Agraria_Journal_WINTER_2022

When the land that now forms Agraria went up for auction in 2017, folks quickly rallied round to raise the funds that enabled Community Solutions to make the successful bid for 128 acres of prime farmland and establish Agraria. A similar dynamic took hold when the historic Whitehall Farm bordering Yellow Springs went up for auction in 1999. A grassroots campaign raised the funds needed to buy the 940-acre farm in just eight weeks. “Save the Farm” was the rallying cry that galvanized that campaign and the sentiment that helped bring Agraria into being. It’s a cry heard around the country today as farmland is sold off, acre by thousands of acres, and converted to residential developments or strip malls with superstores like the one down the road from Agraria. Each lost acreage puts affordable and accessible farmland further out of reach for aspiring farmers, especially farmers historically underserved by American agriculture. Access to farmland is one of the biggest challenges facing folks trying to make a life and a living in partnership with the land. As Agraria’s BIPOC Farming Initiatives Director, Tia Stuart, says in an article about land access in this issue of the Journal, “You can have all the knowledge, you can have the seeds, but if you don’t have the land, you don’t have a farm.” Writers in this issue of Agraria Journal ask us to pay attention not only to the issue of land access, but also to an agrarianism that ecompasses the wider issues of social justice, equity, and care for the earth. Michael Charles shines a light on a story of dispossession, of Native lands stolen through violence, force, and duplicity, and used to provide a foundation for establishing and sustaining the nation’s land grant universities. Brooks Lamb writes about farmland lost to the voracious maw of development and calls for approaches to conservation and growth that foster equitable and affordable access to land for the next generation of farmers. Omopé Carter Daboiku’s agrarian vision for “healing the hoop” is an Earth-centered life that treats land as a shared resource with equitable food production and distribution at the center of community life. Rich Sidwell finds a “roadmap for renewal” in Indigenous understandings about the interconnectedness of all beings and the caring and sharing of resources that characterized his childhood community. Megan Bachman offers bioregionalism as a framework for questions about where and how to live in ways that exploit neither land nor people. Rebecca Burgess, in her interview with Bachman, invites us to consider building a regional fiber economy that prioritizes land stewardship and access as well as a cooperative and equitable approach to supporting regional producers. And Susan Jennings offers up the concept of critical agrarianism — land-based work that advances social justice, equity, and environmental sustainability — as a way to shift the narratives that bind us to a globalized and commodified food system. With poets Audrey Hackett and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg we celebrate the natural world and the ephemeral yet enduring grace of moments in time and place. We celebrate also in this issue Agraria’s place-based work to regenerate our bioregion and the people who lift it up and carry it forward: our dedicated land and education teams; Regenerative Farmer Fellows and BIPOC Farming Network; institutional and organizational partners like The Nature Conservancy, Central State University, and area K-12 schools; the funders, individual donors, and volunteers who catalyze and support our work; the role models who inspire us; the Indigenous peoples whose ancestral land we inhabit; the bioregional community of people who share in our work through programs and events; and, you, dear readers. Thank you for your support of Agraria and for all you do to regenerate our lands and places, and the people and communities across the bioregions you call home. Amy Harper is project manager at Agraria and editor of Agraria Journal. 4 AGRARIA JOURNAL 2022 INTRODUCTION BY AMY HARPER A Wider Lens on Land Access