What are those Scots up to?

I apologize to those I have kept waiting on tenterhooks for the next installment of the Radical Land Tenure series; illness has severely curtailed my energy. But I have dragged myself out of bed to tell you about Scotland, because it is really just so cool. Now, actual Scots are welcome to comment and agree or disagree; I'm going by the literature, here.

Until very recently, the Scottish system of land ownership was literally feudal, with the concentration of land ownership amongst the rich that one would expect. In the Highland Clearances of the 1700s and 1800s, rural tenant farmers were forcibly displaced from their small plots to make room for sheep and later sport hunting. These farmers ended up concentrated in the outlying and less desirable parts of estates in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, where there are 30,000 of them today on 7% of Scotland's total land area.

Because of this history, as of 1996, and perhaps yet today, Scotland had the “most concentrated pattern of large scale private ownership of any country in the world” (Wightman, 2004: 3). (Two-thirds of this land is owned by 1252 landowners - 0.025% of the population - in large estates. One quarter of the privately owned rural land is in estates of 30,700 acres and larger, owned by just 66 landowners.). Many landowners were (and are) renowned for their neglect, paternalism, and iron-fisted control over the land and any changes or developments to be made to it. The feudal system of land tenure was only abolished in an Act of Parliament in 2000. Scotland is in many ways in a post-colonial situation.

In 1993, the crofters of Assynt took a historic step, coming together as the Assynt Crofters Trust to purchase the 21,000 acre estate on which they were tenants from a bankrupt Swedish land speculation company. This stimulated land reform in Scotland and became emblematic of the “social sector” in land ownership. Further community land purchases followed, and in 2003 the Scottish Parliament introduced the Land Reform Act. This Act granted rural communities in Scotland the right of ‘first refusal’ on the sale of estates and granted crofting communities the right to buy their croftlands on a collective basis, even over the objections of land owners. At a time when Canadian farmers are encouraged to lease land from investment companies, Scottish communities are becoming owners. As of 2009, some two hundred groups have been helped to achieve buy-outs by the Scottish Government’s Community Land Unit. More than two percent of the nation’s land—a third of a million acres—is now under such ownership.

Individual crofts (small farms) are typically established on about 5 hectares of “in-bye” for better quality forage, arable and vegetable production. Each township traditionally manages poorer quality hill ground as common grazing for cattle and sheep. Because of the poor quality of this land, crofters traditionally rely on income from other activities in addition to agriculture.

Community buyouts take different forms: they form or use a democratic body to represent the community and then usually make a company that owns and manages the property on behalf of the community. Other ones may share control over the land with partners such as conservation organizations (community partnerships as in Eigg) or sometimes it's only crofters that purchase (crofting trusts). Communities get all the security and rights of conventional land ownership under Scots law (unless under easements for example, or charitable status). Crofters still lease their inbye land, but they lease it from the community organization, that also owns the common land. Other than whole estates, community property includes community facilities, heritage assets, economic resources such as wind turbines. Community ownership allows diversifying croft activities that require collective action: developing horticulture, sheep's wool for house insulation, stock clubs, planting trees, sensitive tourism, or a small hydro scheme as in Assynt.

There's a variety of ways to obtain the purchase price of land. Funding for community buyouts is available through National Lottery money in Scottish Land Fund, as well as other grants such as those the Highlands and Islands Development Corporation provides. Some money comes from the purchasing community, other from donations and loans. Community ownership has many potential benefits. It can provide greater security allowing people to plan for the future, greater freedom to use assets, facilitate access to greater funding, encourage social networking, allow profit to be retained in community, promote community cohesion and pride, provide greater transparency and accountability in decision making.

Because this system involves community development, it speaks to the issue not just of land reform – everyone being able to access an equitable share - but agrarian reform. It recognizes that, as Borras and Franco say, “while land redistribution is the 'heart' of agrarian reform, post-land (re)distribution support service packages and favourable rural development policies are the 'soul” (2010: 114).

There seems to be an attitude towards land and rural development on part of the Scottish government that is very different from that of neoliberal governments in Canada. The government justifies intervention in the land market/private property rights on the grounds of social justice, capture of economic opportunity, population retention and self-determination (Brown 2007). This helps convey the moral authority that communities need for feasible ownership. So does the ethic of community rights trumping individual rights that is rooted in Highland culture. It seems to be recognized in Scotland that the land tenure system doesn't just affect usage, and doesn't even just affect economic factors such as the labour skills of the population or access to employment and thus migration, but the social structure; and the distribution of power and influence.

There is debate within the crofting movement regarding private ownership, though. The 2007 Committee of Inquiry on Crofting found that there was division over the fundamental question of whether, with the cessation of feudal tenure, a croft is an individual/family asset, to be bought and sold freely, or a wider social and cultural asset, for generations now and in the future. Thus far, the weight is on the latter side with those who see crofting not just as an economic asset/means but as a social, cultural, environmental, and agricultural practice that is collectively beneficial, and threatened by an open market in crofts. That putting crofts on the open market would eventually mean the demise of crofting is acknowledged by the proponents of that market.

The collective vs the individual. We've seen this many times in agriculture here, and will no doubt see it again. Which way do you think we are trending? 

References:

Borras, S. (Jr.) & Franco, J. (2010). Food sovereignty and redistributive land policies: Exploring linkages, identifying challenges. In H. Wittman, A. Al Desmarais, & N. Wiebe (Eds.), Food sovereignty: International perspectives on theory and practice. Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing.

Brown, Katrina. 2007. Understanding the materialities and moralities of property: reworking collective claims to land. Journal compilation: Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers.

Bryden, John and Charles Geisler. 2007. Community-based land reform: Lessons from Scotland. Land Use Policy (24), 24–34

Chenevix-Trench, Hamish and Philip, Lorna J.(2001) 'Community and conservation land ownership in

highland Scotland: A common focus in a changing context', Scottish Geographical Journal, 117: 2, 139 — 156.

Mackenzie, Fiona. 2010. A common claim: community land ownership in the Outer

Hebrides, Scotland. International Journal of the Commons, 4: 1, 319–344.

Shucksmith, M. Committee of Inquiry on Crofting: Final Report. 2008. Available at http://www.ecology.ethz.ch/education/BE_documents/Crofting_final_report.pdf

Wightman, A. 2004. Common Land in Scotland: A Brief Overview. Available at http://www.scottishcommons.org/docs/commonweal_3.pdf

Confession: I am a Landlord.

I am still coming to terms with the fact that I am.... a landlord. That's right. After the settlement of my father's estate, I now own 1/3 of two quarters of land shared with my siblings. I do not farm it. (We are renting it to a cousin to run cattle on). It feels weird to me to make money not due to any merit of my own but simply because I inherited. I do not labour at all, and yet I directly benefit from the labour of others. I don't like it.

However, I have to admit I do like owning land. Yes, even though I research alternative land tenure and am terribly committed to it in principle... I have an attachment to this land. This rooted place that belonged to my great-uncle and then to my father, with coulees that still contain echoes of primal prairie. Is it an attachment to possession, or to history, or to experience - the brome and alfalfa mix that I lay down in for shelter from the wind while waiting for the post-pounder to catch up to me as I surveyed fence for my dad five years ago? Is it an attachment to... possibility?

It's still important.

I apologize for the lack of meaty posts here (and I mean that in the figurative sense). I'm in a slump where all the food news seems depressing, coinciding with the most grinding work on my thesis. But here's a grain of hope: at least my thesis is on an important topic.

In the United States, the National Young Farmer’s Coalition released a study on barriers for young and beginning farmers in starting a farming career. Building a Future With Farmers: Challenges Faced by Young, American Farmers and a National Strategy to Help Them Succeed surveyed 1,000 farmers from across the United States and found that access to capital, access to land and health insurance present the largest obstacles for beginners.

Land access was the second biggest concern. Farmers under the age of 30 were significantly more likely to rent land (70%) than those over 30 (37%). Over the last decade, farm real estate values and rents doubled making farm ownership next to impossible for many beginners.

