Deepening Community: Preserving Farm Legacy through the Farmland Commons by Darby Weaver
Deepening Community: Preserving Farm Legacy through the Farmland Commons
The Farmers Land Trust
By Darby Weaver
Another summer growing season has peaked and faded away, and, once again, small farms across North America worked tirelessly to tie their local communities to the wellness and spirit of the landscape. These dedicated stewards fed families, supported biodiversity, sequestered carbon, and maintained the vitality of their farm organisms through keen observation, the development of dynamic systems, and the cultivation of a loving relationship with the land. These relationships can take years to fully form, as farmers must experience the variabilities of the natural world through the lens of their unique microclimates, and some of the healthiest farm organisms today are stewarded by our wisest elders.
All of these farms, tended by the young and old alike, serve as our connection to the life force of our planet. Their efforts in the field sustain us, allow us to harness our imagination and creativity, and bring flavor and joy to our dinner tables. These farms are able to survive in our modern world primarily due to the support of their communities. Whether it be from sales to neighbors at the local farmers, market or through the dedicated annual dollars of a community supported agriculture (CSA) program, the farm exists in a symbiotic relationship with the families it feeds.
The Farmers Land Trust sees this symbiosis between farms and community as an essential part of preserving the legacy and viability of farms in a modern world that has increasing barriers to farming success. They see the power and stability that comes from community support and intend to take this even further by encouraging communities to deepen their relationship with the farm and land by holding the land in common. The Farmland Commons is a new land tenure model that provides the legal and practical structure for this relationship.
Agricultural Context
The Farmland Commons model is an effort to directly address the current agricultural crisis in the United States. Every year since 1935, the United States has been losing farmland. Down from 6.8 million farms counted in the 1935 USDA Agricultural Census, the USDA counted just two million farms in 2022. This loss can be attributed to many factors, namely farm consolidation and development. According to American Farmland Trust, the United States is losing 2,000 acres of farmland a day to low-density residential sprawl. As available farmland dwindles, land values continue to grow. In the Land Values 2023 Summary issued by the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, the average cost of farmland in the United States jumped to $4,080 per acre this year, up 7.4 percent since 2022.
Elder farmers in the United States looking toward retirement have limited options. Farming is a relatively low-margin business, bringing in revenues that are often difficult to translate into savings. This puts elder farmers in the position of needing to sell their farms into the inflated, open real estate market to cash in on the growing value of land in hopes of providing for themselves in retirement.
While farmers need to sell their land for the highest dollar value, new and beginning farmers are unable to afford to start their operations. Young and beginning farmers cited access to land as one of their biggest barriers to entry in the National Young Farmer Coalition’s quinquennial survey. The inability of elder farmers to pass on their farming operations to the next generations of agrarians is a big problem that The Farmers Land Trust is working to address.
Kristina Villa, Co-Executive Director of The Farmers Land Trust, has an intimate understanding of the challenges faced by modern farmers, having spent over a decade growing food. Her years of raising crops and building community help to root the work of the organization into the lived experience of those who derive their income from the land. Kristina reflects, “As a young farmer, and after spending eight years on a very large and productive biodynamic farm that ran a successful CSA program, I knew how to farm and how to run a farm business, but I could not afford land. That is not a unique story to me either, with land access being the number one barrier for new and beginning farmers.”
These issues—faced by new and beginning farmers, Black and Brown farmers, and farm elders—are all associated with the privatized land-ownership model in the United States that has historically favored large, capital agriculture operations over small-scale, local farms. The U.S. real estate market has prioritized commercial development ventures, investments, and wealth accumulation and has disproportionately ensured white land ownership. Ninety-eight percent of rural acreage is owned by white people, a finding that has been heavily cited from the USDA’s Agricultural Economics and Land Ownership survey of 1999.
How the Farmland Commons Model Works
While most land trusts utilize conservation easements and other agreements to limit land rights and uses to prevent development, they are often made up of restrictions for land use that can, and often do, limit the productivity of agriculture, ultimately separating humans from natural spaces. The Farmers Land Trust is similarly working to protect land from development, but it is also prioritizing agricultural productivity and securing land for farmers with stipulations for land use that focus on regenerative farming practices.
The Farmland Commons model decommodifies land by placing it in the nonprofit ownership of local communities. It is accomplished by expanding on the CSA farm business model to encompass thinking about land ownership, land equity, and land tenure as functions of community.
The Farmland Commons are created by forming a land-holding entity through the establishment of an IRS-designated 501(c)(25) nonprofit, which is formed when multiple 501(c)(3) nonprofits work together on a shared goal. Once the partner organizations—numbering from three up to 35—come together with the goal of protecting agricultural land, a board is created for the 501(c)(25) that is made up of members of the parent 501(c)(3) organizations. These nonprofits can be national, regional, or local, but a focus is put on organizations that have community roots. Having a mix of local and national representation can bring great benefit to the network by extending support and resources to the larger capacity held at organizations on the national level. The 501(c)(25) itself is a limited-scope entity that exists exclusively to hold title to acquired real estate and convey lease of this real estate to the farm.
