Cultivating Resiliency in Roanoke, Virginia
As a recipient of Roanoke City’s share of American Rescue Plan funding, LEAP is working to create a centralized food hub about a mile down the road from Lick Run Farm farm, where Cam plans to take his vision for growing food and building community to the next level. Once the funds are raised, the land will become the founding farm for the Southwest Virginia Agrarian Commons: a space where Cam can build soil, host workshops, and raise vegetables to be sold on-site as well as through LEAP’s new food hub.
Equity & Justice Research Grant
The Gund Institute for Environment, based out of the University of Vermont (UVM), recently announced their inaugural Equity and Justice research grant, which supports projects that aim to address inequities and injustices underlying environmental crises. I was honored to receive one of these grants to support my collaboration with Agrarian Trust exploring how creative approaches improve equitable farmland access and sustainable on-farm practices. To date, land access policy initiatives in the United States have focused exclusively on expanding private property ownership. Recent research, however, indicates that such efforts may not fully address the systemic and structural barriers to equitable farmland access.
The Diggers Today: Enclosure, Manure, and Resistance
Such historical examples of commoning practices and resistance to land enclosures not only provide ample opportunity to learn from past struggles, but also serve as proof that, rather than being a static relic of the past, the commons are continuously defended and transformed in the struggle against the exploitative and dehumanizing forces of enclosure. Agrarian Trust and similar grassroots organizations are part of this long lineage of commoners fighting for a more equitable and ecologically oriented relationship with the land. Over three hundred years before the founding of Agrarian Trust, Gerard Winstanley and the Diggers championed a compelling alternative to the early capitalism of the seventeenth century. Their platform centered on the democratic control of land and the restorative power of a simple but often overlooked fertilizing agent—manure.
The International Land Coalition Commits to New Strategy Centered on Restoring Land Rights to Dispossessed Communities
The International Land Coalition has released a new strategy that centers on securing land rights for “women, youth, family and peasant farmers, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, forest dwellers, fisher folk, afro‑descendants and local communities.” The Agrarian Trust is a member of the International Land Coalition (ILC), a global coalition of over 300 members dedicated to the advancement of people-centered land governance.
Press Release: Announcing New Land Acquisition Project for the Southwest Virginia Agrarian Commons
The Southwest VA AC needs to raise $251,329 through a fundraising campaign to fully fund this $426,250 project and acquire the 3.5-acre Lick Run Farm in Roanoke, Virginia.
Creating Land Access & Tenure for Black Farmers in Virginia
While securing land tenure is a challenge facing farmers of every race in this country, Agrarian Trust knows that land access is a greater barrier for farmers of color, and is centering the work of making affordable land security available to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) farmers. More than 98% of farmland in the U.S. is owned by white people while more than 70% of the farmworkers who seed, cultivate, weed, and harvest the crops that feed us are people of color. This gross injustice needs to change.
Agrarian Commons: A New Model for Community-Owned Farmland
On May 4th, 2020, Agrarian Trust announced the launch of a transformative new model for community-based farm and ranch ownership and tenure, the Agrarian Commons. After several years of development and collaborative input, the Agrarian Commons launches in 10 states across the country. Co-founded with 12 farms representing 2,400 acres of diversified agriculture serving local foodsheds […]
Sweet Land: The Story of a Collaborative Farming Model that Saved Two Dairies
This is the story of the revival of two dairy farms as a result of regenerative farming practices, savvy marketing, and an openness to sharing land and cows. It’s written from a series of conversations at a farmer’s market in Roanoke, Virginia, where the author and Sweet Land farmers are neighbor-vendors. Rob and Erin Lisenby […]
Nos Robaron La Tierra / They Stole the Land From Us
by Vanessa García Polanco What do you want the future of your land to be? “Nos robaron la tierra,” they stole the land from us, exclaimed my great aunt Tia Amantina with sadness. She was the first of my great aunts and uncles to be forcefully evicted and to migrate to the United States. In […]
Let’s talk about the land!
by Vanessa García Polanco When you’re driving in rural America and pass a farm, do you ever wonder how it came to be or do you just assume it has been there for generations and will be there for generations? I think that is the biggest distinction between some of our rural and urban farms. […]