Worker-Owned Farms
Description
Neil Thapar:
"REITs exemplify a dominant feature of farmland in the United States, absentee ownership. This “out of sight, out of mind” approach leaves open a gap in land management that agribusiness has been all too eager to fill with its overuse of chemicals, export-driven cropping practices, and worker exploitation. It is one reason why communities in the Central Valley of California, mostly people of color, experience some of the highest rates of food insecurity and environmentally-influenced diseases in the state, even though they live in the heart of the richest agricultural economy.
Worker-owned farms, on the other hand, are by definition locally-owned. And local ownership matters. Placing farmland ownership in the hands of the people who work the land, live in nearby communities, and raise their children there leads to a seismic shift in decision making over land management. Empowered is this way, would farm worker-owners choose to spray chemicals in the fields where they work? Would they choose to grow crops without considering whether they will be able to feed themselves? Would they contaminate groundwater with nitrates from overusing fossil-fuel based fertilizers? We think the answers are no, no, and no.
At the Law Center, we are leveraging our expertise with worker cooperatives to put together a series of resources for farmers and farmworkers interested in developing worker-owned farm enterprises. While the cooperative model has a long history of supporting self-sufficiency in agriculture (see Federation of Southern Cooperatives), worker-ownership has not been a key feature." (http://www.theselc.org/reit_blog_part_2)
Examples
Neil Thapar [1]:
"Recently, several examples of worker-owned farms have developed, including
- Our Table Cooperative,
- Solidarity Farm, and
- Our Harvest Cooperative.
- Swanton Berry Farm, while not set up as a cooperative, does include features of worker-ownership through an Employee Stock Ownership Program and a unionized workforce."
More Information
Other tools: