21st-Century Land Reform: Community Models for Farmland Tenure

Is it time for communities to secure the land base needed for their best future? Land is unaffordable to almost all farmers, with non-white farmers starting near zero. 98% percent of US farmland is white-owned, with Black owners continuing to lose land. Indigenous groups working to bring land back to systematically impoverished communities have a steep road ahead. 92% of California’s farm labor force, yet only 3.3% of farm business owners, are Latinx. The business of farming is high-risk to start, but land insecurity has almost completely shut the gate. New tools are needed to redistribute land to working farmers and their communities! Hear about Rancho San Benito’s search for a land base for collective regenerative farming; and how a new crop of Agrarian Commons around the country are taking farms off the real estate market and conveying lifetime tenure to diverse working farmers.