By Ellen Pearce, from The Plot.
It’s an interesting question – who owns England, and perhaps more locally, who owns North Lancashire and how can we access it?
For those who are interested in accessing land for food growing, the challenges of the high costs of land and rural accommodation, combined with the low returns on investment for small-scale farming, make it often impossible.
Fields that could be used for food production are often sold for housing, as an investment, for carbon offsetting or other more lucrative uses.
New entrant farmers without capital funds or access to a family farm simply cannot afford to purchase land, which is also being bought up by wealthy individuals and global investment funds.
In April BBC Countryfile published an article which highlighted that the Danish fashion billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen is now the UK’s largest individual landowner, after he acquired 12 estates in Scotland (over 89,000 hectares of land).
Thankfully, there are a number of creative models which are beginning to gain more ground and put land back into the hands of local communities.
Some Northern examples include the community owned Kindling Farm between Manchester and Liverpool, the creation of community land trusts (one example being the Calderdale Ecological Land Trust) and the Right to Grow movement in Hull which makes Council-owned land available to community organisations for gardening.
Here in the Lancaster District, LESS have recently purchased some land in the city for a Community farm focusing on food growing, education/training and community building, and hosted a recommoning think-tank event to start to explore how to put more resources (including land) into common ownership.
Alongside the moves to put land back into community control, other initiatives are focusing on trying to match those seeking access to land, especially new entrant farmers, with those who own it.
England does not currently have a centralised land-matching service to support land-holders in leasing or releasing land, or to advertise opportunities to land-seekers. With input from 30 organisations with land access, new-entrant support and land justice a regional pilot is soon to start across the North West.
The aims of the one-year pilot are to work with landowners who are interested in leasing or share-farming their land, and with landseekers to make it easier to find out about opportunities and signposting for training or business skills which can help prepare them to take on land when the right opportunity arises
You can apply to be the North West Land Match Coordinator here, or email ellen@lessuk.org if you would like to be kept informed about the project – if you are a landowner interested in leasing land, or a land seeker.
