Access to Grazing: Leased Land Ideas and Issues

Our Land is a documentary created by The Greenhorns, a grassroots, non-profit organization of young farmers and collaborators.  The documentary is part of their mission to recruit, promote and support a new generation of young farmers.  It shares the stories and voices of young farmers who are getting started in the business. On Pasture readers might be most interested in part 4, Access to Grazing Land (9 minutes, embedded below for your viewing pleasure).  It looks at the efforts of two couples to carve out farms of their own starting with small rented parcels. Erica and Joel raise pastured poultry, beef and free-range eggs on land they were offered by a food organization.  In return for using the land, they work 40 hours a week for the land-owner.   While they love the work, growing food for their community and improving the land with organic grazing, they express their frustration with the limited authority they're given over the land they're working.  Joel hopes that their pilot project on 15 acres will show they can do a good job, and that then they'll be given the rest of the 500 acres to manage.  In the meantime, the existing farm manager continues to use herbicides that threaten the organic status of the young couple's products. Adam Gaska, who has 6 separate parcels in the Mendocino Valley of California describes the issue well saying that young farmers are trying to figure out the social logistics and to create equitable arrangement so the landowner