“In Nebraska the main barrier to new and beginning farmers is access to land.  Unless an aspiring farmer inherits land, it is very difficult to have access to it,” says William A. Powers, farmer and Executive Director of the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society.

There are answers. But is there the will to help young farmers?

Why Land?

 

When I started grad school, I received the good advice to create 10-second, 30-second, and 2-minute spiels in response to, "And what is your research about?"  I received the advice, but I didn't follow it. I have a 5-second spiel - "Alternative agricultural land tenure in Saskatchewan" (I talk fast) - and then I have a lot of flailing about as I add explanations and qualifications.

Truth is, I don't know why I ended up focusing on land. I remember having to come up with an idea for a grant application at the same time as I was reading Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ("property and robbery are synonymous terms") for a class on theories of justice, just months after my father passed away and left the state of the family farm in limbo. Out of that stew, an idea about land emerged. And then it mutated.

If you've ever had to explain to an 18-month old why he can't walk across a neighbour's lawn, you might realize how ridiculous ideas about property are. If you go on to read Locke, you realize his ideas about labour and property conveniently justified dispossession of aboriginal peoples. Then when Jun Borras tells you that property rights are not things, but social relationships, you get interested. And when, with Jennifer Franco, he tells you that "Ultimately, food sovereignty is about effective control over wealth and power", you get excited.

So. Today, I am starting a draft of my thesis, trying to sift through my data and analyses, trying to unite all the pieces that I have written for classes and conference presentations, trying most of all to sieve out all of the fascinating, but unfortunately unrelated, food systems information I have amassed in the past two years. Trying to focus.

I'll let you know what my research turns out to be about. Then I'll answer the question I posed in the title.

Whereupon I put on my spectacles and grown-up voice. Ahem.

I am presenting a paper as part of a panel at the Joint 2011 Annual Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, Association for the Study of Food and Society, and Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition from June 9 – 12, 2011 at the University of Montana.

The conference is called "Food and Agriculture Under the Big Sky". (Montana has big skies, we have living skies: I think we can connect on this.) My paper has the unimaginative yet apt title, "Visions of Food Sovereign Land Tenure in Saskatchewan". Here's the beginning:

Last November, I was driving out to conduct an interview in southwestern Saskatchewan and stopped in a small town cafe for lunch. I happened to overhear some of the chat on coffee row. You could tell they were farmers by the ag company caps. One was holding forth on how there were a few farmers in the area who had most of the land, and these big farmers did business directly with Viterra, who offered them all sorts of deals to get their business, and because of this, soon the Co-op in the town would close. None of the farmers chatting seemed to like the prospect, but they didn't propose any solutions, and they all agreed with the main speaker at the conversation's close: “That's business.

In a similar vein, a professor here told me not to study agriculture, because it was done. Not meaning that it was thoroughly studied, but that from a progressive point of view, there was no hope; it was finished. Well, in the words of one of my interviewees, “Agriculture can't be done. It has to be redone.”

Are you with me? Do you like it? Well, here's the abstract:


A radically different vision of access to and control over land, as the basis of a new food system, is necessary in striving for a socially and ecologically just agriculture. Using data from in-depth interviews of farmers involved in a progressive agrarian organization and in alternative land tenure models, this paper explores visions of radical changes to the dominant agricultural land tenure system in Saskatchewan. Interviewees address primary problems of loss of farmers and rural communities, and accessibility, affordability, and concentration of land, as the result of market forces. They agree on several key points, including the importance of collective action, community, and values of interdependence, diversity, and sustainability, all consonant with food sovereignty's conception of land as multidimensional and noncommodifiable. In the struggle against the hegemonic ideology of private ownership of land, a common politicized vocabulary and frame of reference, and greater communication between actors about strategies, practices, and insights, may facilitate action. Food sovereignty can provide these for various groups tackling land tenure problems in Saskatchewan. 

We'll see how much of this is retained in the paper, which I am still writing. Questions? Comments?

Happy Weekend! I'm off to small-town-with-no-internet.