Land is a key determinant of whether this vision can take root and thrive in Europe. Around the continent, over recent decades, farms have become larger and larger; land has become more and more scarce and expensive and been lost to urban development and non-farm uses; small-scale farmers have been squeezed off the land; and the systems that feed us have become more and more long-distance and centralized. This has led to the hollowing out of rural communities, to frustrated young and new farmers being unable to access land to farm, and to urban centers that are increasingly cut off from the landscapes and countrysides that sustain them.
But, a rich ecosystem of alternatives has also arisen, across Europe and at every level. Small-scale food producers and other traditional users of land have been struggling to regain accountable, democratic, and participatory control over land, in order to build the kind of food system we all need. From pastoralists in the Basque country developing new partnerships with municipalities to continue centuries-old herding practices, to the Scottish government giving communities important new rights to purchase abandoned, unused, or hoarded land; from Sami herders winning critical legal recognition for their land rights to activists fighting destructive gold mining in Roșia Montană, Romania, people across Europe are putting a new vision of land into practice.
Two key documents published by the Nyéléni Europe and Central Asia platform for Food Sovereignty, in collaboration with the European Innovative Land Strategies partnership, have collected these stories, and developed concrete and constructive policy recommendations based on them: