Land Looking for Farmers for the Puget Sound Agrarian Commons – Apply to Farm This Stunning Protected Land on Whidbey Island
Agrarian Belief has launched our first request for proposals for the Puget Sound Agrarian Commons! This name for proposals from land looking for farmers marks an thrilling milestone for the primary farmland to be donated to an Agrarian Commons.
Caroline Gardner donated this ten-acre farm to the Agrarian Commons in 2019. Situated about thirty miles north of Seattle on Whidbey Island, this stunning acreage consists of prime soils and about 3.5 acres of tillable land. Although distinctive, it is usually consultant of smallholder farmland throughout the US: intense improvement pressures and inflated actual property values threaten small-scale farming within the area, and the worth of farmland on Whidbey has risen as a lot as 30 p.c in lower than two years.
Farmland owned and bought within the standard manner—as non-public property, with gross sales pushed by market and revenue—has turn out to be inaccessible to the sort of farmers who will develop meals for his or her communities and mindfully steward the land.
This name for farmers presents a possibility for restorative, community-centered farming on Whidbey Island. It’s a distinctive problem—and alternative—for strengthening meals sovereignty in an island neighborhood with a protracted agricultural historical past. Fill out the applying and discover out extra data right here in regards to the land, the lease, and the present board members.
We’re thrilled and grateful that Caroline’s generosity and imaginative and prescient might assist catalyze the Agrarian Commons.
For extra data, e mail rhys@agrariantrust.org.
THE PUGET SOUND AGRARIAN COMMONS IS INFORMED BY AGRARIAN TRUST MODELS OF LAND EQUITY, HUMAN/COMMUNITY EQUITY, AND FINANCIAL EQUITY:
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As with every particular person Agrarian Commons, a minimum of one-third of Puget Sound Agrarian Commons board members can be leaseholding farmers, guaranteeing that farmers share within the main decision-making as colleagues.
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In an effort to interrupt the racial energy dynamics that may come up in white-majority boards, the board’s objective is to have 50 p.c of leasehold farmers be folks from Black, Indigenous, South and East Asian, and different communities of shade who’ve been displaced from their land and/or struggled towards injustices in land entry.
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The Puget Sound Agrarian Commons is dedicated to holding land for meals manufacturing, farmland preservation, restorative farming, and funding in ecosystem, and has invested in soil enhancements and pollinator habitats whereas awaiting a brand new steward for the land on Whidbey.
