Empowering Adoption of Innovative Land Access Models

Commodities

Practices

As a result of this project, dozens of underserved farmers across
the North Central region will find new opportunities to secure
stable, resilient access to land through 4 innovative models.
These emerging models address persistent problems experienced by
underserved farmers and others, including lack of capital, poor
credit, and low trust in lending institutions while leveraging
the desire to farm collaboratively. This project doesn’t just
teach- it gives voice to the deeper need of community members for
representation and justice. We achieve these results by creating
educational resources that offer technical and legal information
alongside practical decision-making and reflection tools. The
project learns from farmers as they use the materials, adapts to
their feedback, and gives voice to their authentic viewpoints in
the educational material.

As a result of this project, underserved farmers will have the
practical resources necessary to choose from and adapt these
tools to their own situations. Underserved farmers will see
represented their own community’s stories, history, and feelings
on these tools embodied in the outreach. This project is led by
Farm Commons, an organization with strong success in creating
highly effective technical material. Our process of building
trust, listening carefully to our learners, and fostering
leadership allows us to create truly empowering materials. We
rely on our extensive farmer networks while working in
collaboration with farmers and organizations that have even
deeper relationships with underserved farmers. The social and
economic sustainability of our region's farmers will improve
through resilient land access.

Objective: Create educational resources (4 guides, 4 webinars, 4
podcasts) on four innovative land access solutions: 1)
Reparations and rematriation/repatriation, donations, 2)
Buy-protect-sell model, 3) Profit-a-prendre, and 4) Entity-based
FSA Farm Ownership loans

After creating and distributing the multi-media educational
resources on the above, we will see:

800 farmers and landowners improve their understanding of the
advantages/disadvantages, process, and legal mechanics of the 4
models.

200 underserved farmers (or farmer-landowners) create an action
plan for moving towards one of the innovative models presented.

22 underserved farmers (or farmer-landowners) develop innovative
land access opportunities appropriate to their needs and
circumstances.