“The UK has one of the highest levels of concentrated landownership in the world, with less than 1% of the population owning over half of all agricultural land. Over the past 20 years, 50,000 small-scale farms in the UK have either closed or ‘consolidated’, in part due to little government support for anyone farming on less than 5 hectares of land.” (Landworkers Alliance podcast, How do we get access to land?)
We draw on the above statement to showcase the stark reality of corporate landownership and land grabbing in the UK today and how it continues to increase. These farms are managed for profit in unsustainable, detrimental ways, or planted with trees or solar panels (under the guise of carbon offsetting), instead of food and nature. Yet an increasing number of new entrants seek opportunities to embark on a vocation in regenerative agriculture, they are hampered by the struggle to access affordable capital and land.
With a lack of government support for training, finance, and business planning, new entrants start from a challenging place in eco-farming careers. Our Land Trust receives increasingly high volumes of enquiries from individuals ready to take the plunge, but feeling overwhelmed at the scale of challenges involved, and lack of generational farming knowledge and skills or sufficient societal support.
The good news is solutions are now being sought with recognition placed on how these issues intersect across social, cultural, economic and environmental domains. More evidence-based research is being carried out among new entrants who are establishing their careers modelling entrepreneurship and working with communities.
What are solutions being worked on?
FarmStarts:
Based on EU the model, and developed here through the Landworkers Alliance (LWA) as part of a training system, FarmStarts facilitates knowledge and skill-sharing, establishes mentoring and provides space to experience farming while making mistakes, taking risks, and gaining confidence. Through grants, FarmStarts offer a protective financial buffer for new entrants to take a step into farming reality, finding routes to market with supported decision-making. The LWAs Farmstarts handbook outlines the history, a how-to approach with UK case-studies featuring farms such as: Tamar-Grow-Local, OrganicLea, and Kindling Trust.
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA):
CSAs are becoming increasingly recognised for the structure they offer and for reducing financial risk and sharing the costs of building a farm or vegetable enterprise. In essence, CSA is a membership-based farming system which relies on community engagement in the finances of buying seeds, equipment, farm infrastructure, and farm labour across the year. Day-to-day management decision-making across CSA farms varies, but the core philosophy remains: community-initiated and supported agriculture that spreads economic risk and provides guaranteed income to the farmer. The LWA has a useful document demonstrating three UK CSAs in practice, highlighting different approaches.
On-farm Traineeships at Huxhams Cross Farm:
At Huxhams Apricot Centre, the School of Regenerative Land Based Studies offers an Accredited Level 3 course which provides a theoretical and practical training in regenerative and biodynamic farming. This year they have 23 students. The outcome will be trainees prepared to transition into farming jobs or further education in Agriculture and Rural Studies. More trainings can be found at BD Agricultural College and Ruskin Mill Trust.
Biodynamic Land Trust Services:
We support the sector by responding to the needs of the community across a range of issues. Covering land acquisition, farmland tenancy, succession planning, long-term viability of farm enterprises, community engagement, business planning and more. We exist to secure land to further the activity of the whole biodynamic and organic sector of community-connected farming across the UK. For more advice we encourage anyone to get in touch with us at info@biodynamiclandtrust.org.uk to discuss their situation.
What does all of this mean for the climate and nature crisis?
Agroecological FarmStarts, CSAs, work based training programmes run by established regenerative and biodynamic farms support a societal shift in making farming a more attractive, viable, career choice. These support-structures are the beginning of a much larger UK-wide transition in providing decent incomes to new entrants. In alignment with our government’s commitment to Levelling Up – FarmStarts and CSAs build stronger and closer community ties due to the greater connectivity and productivity of small-scale local food growing and distribution. Further collaborative opportunities exist for farms with rural and urban businesses which strengthen social and economic enterprise at the local level. These local processes shorten supply chains, reduce transportation and thus emissions and generate significant social capital in relationships, trust, and knowledge/skills generation. Join us!
Written by: Amber Lawes-Johnson
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