Agrarian Futures - Igniting a Farmland Commons Movement with Kristina Villa

Igniting a Farmland Commons Movement with Kristina Villa

05/13/24 • 45 min

Today we are joined by Kristina Villa of the Farmers Land Trust who is confronting one of the most intractable challenges and deepest inequities within our food system today: Land access and tenure.

Kristina shares her remarkable journey that has culminated in launching her own organic farming business and founding an organization that enables emerging regenerative farmers to gain access to arable land that then can be held in community for generations rather than going back into a commodity market that favors traditional development.

In this episode, we cover:

Kristina’s story and how her childhood reliance on food banks led her to organic farming and launching the Farmers Land Trust

The importance of thinking about land transition to help aging farmers pass on their legacy

Why we’re meant to farm in community

Layering enterprises to get more people back on the land

Crowd-sourcing land acquisition

Addressing inequity in land access, ownership, and tenure through a farmland commons strategy

How anyone can start their own community land trust

Kristina’s advice for getting into farming from a non-farming background

And much more...

More about Kristina and the Farmers Land Trust:

Kristina Villa is the Co-Executive Director of The Farmers Land Trust, and is a farmer, communicator, and community coordinator who believes that our connection to the soil is directly related to the health of our bodies, economy, and society. With over a decade of farming, communication, and fundraising experience, Kristina enjoys using her skill sets to share photos, stories, and information in engaging ways which help to inspire change in human habits and mindsets, causing the food system, climate, and overall well-being of the world to improve. Kristina has spent the last several years of her professional career saving farmland from development and securing it in nonprofit land holding structures that give farmers, stewards and ranchers long-term and affordable access and tenure to it. Most of her work in the land access space has focused on equitable land security for BIPOC growers, addressing the inequities and disparities in how land is owned and accessed in this country.

Find the Famers Land Trust on social media at: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Youtube

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.

Today we are joined by Kristina Villa of the Farmers Land Trust who is confronting one of the most intractable challenges and deepest inequities within our food system today: Land access and tenure.

In this episode, we cover:

Kristina’s story and how her childhood reliance on food banks led her to organic farming and launching the Farmers Land Trust

The importance of thinking about land transition to help aging farmers pass on their legacy

Why we’re meant to farm in community

Layering enterprises to get more people back on the land

Crowd-sourcing land acquisition

Addressing inequity in land access, ownership, and tenure through a farmland commons strategy

How anyone can start their own community land trust

Kristina’s advice for getting into farming from a non-farming background

And much more...

More about Kristina and the Farmers Land Trust:

Find the Famers Land Trust on social media at: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X, Youtube

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.

Previous Episode

Building the Next Generation of Agrarians with Josh Payne

It's no secret that conventional farming is wreaking havoc on America's farmland, but is it really economically possible to convert conventional row crop farms to a regenerative approach that heals our planet? And how can the concept of an agrarian help foster stronger ties between rural farming communities and the cities they feed?

In this first episode, we dig into the answer with someone who's done it: Josh Payne of Rusted Plowshare Farm shares the story of how he and his sister Larin transformed their grandfather's corn and soy row crop operation into regenerative pastureland complete with sheep and cattle, microgreens, and over 30 acres of chestnuts.

In this episode, we cover:

What it means to be an Agrarian

How they transformed their farm from conventional row crops to regenerative

Caring for each other through disagreement

The concept of the "hinterland," and how to create stronger ties between urban and farming communities

Keys to establishing regenerative pastureland

And much more...

Learn more about Josh, Larin, and their farm here.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.

Next Episode

Modern Horse Logging with Daphné Rose Courtés

In our increasingly technology-driven and urbanized culture, who hasn’t fantasized from time to time about getting out of the hustle and bustle, moving to the woods, and reconnecting with the natural world? Today we’re joined by Daphné Rose Courtés a horse logger in rural Quebec who has done exactly that.

In this conversation, Daphné gave us a picture into the day to day life of her and her horse, Fred, which showcases a true agrarian lifestyle in 2024. She is an inspiring example of someone who has followed their own intuition and embraced difficult, but fulfilling work back on the land.

In this episode, we cover:

How Daphné found her way from Paris to working as a horse logger in Quebec

Finding the beauty in both rural and urban life

Exploring her close bond with her horse, Fred

The importance of finding a good mentor

The ecological benefits of horse logging vs conventional

The challenges of being one of the few woman horse loggers

The horse logging community and how they welcomed in Daphné into their ranks

How someone could get into horse logging themselves

And much more...

More about Daphné:

Daphné was born and raised in Paris and she started riding horses at a very young age. After moving to Quebec, she did a three year program in growing organic fruits and this is how she met Paul Chaperon and his family during an internship. He became her mentor and gave her the opportunity to use horses everywhere on a farm. From doing loose hay, logging, seeding, plowing and much more, it revealed her passion for working horses. She started her own small-scale logging business after buying one of her mentor’s horses, Fred. Using a single horse, the goal of her new project is to harvest wood in an ecological and thoughtful way.

Interested in learning more about horse logging? Check out the Draft Animal Power Network's podcast here.

Agrarian Futures is produced by Alexandre Miller, who also wrote our theme song.