The Shared Landscape

The Shared Landscape: an overview of shared land projects around the United States is a project by New Entry Sustainable Farming Project’s National Programs team towards our mission of supporting shared land initiatives around the country through network programming and technical support.New Entry Sustainable Farming Project is an incubator farm in Beverly, Massachusetts. Beginning farmers can join our incubator by leasing small plots of land, taking courses, attending workshops, and working 1:1 with our skilled team of farmer mentors. New Entry also operates a network of practice, which we call the (Farm Incubation and Education through Land-Based skills Development) or FIELD network for short!New Entry’s farmland at Moraine Farm is held in land trust and operated by the Trustees of Reservations, a Massachusetts non-profit organization working to conserve land for environmental, public, and agricultural usage. Moraine Farm is located on colonized Pawtucket and Massa-adchu-es-et (Massachusett) traditional territory.Accessing land is one of the biggest barriers for young and beginning farmers in the United States. In our capitalist society where land is a commodity, farmland is disappearing. The American Farmland Trust found that between 2001 and 2016, 11 million acres of agricultural land was lost. The AFT’s research estimates that without policy intervention, the U.S. is projected to lose 18.4 million more agricultural acres by 2040. This is exacerbated by the current farmer generation closely reaching retirement. The AFT estimates that by 2035, 40% of farm land is expected to change operator hands. Seeking inspiration from Black and Indigenous agrarian traditions and shared land practices, new models for holding land in Commons, and/ or farming collaboratively are being practiced across the United States. This podcast share the stories of farms in shared land.