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Adam Peterson's avatar

Great post Sami. Very cool to see how many overlaps there are between urban and agricultural problems. For example:

- Real Estate Investment trusts are seen as a tool in urban settings to give disadvantaged populations a stake in the increasing value of land - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EYVtu6MqJ0&ab_channel=SidewalkLabs and https://mynico.com/ for example.

- New policy mechanisms needed to disincentivize "non-productive" use of lands. In your case farmers who aren't farming their land, in the urban case, landowners who refuse to develop their lots. You don't say as much but some of your recommendations dance around the idea of a land value tax and other prescriptions from the Georgists (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism).

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Sami Tellatin's avatar

Thank you for reading and engaging, Adam! I definitely have wondered about the application of urban setting solutions to farmland. Looking forward to checking out the resources you shared. From a quick glance at the Georgism article, I can definitely see some of those themes explored here.

I just talked yesterday with someone from Land Trust, which is a company that helps farmers diversify their land based income. I wonder about initiatives like agrotourism to be an alternative to a conservation easement to help drive income for farmers on less productive land. Maybe a capitalist carrot alternative to the land value tax? https://landtrust.com/

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Nick Tyre's avatar

If we want to have another generation of farmers, we have to redefine our understandings of land tenure. The institutions and mechanisms in this article are a great start!!

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Hudson E Baldwin lll's avatar

Gabe Brown

Google him

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