another free farm offer

More info here.

event for landless farmers and lucky landowners, forest grove, or

Dairy Creek Community Food Web presents:

Fields for Food
a workshop on leasing farmland
Tuesday March 17, 6:00-8:00 p.m.
@
St. Bede’s Episcopal Church
1609 Elm St.
Forest Grove, OR
To RSVP, call: 503-992-0078 ext. 302
Free with snacks provided!

Presentations by:
Nellie McAdams, Director of Farm Preservation Program at Rogue Farm Corps. Nellie will explain how to find farmers and craft a lease.
http://www.roguefarmcorps.org/

Greg Malinowski, farmer at Malinowski Farms and Washington County Commissioner. Greg will share his experience in leasing portions of his land to farmers for over 20 years.
http://www.friendsoffamilyfarmers.org/

Charlene Murdock, Nana Cardoon Urban Farm and local Forest Grove resident who has leased land to Adelante Mujeres Sustainable Agriculture program participants.
http://www.adelantemujeres.org/, http://www.nanacardoon.com/,

what would it take to strengthen women’s land rights

The evidence base is growing: strengthening women’s land rights contributes to women’s empowerment and household welfare.

Evidence is also showing that women who have more secure land tenure are more likely to plant trees or make other investments to improve the land and generate ecosystem services. This means efforts to improve women’s land rights can also create enabling conditions for land restoration.

But strengthening women’s land rights isn’t that simple. Unfortunately, there’s also evidence that changing property rights is not an easy process in any case.  There are always vested interests to protect the status quo, especially when it comes to something as important as land rights.  And when it comes to women’s property rights, there are additional layers of gender norms that make it even more challenging to bring about changes.

To read more, Click HERE!

call for papers

from The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development

Special Topic Call for Papers:       

Land for Food:

A Focus on Farmland Protection and Land Grabbing

Deadline for manuscripts: May 15, 2013, for publication in the fall 2013 issue

Sustainable and equitable food systems require adequate volumes of high quality and affordable farmland. Many farmers invest heavily in their farmland; typically it is one of their greatest assets. Meanwhile, the loss  of  farmland may affect food security. In the United States, for example, the USDA reports that  the country is short by 13 million acres for fruit and vegetable production to meet daily requirements.¹ While the international recession has slowed farmland loss in some places, sprawl that affects some of the best farmland continues unabated. The loss in some countries has been so great  that they are pursuing the control of agricultural land in other countries — particularly in the global south.

young farmers, land tenure, crazy weather

For young farmers: No land but plenty of climate change to go around
by Jared Flesher, cross-posted from Grist & Edible Jersey

We desperately need more young farmers in this country.

“If we do not repopulate our working lands, I don’t know where to begin to talk about the woes,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan told The Washington Post this April.

The average age of the American farmer is 57 years old and rising. There are but 120,000 American farm operators age 34 and under. There are 1.3 million American farm operators age 55 and older.

In 2009, I picked up a video camera in order to start documenting something that looked hopeful. As if they had seen a poster with Uncle Sam’s pointing finger, young people with college educations — but absolutely no background in agriculture — were showing up on small organic farms in my home state of New Jersey, seeking training. In many cases, the self-appointed mission of these young people wasn’t just to farm, but to farm as sustainably as possible. I made a film about it, titled The Farmer and the Horse.