Farms for the Future
Ensuring legacy
By The Fiertzeside today, we have a range of cold-pressed juices making use of our homegrown grapes, apples and pears. With the cooler evenings, a small fire smoulders with a cauldron of vegetable soup, made with home and locally grown vegetables.
I’d like to welcome those new to our gathering, writer and author,
who writes , polyglot and polymath, who writes, and a reader outside of the Substack platform. You are very welcome!While you’re getting settled, here’s some very happy free-range cows and calves.
The reason why I’ve shared this particular herd of dairy cows is because they live and work on a farm with a difference.
The farm is owned by St. Anthony’s Trust which was founded by a man who was very interested in the idea of a farm and a community functioning like a single organism. The Trust purchased Plaw Hatch Farm (in the video above) as a kind of experiment in community-based biodynamic farming. A few years after the purchase, a biodynamic agricultural college suffered financial hardship and had to sell some of its land. However, to keep the principles of biodynamic farming alive, the college bequeathed part of its farm to the trust.1
This was all fine and dandy until Plaw Hatch met with financial problems of its own. It would seem that biodynamic farming isn’t the way forward in providing farms for the future. However, under the cooperative management of the two farms combined, Plow Hatch was rescued and now has 93 leasehold farmers,2 75% of whom are women.3
One Plaw Hatch community member is shepherd, Gala Bailey-Barker, who manages an 80 strong flock of two sheep breeds from which meat, yarn with natural plant dyes, blankets and sheepskins are produced.4 Other members of the community contribute to dairy (see the cows above), poultry, pig, arable and garden farming in a holistic system of production.5
Did you notice how many people came to watch the cows being turned out? The farm is open, so consumers are as connected with the food process as the farmer is. This short video briefly explains how Plaw Hatch works.
Apart from the holistic practice employed on the farm, the land remains owned by the trust. The advantage is that the land can only ever be used for biodynamic farming. In this sense it is a farm for the future. For people like Gala, who never would have found a way to farm, the trust provides not only land, but a supportive community to those who have not been brought up within a tradition of farming.
However, one farm, which relies on the whims of a wealthy benefactor, is not enough to create resilient farms for the future.
Ecological Land Cooperative
Also based in the south of England, is a cooperative which purchases existing farmland which has come on to the market. It then subdivides larger farms into small-holdings which are leased to people who are new to agriculture and wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a farm purchase. Unlike Plaw Hatch, each leaseholder is independent rather than part of a single organism, but may capitalise from being in close proximity to others like themselves. This means they have the ability to share tools and machinery, share produce and benefit from each other’s research. At the end of the leasehold, the land returns to the cooperative, which maintains ownership, ensuring a legacy of farms for the future.6
Our vision is of a living, working countryside where land is valued in a way that enhances both the local community and the natural world. We also want to support new entrants into agriculture by making access to land a reality for all – not just the few.
We want to see low-impact, land based livelihoods flourish. We believe that land should be stewarded in a way that produces healthy and ecologically sound food and land-based products – now, and into the future.7
One beneficiary was Sinead Fenton, who with her partner, both from “low-income families” with “no access to farms growing up,” now has a 4.5 acre plot and 150 year lease through the Ecological Land Co-op. Together they run Aweside Farm, specialising in fresh and dried edible flowers since 2020. From an original 20 acre farm, two other plots have been leased, which provides Sinead with a support and learning network.
In March 2020, we left our flat in Essex and moved into a static caravan on the land. Since then, we’ve been transforming what was a field of low biodiversity and in poor condition into an ever thriving space with over 5000 trees planted, wildlife ponds, thousands of flowers and are now proudly home to lots of wildlife like birds, bees, snakes, insects and so much more.8
The cooperative policy of leasing smallholdings rather than large farms is to create greater rural equity, not just now, but for future generations. Land acquisition for farmers is a form of food sovereignty. Like the trust behind Plaw Hatch, the leasehold stipulates using the land in a particular manner, one that is regenerative.
It now has ten farms on four sites, with two sites ready for further smallholding development.
Can you earn a living from small-scale farming?
In 2016, Britain’s environmental department showed that out €3.7 billion total farming income, £3.2 of this was in the form of subsidies. Traditional farming isn’t profitable in a supermarket chain system of food supply. It has to be subsidised. While the co-op’s own financial analysis of small farms found that annual wages and profits are low, the co-op emphasises a ‘multiplier effect’ of fresh local food, environmental stewardship, and the local social impact of small farms which larger farms generally do not have. Additionally, farmers benefit from their own food supply, reducing their external consumption. They also don’t cost as much to run as inputs, like heavy machinery, are low. Their prices reflect the actual cost of production, and as seen in the Plaw Hatch example, interest has increased rather than declined.9
At the present time, the cooperative’s reach is small-scale, having to date supported just 10 agricultural projects, but this is continuing to grow and could benefit from a proposed government policy of helping aging farmers to retire. Forty percent of British farmers are over the age of 65.10 Flat rate subsidies per hectare of land provided little incentive for older farmers to change their practice. However, a younger generation of people without traditional farming backgrounds, many of whom are women, are trying to find a way in. Cooperative and trust purchase of land is an affordable solution.
