Video calls on Europe to protect land
A new video explains how new farmers struggle to find land across Europe.
Produced by the Access to Land network, a group of European initiatives represented in the UK by the Soil Association, this 35 minute road movie documentary features farmers from the UK, France, Italy, the Catalan Pyrenees and Romania, and commentators including George Monbiot.
The film was triggered by the challenges faced by new grower Gavin Bridger whose community supported agriculture project was forced to find a new site. Faced with exorbitant land prices and competition from amenity users, Gavin sets out to explore what challenges farmers and growers are facing across Europe, and the innovative solutions they find to overcome them.
Follow his road trip, as it takes him first to meet Kate Collyns, fellow Soil Association Future Grower who has set up a successful enterprise on land rented from another farm. As he travels further afield, Gavin meets the founder of Terre de Liens, a French land trust that now owns over 100 organic farms. He discusses the historical implications of the industrial revolution and land ownership in the UK with journalist and author George Monbiot. His journey then takes him to Catalonia where new shepherds are revitalising the tradition of sheep and cattle breeding in the Pyrenees. In Rome he meets radical farmers who originally squatted land and now have successfully persuaded the local authority to put abandoned land back into production. Lastly, he travels to Romania, where peasant farmers struggle to survive in a sea of corporate agriculture and face the very real threat of land grabbing.
Watch the video here.
