In the fall of 2020, many groups of farmers, BIPOC, indigenous, white, and urban/rural, participated in our first year of programming in collaboration with Agrarian Trust, we began exploring how to work together for common innovative agricultural solutions. Several specific individual farmers and groups of farmers expressed interest in working with an advisory circle or as farmer mentors to share existing farm commons practices from their experience. We convened virtually as farmers, landowners, funders, extension, technical service providers, and local government.

In 2021, local governance and decision making emerged as a strongly held value across farming groups and communities. We rooted deeper into our regional needs and began to grow out of our collaboration with Agrarian Trust. Commons Land (prior to 501c3 formation) was awarded a Bush Community Innovation Grant with support from our fiscal sponsor Shared Capital Cooperative to implement a commons based approach to strategically acquire and steward a network of farms in communities across Minnesota. Our project goals include: 

1. Redefining wealth/security in order to build equity and utilizing strategies that:

• end the long-pattern of land injustice in Minnesota that prevents access to farm and forest land for BIPOC people;

• ease the pathway for emerging and BIPOC farmers to get access to sufficient land to grow food for personal consumption and market to sustain livelihoods;

• provide alternative options for land access and tenure beyond individual debt finance;

• promote cooperation among farmers to co-create conditions for the co-evolution of a much more equitable, inclusive, just and ecologically sound future for agriculture in Minnesota, the Midwest and the world

• remove land transfer from the wealth imbalance in the American economic system; remove land ownership from unjust power structures

• protect agricultural land from development and ensure that it remains stewarded as healthy agricultural land for generations and communities to come

• provide alternative outlet for philanthropic land owners to donate land

2. Land justice: The future of farming and rural communities in Minnesota cannot be a continuation of the current approaches to rural livelihood and agriculture that reinforce norms of ecological apartheid. Restoration of a Commons-based approach that is deeply democratic, intercultural, and tangibly beneficial to BIPOC farmers is key.

3. Agroecology as climate justice: Supporting BIPOC and emerging farmers in an intercultural and integral approach to four objectives based on regenerative production practices: carbon sequestration; restoring ecosystems and biodiversity; nourishing local living cultures and economies; and cooperating with other farmers in the Commons to advance a more democratic and ecologically sound future for both agriculture and both urban and rural livelihood in MN.

4. Land acquisition and provide more accessible opportunities: Lease development, reciprocity, complimentary avenues of land access: Other complementary land access models can also be explored and woven together in practical application. An example of this could be specific BIPOC led efforts or “buy /protect/ sell” options rather than lease holding. Renewing the Countryside is working on such a model with American Farmland Trust, that could prove to be another avenue for specific communities.

5. Build our muscle for utilizing a local, democratic shared governance model that is at the heart the Commons Land Model