The assembled board from the parent nonprofits determines the terms of the lease. The Farmers Land Trust advocates for affordability and equity through the establishment of a ninety-nine-year lease agreement. The board of the umbrella 501(c)(25) can harness their legal position to take in lease revenue and pursue tax-deductible, philanthropic funding acquired through the connections and partnerships held by the 501(c)(3) parent organizations.
Ian McSweeney, Co-Executive Director of The Farmers Land Trust, elaborates:
“A 501(c)(25) can take in philanthropic funding and land gifts, but for it to be tax-deductible, it must be given to one of the parent organizations, which then passes it on to the 501(c)(25). That is one of the benefits of being connected to a nonprofit and why we see the nonprofit vehicle being so crucial. It can take in philanthropic funding in a tax-deductible way, which is needed when trying to acquire and support land in a system that is broken and out of touch with reality in its prices and costs. A benefit to holding land in the 501(c)(25) is that, because it is limited in scope by IRS laws, it gives the farmer/leaseholder more autonomy and independence than any other entity or model, while also giving them a voice through a position on the board.”
This means that the next generation of farmers—who can be organized into any legal structure, such as an individual, LLC, or nonprofit—get a ninety-nine-year lease on the land, giving them all rights to use the land and long-term, affordable tenure to that land. The board seat means that they are not only leaseholders to the land, but also have ownership in the structure itself. Additionally, as leaseholders of the community-held land, they can be owners of buildings and other infrastructure on the land, giving them a way to build equity.
The 501(c)(25) manages the real estate holding responsibilities of taxes, insurance, permits, approvals, capital improvements, and long-term management. The entity creates and manages an ongoing budget designed to reinvest in the agricultural infrastructure and cover all current and future carrying costs of the agricultural entities and any other costs associated with the related management efforts made by the member nonprofits.
Ian sees the nested model of collaborative community organizations as an essential path forward for modern land ownership, and he feels that community-led initiatives have the power to be so successful because they mimic the momentous and synergistic symbiosis that fuels the natural world:
“Nature and healthy ecosystems, soil, and communities all function through complex multiple entities, nodes, energy, and all would cease to be sustainable and resilient if not for the complex network of nested relationships and interdependence. Our colonial, patriarchal, capitalist ways are all focused on division, separation, and evaluation, measurement, and assignment, and it leads to the need to dissect everything, commoditize everything, and individualize everything to the point that we are destroying our wholeness and connections to one another and the Earth. We are destroying our planet, and we are stuck believing it is the only path forward.”
The Farmland Commons is a completely open-source and dynamic legal arrangement generating a feasible path for farmers to retire from their operations, while also honoring and valuing what their years of cultivation have contributed to the productivity and ecological integrity of their land and community. When a farm enters the Farmland Commons, the 501(c)(25) umbrella organization becomes the owner of the parcel and the board works together to ensure that the land is preserved in farming and placed in the care of capable growers, thereby carrying forward its legacy.
The Farmers Land Trust believes that this decommodification of agricultural land is an essentially needed, innovative approach that has the potential to change the future of agriculture in the United States for the better. Kristina explains:
“My hope is that people with land, who are the ones holding all the power, begin to realize the incredible potential for transformation that they hold, and open themselves up to gifting that land to farmers and communities who have been, and who continue to be, systematically displaced from land. People gift land for conservation and to churches and schools all the time, and we need to normalize gifting land for regenerative agriculture, food production, connection to land, sustainable food systems, and social justice in the form of food sovereignty.”
Where the open real estate market has created a divide between elder farmers and new and beginning farmers, The Farmers Land Trust is building a bridge. By creating the Farmland Commons, we are inviting collaboration, building equity, and reconnecting and reinvesting communities back into the natural landscapes that sustain them. Kristina and Ian encourage farmers and organizations interested in learning more about their options to get in touch: “We would be honored to talk with any farmers, landowners, organizations, or communities interested in holding and being in relationship with land in a new way and encourage them to reach out to us.”
To find out more about The Farmers Land Trust, visit www.thefarmerslandtrust.org. You can start a conversation with them through the contact form on their site.
Darby Weaver is a farmer and writer, growing biodynamic food and cannabis on her small farm in Wolcott, Vermont. She attended school at Sterling College in Craftsbury, Vermont where she received a degree in Sustainable Agriculture. She has been growing crops and raising livestock with her husband Elliot Smith for 15 years. As a writer, Darby is passionate about using storytelling to uplift the work of communities reconnecting folx to the nourishment offered by regeneratively stewarded landscapes.