Britain, in recent years has seen growth in regenerative agriculture. This is largely due to the announcement of a change in government policy from subsidising traditional farms on the basis of acreage, to paying farmers for providing public goods, such as water supply protection, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity.11 This may be a positive move forwards, but whether the proposals are enacted remains to be seen. There have been three changes to the position of environment secretary since inception of the policy proposal.
Terre de Liens, France
Britain isn’t alone in its concern about farms for the future. In France, an organisation, Terre de Liens, established a foundation in 2003 which from savings, donations and bequests buys existing land which would otherwise be added to existing large-scale farms, or used for housing or industrial development. The farms are then made available for long-term lease, but like the previous two examples, has environmental clauses: the farming practice employed must work in harmony with nature and contribute to the preservation of waters, biodiversity, and include the regeneration of soils, etc. When the farmer retires, the land goes back to the foundation to be passed to a new tenant.12
The process ensures that French land remains with French citizens, reduces land-grabbing monopolisation, and the development of existing agricultural land for other purposes, thus improving food sovereignty for future generations. By 2010, it owned 71 farms with 220 working adults. The number has since more than doubled with almost as many projects ready once funding is available. It has such strong public support that municipalities have become involved in securing land for the organisation.13
Of the Terre de Liens farms which are now operational, almost all have a short supply chain, marketing locally and have fostered direct relations between consumers and producers. Being engaged in their own processing activities, they, like the British cooperative example, create added value by employing local workers and contributing to the local economy.14
Terre de liens, has demonstrated how it contributes to the social and environmental common good, but faces two key challenges:
reforming policy and social representation to encourage renewed youth interest in agriculture
changing public attitudes toward land in a philosophical way, from land as a commodity to land as a common good.15
Any thoughts?
Embers
has a very interesting story to tell besides the fiction he writes. If you are in need of (re)establishing your connection with nature then the Crow’s Nest is an excellent place to visit in addition to Cricklewood (which I mentioned a couple of week’s ago) where shares and provides guidance on nature journalling. 
In a comment recently,
referred to permaculture enthusiast and teacher, Toby Hemenway and his position on the ethical principle of sharing surplus. I hope this was the conversation you were referring to Duane!May I toot my own horn? Sorry if you groaned. I’m a bit deaf after years of being caught on corridors when the school bell blasts. I’m very proud to be mentioned in association with enchantment over
’s Enchanted Forest round of enchanting posts. Thank you, Tara! I read all her recommendations (except my own), and enjoyed each and every one, especially the observation of how much food was spoken of in the book version of The Wizard of Oz. It’s made me notice how much Haruki Murakami does too (last read The Wind Up Bird Chronicles, current read Dance Dance Dance. You can find Tara’s recommendations HERE.Take Away
I haven’t really offered a take-away for the past few weeks. I probably underestimated how much food and beverage was needed at The Fiertzeside given how quickly our gathering grew. Each post, however, has established a train of thought that lasts beyond the publish button. The writing process has reconfirmed my commitment to the land we are lucky to have and our original purpose. The Fiertzeside has become a source of personal accountability and it is making me get up earlier and out into the garden with a sense of renewed purpose. My personal transformation during these past few weeks has been immense, even if the steps arising out of are likely to be small. There is too much to share as a take-away, but I do promise a future post on my own story.
Up Next:
Next week, we’ll be travelling to Shroud in England (possibly via Portugal and elsewhere) where we’ll take a different slant on food sovereignty.
https://www.stanthonystrust.org/how-we-began/ Accessed 13/09/2023
ibid.
ibid.
https://www.plawhatchfarm.co.uk Accessed 13/09/2023
https://ecologicalland.coop/about/ Accessed 14/09/2023
ibid.
https://awesidefarm.co.uk/pages/about-us Accessed 14/09/2023
https://terredeliens.org Accessed 09/09/2023
ibid.
Another wonderful post, thanks! And thank you for the mention too, that really made my day.
One thing you do so admirably here is show the hope which exists in the world. Too often, we are preprogrammed by the media (whether social or mainstream) to only look at the negatives but, when I read something like this, I am reminded that there is a lot of good in the world, too. Thank you for sharing!
(We have friends from Thailand who you might also be interested in, they run Punpun, which is a small organic farm, but also teaches widely, whether on seed saving or natural building, for example. There really are so many wonderful initiatives, on a global scale. We just need to keep spreading the word.)
By a lucky coincidence, I'll be talking to our local land trust and organic farm school this week. I'll plant this seed!