Healthy food production in a climate-resilient landscape.

While the demand for local and healthy food is on the rise, the willingness of consumers to help make local food production possible again is also increasing. Just as citizens collectively purchase a district heat grid to supply their energy, they can invest in their own food supply. Investing in food means investing in land and in farmers! Citizens come together to jointly purchase land and employ a farmer to work it. Farms are more resilient if a group of private individuals stands alongside the farmer on the business side. Shared ownership allows certain financial costs and benefits to be borne collectively, such as trialling a crop that would not be profitable on the conventional market, sharing investments for expansion, or compensating harvest losses due to persistent drought. The farmer is supported democratically in his or her activities, can count on a group of shareholders during busy harvesting periods and benefits from a fixed wage. The citizen-entrepreneurs get a say in the cultivation plans and produce, are jointly responsible for the quality of the food they consume and enjoy a safe investment. In short, citizen-entrepreneurs and farmers collectively make long-term land use for food production possible!

Not all agricultural activities of every farm need to take place within the boundaries of the farmer’s land. A growing number of farmers are using nature reserves in exchange for managing the green space. Some breeds of cattle and sheep are ideal grazers for managing and conserving natural meadows or poor heathland. By adopting a nomadic approach on a larger area, farmers prevent intensive grazing that exhausts the soil. Some farmers maintain the sides of hedges and collect the green waste to use as compost for cultivating vegetables. Farmers and nature conservationists are jointly setting up projects in which nature creation, reforestation and food production go hand in hand. This is interesting for the owners of nature reserves as they can outsource management of the land for free. Farmers have access to a larger area of land without the burden of land investments, which makes extensive farming financially feasible once more. Moreover, it guarantees long-term land use. Agricultural and nature areas collectively form a circular landscape.

Many supermarkets would love to be able to offer more local and organic food. If farmers collaborate with major retailers, they jointly hold the key to elevate locally produced food so it is no longer a niche market. The financially robust position of retailers and their large-scale impact allow them to purchase land and experiment with the development of local or regional organic chains. Farmers have a guaranteed buyer and retailers can, in consultation with the farmer, respond to market demand. By setting up a model that is workable and fair for both the farmer and the buyer, we can safeguard a considerable amount of land for locally produced food and build on the infrastructure required to ‘relocalise’ the food chain.

Residential expansion areas on or nearby agricultural land often jeopardise agricultural activities. But what if, in some places, food production has a greater right to exist than housing? Could we not change the land use classification? Or could farming be afforded an equal right to exist and be part of the development of new housing districts from the outset, even in non-agricultural areas? Bare, meticulously mown lawns would make room for a diversified, professional farm in conjunction with the residential area. Playing in the communal garden would involve discovering beasties that live in the soil, swinging over a field planted with leeks, or helping with the harvest. The shared space is a healthy and enticing environment, with clean air, a reduced heat island effect and opportunities for pollinators. Farming can provide a more climate-robust organisation of the space and the farmer can live near his or her field. The development of a productive public space offers farmers new access to land. It acts as a lever for the production of cheap, healthy food, preserves a fertile and climate-adaptive soil and boosts social cohesion in the residential district.

A considerable number of (semi) public institutes possess agricultural land thanks to historic investments or donations. The decision to purchase produce from local farmers to prepare public meals (in hospitals, schools, OMCW, municipal or national administrations), provides local farmers with a stable sales market and thus also security for the future. The (semi) public institutes are both landowners and buyers, but could also use their land to achieve their own objectives. Hospitals may want to focus on food production for the specific dietary needs of their patients. An OCMW could set up a socio-economic farming project focusing on employment care. If multiple professional kitchens bought a share of their volumes through a direct partnership with local farmers, this could serve as a major platform for guaranteeing long-term access to land for local food production.

While a lot of infrastructure is already available for today’s globally organised food system – such as our ports or road network – over the past seventy years, support facilities for local agriculture have disappeared from our landscape. Examples include access to forests for collecting organic material or goods traffic consisting of a ‘boerentram’ (literally translated as farmers’ tram) running between the city and the countryside. Public land and resources can provide new farmers or those converting their business with a boost. It could be achieved by making pilot plots available, setting up collective composting or processing infrastructure, or reorganising green and brown flows. Based on their historic land position and social responsibility, local administrations possess the tools to provide the next generation of farmers with space for experiments and innovation, in close cooperation with local farmers. These ‘farm start-ups’ can also help achieve sustainability goals in terms of the environment, employment or healthcare.

If we want to boost local food production we must provide farmers with long-term land security. Thanks to a well-considered approach to land management the authorities can provide enterprising farmers with access to land tailored to their business model and needs. We should not create new ground (for example on rooftops) using soil excavated from elsewhere, but protect the remaining fertile soil and use it more strategically. As a result of historic land parcelling, a great deal of industrial or residential expansion areas occupy fertile land. Even within agricultural areas there is arable land that would be better used as grassland, or vice versa, if you take into account the type of soil, soil fertility, location, gradient, access to the sales market or the availability of organic flows. After all, the idea that sustainable and climate-resilient food production is possible anywhere in any form is no longer valid. In our recent past, land re-parcelling was mainly used for upscaling and nature or infrastructure expansion. What if we also use this tool to reorganise landscapes to maximise land for local food production? Policy instruments such as land use planning and land re-parcelling could be applied to provide land guarantees to farmers who want to farm sustainably. Land observatories, land funds or other strategies could safeguard land for long-term food production and keep land prices under control.