Comprised of  Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties in western Massachusetts, the Pioneer Valley is fortunate to have dedicated local food consumers, a rich agricultural economy, and many organizations committed to working together to advance a more connected, just, and sustainable food system. As the local food movement becomes more established, PVGrows provides space for stakeholders to connect, share, and match goals and expertise to promote the growth of our food system. From agriculture finance to policy formulation, from Farm to School to job creation and improved access to good nutrition, PVGrows helps partners build on each other’s strengths to effectively support a diverse and viable local food system.

As with previous projects, our goal was to help balance community needs with needs of the farmers who work the land.

Out of the organizing emerged Grow Food Northampton (GFN), a nonprofit promoting food security by advancing sustainable agriculture. Partnering with the City and Trust for Public Land to protect the farmland, a river corridor, and space for sports fields too, Grow Food launched a massive volunteer-led fundraising campaign, raising $670,500 in just eight months! Grow Food purchased the farm in February 2011, protecting 121 acres of farmland.

A competitive application process, designed by Equity Trust and guided by a panel of local farmers, led to GFN’s selection of Nate Frigard and Jen Smith to farm the site under a 99-year lease. The City is leasing a separate 17 acres for community gardens. Equity Trust developed both long-term leases, and helped facilitate the negotiation process. Jen and Nate’s lease provides a secure, affordable home for their CSA farm and the right to transfer the lease to their children if they want to farm. An agricultural income requirement guarantees that the farmers will grow lots of organic produce each year, and stipulates that local people get first opportunity to purchase it. (For further community benefit, GFN raises funds to ensure subsidize some discounted shares for low-income families.) The lease agreement also guarantees that experienced farmers will steward the soil and will offer—along with food—celebrations and a chance for people to connect with the source of their food.

Jen and Nate launched their CSA, Crimson & Clover Farm in time for the 2011 season. Grow Food Northampton manages the 17 acres of the Community Farm dedicated to the Florence Organic Community Garden, with 100 leased plots for local residents. In 2012 the GFN also leased 10 other acres of the Community Farm to Slow Tractor Farm, owned by Andrea and Christian Stanley of Hadley, MA. The Stanleys own Valley Malt, a young business that malts locally-grown barley to sell to local breweries.  Slow Tractor Farm grows oats and barley on their leased field and they are collaborating with Crimson & Clover to grow dry beans and wheat on another18 acres of the Northampton Community Farm.

The Community Land Trust Reader, edited by John Emmeus Davis and published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (www.lincolninst.edu), brings together the writing that inspired and defined the community land trust movement, including essays by Equity Trust founder Check Matthei and several past and present board members. The book also excerpts two chapters from our farm preservation manual, Preserving Farms for Farmers.

The full collection of essays in the CLT Reader, assembled together for the first time, trace the roots, evolution, and prospects of the community land trust from the visionary ideas of people like Henry George, Ebenezer Howard, Ralph Borsodi, and Arthur Morgan, to the model of affordable housing flourishing today in hundreds of U.S. communities. It shows how the CLT innovation in land tenure, combining common ownership of land with individual ownership of the buildings located on that land, has roots in experiences as diverse as the Garden Cities of England, the Gramdan villages of India, and the southern Civil Rights Movement, and it explores new opportunities for using this model to protect land and property for community benefit.

The Community Land Trust Reader
Edited by John Emmeus Davis
2010 / 616 pages / Cloth / $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-55844-205-4

Order online from the Lincoln Institute

Biodynamic Farming Association

Burlington Associates 

New Economics Institute
(formerly The E. F. Schumacher Society)

The Good Life Center

Land For Good

Land Trust Alliance

Lincoln Institute of Land Policy

The New England Small Farm Institute

The Trust For Public Land

The Network has a technical assistance program to increase the capacity of community land trusts to serve their communities and to be good stewards of the community assets for which they have responsibility. It also has an excellent training program for members and the general public provided through its Community Land Trust Academy. The TA Program consists of on-line resources, peer-to-peer coaching, the help-desk and direct, consultant delivered TA to individual organizations. The CLT Academy provides comprehensive training on theories and practices unique to community land trusts taught by skilled and experienced instructors, promotes public understanding of the community land trust model, and supports research and publication on evolving practices.

The Community Land Trust Network incorporated in 2006, picking up the mantle from the Institute for Community Economics (ICE) to provide support and leadership for CLTs around the country. Equity Trust supported this transition, both as one of the partner organizations assisting in the creation of the Network and through stewardship and sharing of the intellectual propery of ICE. (ICE was the originator of the CLT model and, for many years, promoted and supported the development of CLTs around the country. When ICE merged with the National Housing Trust in 2008, it transferred the rights to all of its CLT-related publications, such as the ICE Community Land Trust Legal Manual, to Equity Trust and we’ve made them available to the Network.)

Access to land is one of the most pressing challenges facing New England’s beginning farmers. Land Here! Assuring Access to Land for New England’s Beginning Farmers (the Land Access Project) tackles the land access issue from all angles in this regional initiative.

Equity Trust is one of over fifty service providers from six New England states that have joined together in this two-and-a-half year project to improve and expand linking programs and farm transfer services. Convened and coordinated by Land for Good, the Land Access Project is working to reach, support and inform public and private owners to make agriculturally capable lands available; and it is developing and fostering innovation in how farms and farmland are made available, affordable and secure for new farmers.

Project collaborators are working in four task forces:

• Listing & Linking
• Farm Transfer
• Non-farming Landowners
• Tenure Innovations

One early product of the Project is New England Farmland Finder, a web-based, regional farm property clearinghouse created to help New England’s farm seekers and farm property holders find each other. It makes it easy for farm properties to be posted, and for farm seekers to search through them. It is free, simple, region-wide, automated and constantly current, serving as a friendly portal for property holders and farmland seekers.

The Land Access Project is supported by funds from the USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (NIFA #2010-03067).

Co-op Power is a consumer-owned renewable energy cooperative operating as a decentralized regional network of autonomous Local Organizing Councils (LOCs) to “create a multi-class, multi-racial movement for a sustainable and just energy future.” Co-op Power has home offices in Hatfield, MA, and there are currently five LOCs representing Southern Vermont, three western Massachusetts counties (Franklin County, Hampshire County, and Hampden County), and the greater Boston area (“Metro East”).

Equity Trust’s loan will help Co-op Power, through the Southern Vermont LOC, develop a 30.6 KWP solar electric (photovoltaic) system on the roof of the brand new Brattleboro Food Co-op (BFC)building in downtown Brattleboro, VT. The array of panels and associated equipment will initially be owned by Co-op Power and leased to the Food Co-op. The Food Co-op will benefit from the electricity that is generated—almost 33,400 kilowatt hours in year 1—from this renewable energy source. Approximately 10,000 pounds of carbon emissions will be saved yearly. After five years, Brattleboro Food Co-op intends to purchase the system from Co-op Power.

The 4-story building that will carry the solar array was developed in 2011-2012 in partnership with the Windham-Windsor Housing Trust and Housing Vermont. In addition to housing the Food Co-op, it provides 24 affordable rental apartments on the upper two floors . During the design input process for the new building, BFC members identified sustainability as a top priority. While the new store is a model of green building and energy efficiency, plans to install solar had were initially tabled for three to five years due to the additional cost of installing a system at a time when the Food Co-op already has its hands full paying for the new building. With Co-op Power stepping up to develop the project, Brattleboro Food Co-op will be able to benefit from solar power without the burden of financing the system.