Land commons

We’re interested in bringing together a group to talk about the possibility of launching a land commons in Stroud, with a view to bringing land and community buildings in and around Stroud into community ownership in perpetuity, to reduce costs for food producers and make locally-produced, high-quality food affordable for everyone.

We’d like to meet with and learn from people in Stroud, involved and/or interested in land & food issues, to talk more about what a land commons might look like. 

If you think you might like to get involved in a formative land commons group, you can have a look at the information below and on this page, and contact us. 

Why land commons?

Most land is owned by a tiny percentage of people. Britain is second (behind Brazil) when it comes to concentration of land ownership – over 70% of the land (and all the farmland) is owned by less than 1% of the population, who get taxpayers’ money to maintain it. Scotland is worst of all, with 432 families owning half of all non-public land – but it’s the same problem in Europe and the rest of the world. Millions of small farmers are losing their land in Asia, Africa and Latin America (Oxfam say that 227 million hectares of farmland in developing countries were appropriated by international investors in the first decade of this century).

Land prices are rising rapidly and landowners charge ever-higher rents to tenant farmers. Growers and food producers need to be generating a lot more income than currently – and that’s difficult because land and house prices are so inflated, but food prices are deflated. Cheap supermarket food means that growers are squeezed – to the point that they have to leave the land or struggle to sustain a business / organisation / livelihood. Then locally-grown, organic food is only accessible for the well-off, who get healthy, better-quality food, but the less well-off don’t.

The basic concept

A land commons is an association of 4 member groups: tenants, investors, stewards, and a ‘custodian’ group (like trusted ‘village elders’) with a veto vote to ensure that commons principles are adhered to, and that land is never sold out of the commons. The commons group issues rent vouchers that can be redeemed for tenancy of commons land. Vouchers are purchased by investors and/or tenants, and the cash raised is used to purchase more land. This avoids debt to the banking system.

What’s happening already

In 2024 Stroud Commons and local MP Simon Opher brought together around 20 organisations owning or looking to own land and community buildings, and to produce food in and around Stroud, to form what we called a ‘cauldron’ containing all these local groups, to see how we might work together and benefit each other. We met with group representatives to look at their capacities, networks, needs and challenges, and think about how the cauldron could move forward to support each other, using the commons model.

But the larger task is to increase demand for local food. There are several ways in which we could increase demand, joining the dots to increase efficiencies and developing strategies for a campaign that can benefit the cauldron members. 

How do we make good food more affordable? There are several strands. First, there’s a need to reduce rents for food producers (and for their customers). This can happen via the housing commons, and we could also possibly provide tiny houses / caravans on growing land. 

Nick Weir, a local, has been working on efficient local food systems for decades, with the Open Food Network (OFN) – an online shopfront for small food producers. OFN’s Food Hub aggregates the produce from multiple growers and reduces their admin side so that they can focus on growing food.

Another way is to link together different sectors of the commons economy in mutually-supportive ways. For example, affordability will be achieved for housing commons tenants via rent rebates, depending on how long they’ve been a commons member. These (and other) rebates and benefits could be paid in local food (or care, energy or water) vouchers, helping to make commons food and utilities more affordable and accessible, and to allow people to avoid corporate supermarkets and consume food that’s more nutritious and sustainable, and that supports the commons economy.

But we need a cultural shift – to see locally-grown produce as providing food resilience in communities during hard times, which is worth a lot. Food hub networks could bring in enormous demand, serving better-off and less well-off communities – then land commons becomes a much more viable investment vehicle. 

There are local community hubs, who have some powerful ideas, including food events where people buy pre-paid vouchers. Locally-produced food becomes something that local people have agency over, which can help build a new food culture from the ground up.

More on food procurement hubs.

Other sources of information