400 Million Acres of Farmland?

Over the next 20 years, roughly 70% of the farmland in the US may be up for sale from owners age 65 and older.

An estimated 400 million acres may change hands, which is an area of land just about the size of the Louisiana Purchase.

Aging and retiring farmers will need to sell because farmland is usually their biggest asset. On the buy side, new and entering farmers will struggle to purchase this farmland, competing with developers, speculators, estate buyers and corporations seeking to consolidate huge acreage farms for industrial cultivation.

The UN has declared 2014 the Year of the Family Farm. If unchecked, this massive shift in land ownership may signify 2014 as the beginning of the end of the Family Farm in the US.

Who will pay to keep land in farming? In this broad-ranging discussion, we address this cultural, economic, and environmental dilemma from a "landscape" perspective, exploring the root causes in current approaches to property ownership.

Join us for a dialogue with Eric Freyfogle, Swanlund Chair at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who will help set the context of our current predicament and propose solutions for a new food paradigm.

Eric's books include: The Agrarian Reader, Wilderness Law, On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land (Beacon Press, 2007; paper ed. 2009) and The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common Good (Island Press, 2003; paper ed. 2011), along with two law school casebooks, Natural Resources Law: Private Rights and Collective Governance (Thomson/West, 2007) and Property Law: Power, Governance, and the Common Good (Thompson/West 2012.

Eric will be joined by North Carolinian board member of Agrarian Trust, Jean Willoughby who directs the Agricultural reinvestment project of RAFI, the Rural Advancement Foundation International, and heads up their new Cooperative Development program for farmer-owned cooperative enterprises. As well we'll hear about land reform efforts in NYC with Caroline Woolard, artist and organizer of Tradeschool.org (http://www.tradeschool.org/) and Ourgoods.coop (http://www.ourgoods.coop/). She is working on commons based solutions for affordable housing for artists and low income New Yorkers. Moderating the session is Severine v T Fleming, founder of Greenhorns, (http://www.thegreenhorns.net/) board secretary of Farm Hack, (http://www.farmhack.net/) and founding board member of Agrarian Trust (http://www.agrariantrust.org/).

Speakers include:

Eric Freyfogle (http://www.law.illinois.edu/faculty/profile/ericfreyfogle), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Severine von Tscharner Fleming (http://www.foodandwine.com/slideshows/the-most-innovative-women-in-food-and-drink/26), Agrarian Trust

Ann Marie Rubin (http://agrariantrust.org/team/), Agrarian Trust

Jean Willoughby, (http://rafiusa.org/aboutus/staff/) Rural Advancement Foundation International

Caroline Woolard (http://www.carolinewoolard.com/), New York Commons project

This briefing is co-sponsored by Fleming Family Foundation, Agrarian Trust, and Surdna Foundation