Land is spoken of constantly in young and new farm circles – where are you farming, how did you access it, what was your strategy, … it is almost always the 3rd or 4th question after “How are you?” and “How’s the season going?”

Some would wax on about vertical farming, aquaponics, and lab grown food. Fair, however these formats are not what the majority of young and new farmers are interested in. Land, soil and access to it, is at the heart of our experience – it is fraught, loaded and deeply rooted at the intersection of class, race, settler – first nation relationships and capitalism (this list is not exhaustive.) In short, land is still that important.

In this first episode of the series, S&G hosts Stuart Oke, Aliyah Fraser and Maddie Marmor break down some of the personal reasons to focus on Land Access. It will introduce the struggle to lens equity into the series from the context of four farmers (can’t forget the amazing Kate Garvie – producer/editor extraordinaire!) who are young, currently and previously ‘landless’, first generation, lower class, white and black, who want to farm while decolonizing within a colonial system.

Balancing the inclusion of land ownership in the land access conversation while not promoting it as a solution was a tension throughout the season. We ask it to you now: how do we access land while also decolonizing?

All this and more in our first episode of the series – Why Land Access?

LINKS

• Sow and Grow website link
• Rooted Oke Farm / IG: rootedoakfarm
• Lucky Bug Farm / IG: luckybugfarm
• National Farmers Union / IG: nfucanada
• Farmland | National Farmers Union
• Farmland Access and Tenure | National Farmers Union
• Treaty Land Sharing Network