Horse Lake Community Farm Co-op building new root cellar

  Investing in a root cellar is a great way to preserve your produce and ensure your food security.  That’s the message Horse Lake Community Farm Co-Op is looking to promote this summer as it prepares to replace its own root cellar. Rob Diether, the chairperson of the co-op, said...
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Island Farm Land Under Increasing Threat

  Provincial planner urges local authorities to do what they can to protect and encourage agriculture Agricultural land across Vancouver Island is facing increasing pressures, and Reed Bailey, a land-use planner from the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, is encouraging local government to do what it can ensure the land...
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Nanaimo Council picks park over housing for Five Acre Farm

  Surrounded by exponential growth Five Acre Farm, a working urban farm in south Harewood will be preserved. Following two rounds of public consultations, 933 Park Ave. widely known as Five Acre Farm, will be set aside for park use, farm practices and a protected wetland. On Monday, Dec. 18...
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Highlights from the 2023 National Farmers Union Convention

The Future of Farming: In Our Hands Michelle Tsutsumi I’m still synthesizing all that happened at the 54th NFU Convention in Ottawa and it was a lot! The National Farmers Union is Canada’s national farm organization committed to family farms. Promoting agroecology and food sovereignty, NFU’s work that centres farmers,...
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Farmland Legacies, Saskatchewan

Our friends in Saskatchewan, Farmland Legacies, are part of a unique organization in Canada.  Headed by Duane Guina, Farmland Legacies holds agricultural land in trust for young and aspiring farmers.  Their farmland holdings are spread over Saskatchewan and Alberta. Lilium philadelphicum var. andinum—western wood lily, provincial flower of...
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The Legal Literacy Guide

In the summer of 2021 the Foodlands Cooperative of BC published Your Land, Your Legacy: A Farm and Foodlands Owner’s Guide. The Guide is expressly designed for owners of farm and food-provisioning lands who wish to create a legacy by preserving their land for generations to come. The Legal...
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The Land and Food Justice Fund

Foodlands legacy and outreach advisor, Natasha van Bentum, was instrumental in the creation of a new grassroots “Land and Food Justice Fund” on the Unite for Change platform of CanadaHelps. Here Natasha gives us more detail about how the Fund was born. Introduction First, a bit of history: ...
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New Resource for Retiring Farmers

Natasha van Bentum, our Legacy and Outreach Advisor, has written an-depth article about the Foodlands Cooperative, it’s mission, and goals for the the Scrivener Magazine. She also highlights our recently published “Your Land, Your Legacy Guide” and the urgent need to find alternative forms of farmland ownership and stewardship....
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Interview with Agrarian Commons

The Agrarians Trust’s Taylor Plett interviewed our Directors Heather Pritchard and Amir Niroumand in 2021 and recently published the article on their blog. Agrarian Trust is well established in the United States. They seek to innovate in land ownership and access to transform the relationships to the land and each...
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International News: The Faithlands Toolkit

A few years ago our good friends in the United States, Agrarian Trust, launched “FaithLands”, an independent 501(c)(3) organization operating nationally.   FaithLands began in 2017. The idea arose during a conversation between faith leaders and Greenhorns — an organization devoted to promote, recruit and support new farmers. (Greenhorns was...
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Obstacles and Opportunities

Natasha Van Bentum’s article “BC Farming for a Green and Healthy Future” highlight the urgent need to redefine our relationship to farming, food provisioning and farmland ownership. In it she discusses the complexity of generational land transfer and the case for developing alternative land ownership...
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