Pathways to Land, a new project by Stir to Action, courtesy of a grant from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Emerging Futures programme, will explore financial pathways to securing land appropriate to the needs of BPOC producers (Black/People of Colour), who often face additional barriers to accessing finance based on their identity.
This project supports a call to redress land inequities through enabling greater access to it, not just in terms of nature connection, but through cultural connection and earning a living from it in ways that responsibly maintains the benefits that land provides us.
Firstly, we have engaged with BPOC farmers/producers in England, past and present, to understand the financial barriers they face or have faced to secure land, how they may have secured land, and what an ideal finance package would look like to them. See our recently published groundbreaking Pathways to Land report for further details.
Ideas by progressive lenders and funders has also been explored at this stage, alongside examples of successful BPOC-led farming organisations beyond the UK to provide potential financial and funding models for what could be achieved in England.
Get involved - attend an autumn forum
If you are a BPOC farmer or organiser of a BPOC community food not-for-profit organisation (past/present) or a social investor/funder/lender interested in food and farming, or a landowner, click here to register your interest in attending our upcoming in-person and online forums. They will be based on findings and recommendations informed by BPOC farmers/other landworkers from our report.
Forum aims
On 26th September and 7th October we will host two forums (in-person and online respectively), incorporating BPOC caucus spaces as well as spaces for social investors, progressive lenders, landowners and more, to begin work on one or more of the following:
- identifying support for initially searching for suitable land/finance
- explore how charitable foundations and funders can make social lending better meet BPOC producers’ needs
- identify financial instruments appropriate to various BPOC needs including those which account for culturally-informed land use preferences
- to identify financial ownership models for BPOC farms
We recognise that collaborating with progressive lenders and funders is not a perfect solution to a wider systemic problem of land-access for BPOC. We wish to hold critiques of these methods with curiosity throughout the project, whilst simultaneously exploring all the avenues that are available to address this issue.
Contact nicola.scott@stirtoaction.com for more details.
Project partners
Jo Kamal (they/them) is a commercial food grower and political organiser mobilising on anti-oppression and liberatory work within the agroecology movement. They have a background in decolonial research and organising towards racial justice. They are a member of compost and soil cooperative Compost Mentis, and have recently taken up a growing post at Ed's Veg in Hampshire. In their spare time, Jo works closely with medicinal herbs and is rooted in healing justice practice.
Pauline Shakespeare was responsible for the Rootz into Food Growing programme (funded by Farming the Future), to challenge and disrupt structural inequalities and narratives within the UK food growing sector. It created a pan-London network of BPOC growers, providing mentoring and support to enable capacity building and enterprise development. As an Associate with The Ubele Initiative, Pauline acted as an advisor for the DEFRA funded New Entrants Support Scheme for the Southeast, supporting new entrants to develop business plans for food growing and farming enterprises.
Nicola Scott has years of community food growing and ecological urban farming experience in Manchester spurred on by her PhD research in Mexico that critiqued GM crop technology transfer to the Global South. Tired of wondering how and why our economies fail many people and the planet, she co-authored a book about diversifying, decolonising, and democratising the teaching and practice of economics. Returning to her passion for food systems change, Nicola managed the DEFRA-funded New Entrants Support Scheme Southeast for Shared Assets. She currently leads on Stir to Action’s work to increase access to land finance for minoritised groups.
