The owners of this property, John and June Strothenke are selling in the most unusual way – an essay contest! It costs $1000 to enter but they are only accepting 420 applicants so that odds that you could win are relatively high! Continue reading
Tag Archives: farmland
internship this summer in farmland conservation in greenwich, ny
The Agricultural Stewardship Association is currently accepting applications for their summer internship program. This paid position is geared towards undergraduate students. The intern will gain experience working in a fast-paced nonprofit on event planning, community outreach, data collection, and project management. This looks like a great opportunity for someone interested in agricultural and natural resources education, communications, event planning, and land trusts.
The ASA is a community-supported nonprofit organization that works with land owners in Rensellaer and Washington Counties in New York’s upper Hudson Valley to conserve farmland.
Full job position is included below. Continue reading
our land 2: moving towards an autonomous food system, NM, nov 9-15
OUR LAND 2!
November 9-17th, in Albuquerque and Santa Fe New Mexico.
ALL THE INFORMATION IS HERE: www.agrariantrust.org/2016symposium
This will be the second Agrarian Trust OUR LAND symposium, and once again we’ve got speakers from around the country and around the region focusing our attention, analysis, activism and collective agency on issues relevant to your regional foodshed.
This event is presented by Agrarian Trust and has a focus on Land access, land transition and the issues underlying ownership and management of the territory required for an autonomous and sovereign food system.
The central themes of this symposium center on land-use and governance regimes of the southwest region. We will learn about the acequias, a system of irrigation ditch commons brought by the Spanish. The history, management regimes and future prospects of this system represent a powerful curriculum for other commons-based systems. Can these ditch commons be explained to include their uplands and headwaters, or will ditch rights be lost to privatization and sold to developers?
FREE lifetime lease on a 65 acre land trust parcel in WV [EDIT: NO LONGER AVAILABLE]
[[[[[[[THIS LAND IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT APC WITH REQUESTS FOR INFO.]]]]]]]]]
The Appalacian Catholic Worker has put out a call for someone to rent a beloved but human-starved piece of land in West Virginia. [Edit: please note that this is NOT a Greenhorns offer. The following text is from the APC, whose contact information is towards the bottom of the post.] Read on for more information:
OUR LAND TRUST HAS A 65 ACRE TRACT THAT IS CURRENTLY EXPERIENCING PEOPLELESSNESS ***** (contrary to urban homelessness, many rural homesteads suffer from peoplelessness, sometimes chronic/cyclical) One of Appalachian Catholic Worker’s community projects is being on the board of directors for the “Regional Land Trust of West Virginia.” RLTWV lands have been protected since 1969, and are close ‘cousins’ with “Trust in the Hills” land trust in WV, started by CWers, Chuck Smith and Sandy Adams (dubbed by Dorothy Day herself as the quintessential examples of CW farmers!)
Currently, RLTWV has a 65 acre tract -mostly wooded hillsides – that would be the perfect place to start your own homestead or CW community. Get a free life-time lease for: – About 10 acres of cleared flat bottom for a big garden or pasturing small livestock; – a pond up on the hill – the old hippie house needs lots of TLC and skilled handiwork or just be lived in as a new one is built – wood stove, water well and pump, electric, telephone land line, indoor compost toilet – and the land taxes this year were only $471.00 !!!
The majority of the board wants to let it go (sell it! God forbid!) because, – since this tract was annexed in 2013, we haven’t been able to find conscientious care-takers who don’t trash the place, or potential lease-holders who can stick around very long. – The board doesn’t want to have to afford (and I can’t myself) the additional taxes on top of the other lands we are responsible for. – We’re an older, or already-swamped, voluntarily-poor board, without the energy or time to clean up the messes or maintain the land.
Mission of RLTWV is … 1. Providing access to land for the landless; 2. Promoting the ecological use of land for the common good; 3. Protecting land from speculation; 4. Encouraging a new relationship with land that sees it as the common heritage of all people, not as the private property of a few, nor as a commodity to be exchanged; 5. Developing networks of support and fellowship that will strengthen those on trust lands in times of need or ecological threat to the land; 6. Supporting efforts for land reform everywhere.
Looks like a job for SUPER CWs or their counterparts!! Your new address would be: 881 Slab Fork Rd. Spencer, WV 25276 about 10 miles from town (last 2 are gravel), relatively reliable transportation would be needed. There are currently FIVE other CW houses spread out around the state of WV each doing different ministries. You’d have an automatic extended intentional community AND a wonderful, tightly knit, REGION-WIDE network of fellow radically-minded, environmentally friendly folks, catholic, not-so-Catholic, and not-Catholic.
Agrarian Trust Symposium speaker Kim Stringfellow’s cool ass project!
The Mojave Project is really just kind of the bomb-diggety. But don’t take our word for it: to learn more, we recommend this absolutely gorgeous video. The project is an “experimental transmedia documentary led by Kim Stringfellow exploring the physical, geological and cultural landscape of the Mojave Desert.” Browse the current projects here.
And while we’re talking about the Mojave Project, they’re asking you to
SAVE THE DATE!
WHAT: We pleased to send you this SAVE THE DATE announcement about our autumn program OUR LAND 2: Tracing the Acequia Commons, a series of talks, exhibits and happenings to advance the broadening discourse on land commons and farmland futures.
WHERE: New Mexico! Most events Free and open to the public.
WHEN: November 9-17th in close association with the Quivira Coalition and Biodynamic Association annual conferences, Agrarian Trust invites you to join us in fine company to approach topics of Public Trust, Acequia traditions and commons culture, emergent urban commons, water enclosures and new topographics; through lectures, documentary films, open archive exhibits and an walk along an Acequia irrigation ditch, flowing continuously for four centuries.
WHO: Mary Wood, Rick Prelinger, Kim Stringfellow, Tezozomoc, Devon Pena, Ruth Breach, Stanley Crawford, Wes Jackson, Emily Vogler, Ildi Carlisle-Cummins, Eric Holt Gimenez, Kate Levy… and more
uncle sam wants you to live and farm on a national park
For readers who are staring out the window of a chilly office on a sunny day, dreaming about a life digging into the land, with miles of hiking trails and quiet, pastoral valleys right outside of your front door…the National Park Service may have a job for you.
Wall Street is buying our farms
Orion Magazine Presents: Buying the Farm
Photo courtesy of Mark Renz
Dean Kuipers dives into Wall St’s speculative invasion of farm country and talks about alternatives that seek to improve farmers’ land tenure, not shake it up, projects like Iroquois Valley Farms, which are, he says,
“…a radical alternative to institutional investors—a radically profitable alternative, he is quick to point out, as his company is making “over a double-digit return on an annual basis, since the inception.” That would put it on par with the institutional funds, which are averaging, according to de Lapérouse, somewhere from 7 to 12 percent annual returns.”
Read article here: https://orionmagazine.org/article/buying-the-farm/
nyt review of “farmland” the movie
By Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times
May 8, 2014
“Bad behavior is pretty rare in our industry,” one of the six young farmers profiled in “Farmland” tells us. Though he doesn’t elaborate, his comment’s lack of detail and depth is typical of a film that plays more like a feature-length advertisement than like a documentary. You keep expecting the camera to zoom in on a packet of bacon or a box of cereal.
A glance at the publicity notes, however, will tell you that this one-sided puff piece was “made with the generous support of the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers Alliance,” a trade association formed in response to films like “Food, Inc.” Smooth and folksy, it traffics in broad, unchallenged claims that serve a single purpose: to persuade us that the only thing wrong with today’s farming methods is our misinformed perception of them.
Click HERE to read the full review!
