so important.
Despite the low population and other challenges of dryland farming in a relatively harsh environment, Montana produces more certified organic wheat than any other state, and ranks second in total organic grain and lentil production. Over the last two decades, Montana has increased its pulse crop production (field peas, beans, garbanzo beans, and lentils) from zero production to a combined pulse crop value of more than $140 million. As the nation’s top producer of field peas and lentils and the third-largest producer of garbanzo beans, Montana has a pulse harvest that is now more valuable than its durum wheat production.
Structure
Model
Founding Farms, Ranches, & Agricultural Organizations
Vilicus Training Institute
Vilicus Training Institute works to inspire advanced land stewardship practices at scale, in partnership with nature, while promoting the standing of professional farmers in society and cultivating the circumstances that enable long-term prosperous stability for the next generation of farmer-stewards on the Northern Great Plains.
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
http://www.vilicusfarms.com
Local Agrarian Commons Documents
Bylaws
Articles of Incorporation
Land Lease (in process)
PARTNERS & ALLIES
COMMUNITY FOOD & AGRICULTURE COALITION (CFAC)
TRUST MONTANA
Trust Montana is a statewide community land trust working to build up a permanently affordable stock of agricultural properties, commercial spaces, and quality homes for Montanans.
Press
