Land Access and the Challenge for the Food Movement: Panel discussion
AUG 20, 2014 , 6:30PM- 8:30PM| LA PEÑA CULTURAL CENTER, BERKELEY, CA

Land access is a serious challenge facing small-scale farmers. Concentration of ownership, increasing farm size, rural gentrification, financial speculation, and rising pressure from residential and industrial real estate developers have made farmland increasingly difficult to get.

One strategy for increasing land access that we are seeing with increasing frequency is the development of land trusts that attempt to intervene in speculative land markets in order to protect farmland. According to the American Farmland Trust’s 2012 national survey, agricultural easements have facilitated the protection of 5 million acres of land.

Eric Holt-Giménez, Food First Executive Director, will discuss land & resource grabs, and ways of thinking strategically about how to assert popular, democratic control over community resources.

Zoe Brent, Food First fellow and coordinator of the Land & Sovereignty in the Americas Collective, will discuss the farmland preservation movement in California.

Caiti Hachmyer, local farmer, researcher and activist, will share some of the realities of the land access challenge as a young farmer in California, and links between rural and urban land issues.

Event Details: Wednesday, August 20th 2014, 6:30 – 8:30pm La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley
For more information, contact [email protected] or call (510) 654-4400, ext. 223