Commenced:
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01/01/2007 |
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Submitted:
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26/01/2011 |
Last updated:
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19/09/2016 |
Location:
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107 Redfern St , Sydney + Surrounds, NSW, AU |
Phone:
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+61 2 5300 4437 |
Website:
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http://www.Milkwood.net |
Climate zone:
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Mediterranean |
(projects i'm involved in)
Project: Milkwood
Posted by Kirsten Bradley almost 14 years ago
Landshare is a concept we’ve been excited about for a while. It addresses the huge (and getting huger) issue of land access in an immediate, accessible fashion.
In short, people with spare land can offer that land to people who want to grow stuff. That stuff might be vegetables, herbs, cows, chickens, trees or anything else you can think of. The reasons they might want to grow stuff might be for personal food supply, or for a small commercial venture. It doesn’t matter. The point is this: to share the land, for the ultimate benefit of all.
We’re coming up against the need for land access more and more often at Milkwood, mostly through our education work. Every permaculture course we do, whether it be in the city, or out at our farm, involves an impassioned discussion about how to get access to land to grow food on a domestic scale, or to try out farming before taking the plunge and investing in land.
You already know and care about food security, the need for local food networks and all the rest, I’m sure. And we all love and support our community gardens, wherever we are. But this Landshare concept is the next step, in a sense. It’s time to get truly and utterly productive.
The concept of the commons remains strong in our cultural consciousness, i think – even though, for most folks of European descent, our ancestors were forced to recede their rights to the commons with the onset of enclosure in the 18th century and beyond.
We no longer expect to have access to enough land to grow all the food our community needs in our immediate vicinity. We would like a little piece, if we can, but it’s not something we demand as a community. Not yet.
These days we seem to have focused on other aspects of our common wealth which should never be allowed to be owned outright by a company – things like seed sovereignty, biodiversity in the form of plant genetics, and our own bodies.
But a stable, local and ethical food supply remains central to all our futures. We all want to encourage it, but how, and where, do we actually make it happen? Can we fast-track the solution? Is there a way forwards without having to wait for the slow mechanisms of local council and government to allow us the funds, the time and the space to get growing? Can we do it now?
Landshare, and any scheme like it, functions on the simple yet very powerful concept of encouraging and enabling people to share land for all the right reasons: to grow food, to create community, and even to provide right livelihoods in the form of small-scale, intensive food production plots. Anyone can be involved, and they can start right now.
You can elect to share your front lawn, your back yard, your spare block, or half your farm. The agreement and arrangement you make with the sharee (is that a word?) is up to the both of you – the land can be gifted, rented or bartered.
The land user could give a proportion of the produce back to the land owner, or to 5 families in that street, or whatever you both decide is a reasonable arrangement. And the lease could be for one season, a year, or for three-score and ten.
The Landshare model was first released in the UK and is now spreading throughout the world. The UK site is a hub of gardening information and also provides templates for things like contracts and such for people to use, so everyone involved in the share is clear on what the terms of engagement are.
At this point I hope you’ll be most excited when i tell you that Landshare Australia is up and running, and you can join up whenever you like. You can create forums, blogs and ask questions about growing things, find land, find sharers, and generally get involved in what we hope will be an amazing resource.
You can register as someone with land to share, someone wanting land, or as someone who wants to help out on a landshare project. You can also offer or source resources like mulch, or compost, or tools or skills.
The possibilities for this model are endless, and any version or agreement you can think of could, in theory, work. It’s probably a good idea to skill up as part of the process, especially if you’re thinking to do a project on a small commercial scale, rather than plunging in with fingers crossed, but without enough information.
When it’s all said an done, this Landshare idea is about growing both carrots AND community. The simplicity and the open-source nature of the model is what we like the most – it allows for many different types of relationships to bear fruit. Or cabbages, or dry-aged beef.
We hope it works, and that the Australian community deems it useful to helping create a bountiful collective future. www.LandshareAustralia.com.au
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