The Farmers Land Trust is Rethinking Land Ownership

Earth Rising is proud to support the work of The Farmers Land Trust because we understand that climate justice is deeply connected to the way we relate to land and food. If we want a future where both people and ecosystems can thrive, we have to rethink the systems that shape land ownership. 

Through the Farmland Commons model, The Farmers Land Trust is leading such work. The Farmers Land Trust is a growing organization that is shifting farmland away from private ownership and toward long-term community stewardship through a visionary model known as the Farmland Commons. The Farmland Commons model is grounded in real-world solutions. Instead of treating farmland as something to buy, sell and extract value from, each Commons is a nonprofit entity rooted in a specific place to hold farmland for regenerative food production and community connections. It’s guided by the people who live there and exists to protect farmland for regenerative farming, ecological restoration, and food sovereignty for generations to come. 

This approach makes farmland permanently accessible to farmers and land stewards through affordable, secure, long-term leases. It’s a direct challenge to the extractive and often inequitable systems that have long dominated land access in the U.S. Farmland Commons offer a different path based in community, care, and long-term commitment to the land.

The Farmers Land Trust is working with a wide range of farmers and communities across the country including new and beginning farmers, Indigenous communities practicing cultural land care, faith communities in the process of transitioning land into community use for food justice and biodynamic and organic CSA farmers already working at the intersection of ecology and community.

This fall, The Farmers Land Trust will help launch seven Farmland Commons across seven different states, working alongside more than 20 nonprofit partners. Together, these Commons will protect more than 280 acres of land, valued at close to $5 million. 

This work is gaining national attention. The Farmland Commons model was recently highlighted in a Yale-published toolkit focused on Land Justice and Land Trusts, as a promising solution to some of the deepest challenges facing land access in farming today.

The impact of this work is inspiring. And we at Earth Rising are proud to support work rooted in community, trust and a bold vision for a different future in land management and food production. 

To learn more about The Farmers Land Trust and support their work visit their website here.