Our search for land and for growers is underway

At our launch on 30 March 2022, we appealed to landowners and farmers to offer land for regenerative growers to lease. We received 21 offers in the first two weeks! Two of our directors, farmers Adam Alexander and John Morris, are currently reviewing the offers and compiling profiles for the ones that match our requirements. Summaries of the first few offers are now available on the landseekers page.

At present there are two types of offer – a fixed plot of land, and horticulture as part of a wider organic farm rotation. Some of the farms are not just offering land: they want to partner with the growers for both growing and selling.

So this week we’re launching the search for growers, reaching out through Black Mountains College, the Soil Association, the Landworkers Alliance, and the Organic Growers Alliance.

Our target for the first year is to match three pieces of land with growers. As these projects take root, and as other farmers and landowners see what’s happening on neighbouring farms, we predict progress will accelerate.

Buying land

Our Food 1200 is constituted as a community benefit society. This allows us to raise funds to buy land through community share offers. We’re not planning to start down this path just yet, but we’re already seeing land that would be suitable for our target of 1200 acres! Through the wonderful Cwmpas organisation, we’ve been teamed up with mentors at the Kindling Trust, who’ve recently issued a successful community share offer to buy a farm, using the online platform, Ethex. (They raised £650,000 from 620 people.)