Land reform in the Global North?
Upcoming Zoom talk Feb 20th
Is land reform possible in wealthy industrialized countries?
An academic reading group focused on agri-food issues (Land & Agrifood Research Collective (LARC)) has set up a regular discussion series. For their next meeting they invited me to give a short Zoom talk followed by a discussion. The event description and how to join is below.
Event info
Scotland's Land Reform Acts: Origins, Possibilities, Challenges
A Conversation with Adam Calo
Date & Time: Thursday, Feb 20, 2025, 10:30am - 11:30am PT
Where: on Zoom, please RSVP for Zoom link
RSVP here - pre-read material below
Description
In 2003, 2015, and 2016, the Scottish Parliament passed a series of Acts to bolster the power of community orgs to buy and repurpose privately-held property for community use and sustainable agriculture and land management. In theory, it sounds brilliant, mobilizing a variety of legal tools for the public good. In practice, how has it played out? What does it tell us about land reform opportunities in the Global North? Professor Adam Calo has written and spoken a great deal about this topic as part of his broader work on the barriers that prevent transitions to a more just, sustainable, and ecologically resilient food system. Join us for an exciting conversation!
Moderator
Evan Hazelett is a Human Geography PhD at University of Toronto. He co-founded the Land & Agrifood Research Collective (LARC) under the Berkeley Food Institute Graduate Council and is actively organizing a budding land reform collective in the Bay Area. His research is on California's direct market farmers, particularly issues of land access/tenure, related challenges around marketing, finances, and operations, and the cultural politics that shape alternative food movements and institutions. Similar to Dr. Calo, he seeks to illuminate the key political economic (land, labor, capital) and cultural (norms, values, ideologies) barriers to scaling out socially just and ecologically sustainable transformations across agrifood systems.
Materials
Academic article: Calo et al 2023 Using property law to expand agroecology: Scotland’s land reforms based on human rights, Journal of Peasant Studies
Blog: Sugden, Fraser 2024 in Land Matters: Global learnings for land reform in Scotland: Towards more radical solutions
Podcast: Episode of Adam Calo's Landscapes podcast: The Parable of the Portobello, w/ Malcolm Combe