34 GGI No 30 Winter 2012

By Nicole Vosper
Nicole is supporting our Membership
Secretary Jill and helping with adminis-
tration of our websites.
Access to land is one of the largest
social justice issues of our time and
will determine our ability to create
systems for feeding ourselves beyond exploitation.
In Simon Fairlie's book "Meat: a benign extravagance",
one of his arguments for supporting livestock is that:
The landless, almost by denition, can never own veg-
etation [] other than by becoming landowners. They
can, however, own animals, because animals are mobile,
they have legs not roots and so are not attached to land.
If vegetation is real estate, animals are chattels. (1)
It was clear this wasn't about meat eating at all - it was about
access to land, a right that has been denied to the majority
since the dawn of capitalism. More livestock farming is not the
answer to social injustice and unequal distribution of wealth.
Access to land in the UK
In Britain, 70 per cent of land is owned by the wealthiest
one per cent of the population, a level of land concentration
that does not exist elsewhere in the world and never has done
(with the possible exception of Tsarist Russia) (2). We may
organise against land grabbing in Africa or Asia, forgetting our
own displacement from the land generations ago. We are now
so urbanised in the UK, that land-based lives can feel like a
romanticised fantasy rather than a right.
As Bill Mollison describes in his Permaculture Designer's
Manual, To let people arrange their own food, energy, and
shelter is to lose economic and political control over them."
The creation of land-based communities with strong levels of
community self-reliance is never going to be on the agenda
of power-holding elites. Plant-based diets require vastly more
permanent vegetation, e.g. permaculture systems based on
veganic horticulture and perennial systems such as agrofor-
estry.
Options for accessing land
Challenging the distribution of power and wealth is necessary
for any widespread access to land campaign. Groups such as
The Land is Ours and Reclaim the Fields aim to point out
the elephant in the room that is land rights.
With populations becoming increasingly urbanised, gaug-
ing demand for land can be a challenge. Rural areas battle the
Access to land
effects of industrial agriculture, general poverty and alienation,
so asking young people to return to the land may seem un-
achievable. However, in my work with Reclaim the Fields I'm
starting to see young people searching for something more,
hungry for skills and an antidote to modern culture in food
growing. The increasing popularity of urban agriculture and
growing allotment waiting lists may be signs that people are
starting to feel what has been denied them through generations
of industrialisation.
Land squats and occupations are slowly increasing in
number, growing food while raising awareness of land in-
equalities. The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem
Terra in Brazil is responsible for over 2,500 land occupations,
with about 370,000 families settled on 7.5 million hectares of
land. These families continue to push for schools, credit for
agricultural production and co-operatives, and access to health
care. Inspiration from the Global South is abundant. Those in
the UK and the industrialised countries of the North need to
determine what access to land looks like for our communities.
Legal options for accessing land
There are many creative ways to re-collectivise land use. Op-
tions include allotments and community gardens, especially
those utilising surplus, vacant or derelict Local Authority and
publicly owned land. Community Land Trusts offer an op-
portunity for increasing the amount of community controlled
and owned land. Community Supported Agriculture schemes
re-connect people and land and build community resilience.
I have been working with a local food charity in Somerset on
an access to land project that links landowners with groups
looking to bring more land into community food production.
We have a powerful toolkit in the UK of regenerative
land use: veganic agriculture, permaculture, agroforestry and
everything in between. Getting these practices implemented
on a broad scale is the real challenge and access to land may
be the primary determinant. Its time for access to land to
again become a right not a privilege.
Resources
www.wildheartpermaculture.co.uk
www.reclaimtheelds.org.uk
www.tlio.org.uk
www.somersetcommunityfood.org.uk
References
1.Simon Fairlie, Meat: a benign extravagance, 2010, Permanent
Publications, Hampshire
2.The Elephant Collective, Of This Land: A collection of writing
on land rights from the grassroots, Summer 2011