CAI | By Elspeth Hay
Published October 23, 2025 at 10:55 AM EDT
In the past decade, interest in regenerative and perennial farming has taken off. But the way Ian McSweeney of the non-profit Farmers Land Trust sees it, if we don’t change the way we own farmland, we’re never going to be able to make these practices widespread.
Ian: Most people who own farmland are not farmers and most farmers don’t own or have security on the farmland they’re on. And the reality of what that means is many farmers cannot think in the long term.
You can imagine that if you don’t know if you’ll still have access the same land in two years, you’re not going to plant blueberry bushes or fruit or nut trees—the timeline for these crops is way too long and it’s too risky. So the Farmers Land Trust and a growing movement of land trusts the United States are working to buy and hold farmland differently—so that it’s off the open market and owned communally.
