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Returning Land Back to the Commons
Returning Land Back to the Commons
Graham Truscott tells the story of how Melbourne Area Transition bought a redundant cabbage field and turned it back into biodiverse, fruitful, community-owned land.
With the opening of a beautiful new hub building in October 2018, 4 hectares (10 acres) of former cabbage field (last held in common ownership in 1791) celebrated the fifth anniversary of its return to cooperative ownership and a significant transformation. The ‘big idea’ in March 2013 had been to turn this rather ordinary field into a multipurpose resource for the local community, an educational showcase and exemplar for permaculture principles and a fighting (albeit local and small-scale) response to the multiple threats affecting the biosphere. We were then a small Transition group in a rural/suburban area of South Derbyshire.
Melbourne Area Transition members had achieved a few small practical successes. A thriving forest garden had been created at the local school, a 10kW solar PV system placed on the roof of the grade 1 listed parish church and a number of other projects and activities drew attention to the big issues … But raising the money, fighting off housing developers, equestrian and other local property interests, managing land as an inexperienced group? That’s how daunting it looked when the commercial ‘For Sale’ signs appeared by the side of the road. By October 2013, however, not only had we figured out how to do it, got ourselves and our new cooperative approved by the Financial Regulator, gathered more than 150 members, done all the legal stuff etc. – and raised the cash – we were holding our first celebration on our own land.
The unequivocal support of The National Forest was critical. Within three days of hearing of our hopes, the promise of a capital grant from this forward-thinking organisation to start the fundraising forced us to turn thoughts into action.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Law of the Land
The Law of the Land
Land is—or should be—invaluable, perhaps even sacred. It is not only a place to live, but also a source for food, for water, for fuel, and for sustenance of almost every kind. Land management choices have profound impacts on our ecosystems and environment, and thus on our health, well-being and collective future.
Hence the politics of land access, and the laws that emerge from it, fundamentally shape our lives, our world and our legacy. Yet in Britain, something is radically wrong. As Simon Fairlie bluntly describes in The Land magazine, “nearly half the country is owned by 40,000 land millionaires, or 0.06% of the population, while most of the rest of us spend half our working lives paying off the debt on a patch of land barely large enough to accommodate a dwelling and a washing line.”
Such consolidated land ownership also engenders the uniform, large-scale, mechanised agriculture that is gradually becoming our mental image of “a farm.” Yet with the UK population having swelled by four million over the past decade, it becomes ever more pertinent that this model has long been known to produce far less food per acre than traditional smaller holdings—quite apart from its oil dependence and wider environmental impacts.
Meanwhile, many dream of using land truly sustainably by developing small-scale agroecological smallholdings that provide satisfying livelihoods, healthier ecosystems and not just more food, but healthier food. Some even purchase land and start planning to build their home before being blocked and frustrated at every turn as they engage with the legal intricacies and often perverse rulings of the planning permission system; the same system that is all too happy to give land over to a proliferation of supermarkets and identikit housing estates.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe
Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe
This report, involving 25 authors from 11 countries, reveals the hidden scandal of how a few big private business entities have gained control of ever-greater areas of European land. It exposes how these land elites have been actively supported by a huge injection of public funds –at a time when all other public funding is being subjected to massive cuts. While some of these processes –in particular ever-increasing land concentration– are not new, they have accelerated in recent decades in particular in Eastern Europe. They have also paved the way for a new sector of foreign and domestic actors to emerge on the European stage, many tied into increasingly global commodity chains, and all looking to profit from the increasingly speculative commodity of land.
“Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe”
Among other findings, the report reveals:
1. Increasing land concentration
Land ownership in Europe has become highly unequal reaching, in some countries, proportions similar to Brazil, Colombia and the Philippines – all notorious for their unequal distribution of land and land-based wealth. While in the EU there are some 12 million farms, the large farms (100 hectares and above) that only represent 3 percent of the total number of farms, control 50 percent of all farmed land.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
