Landscapes Podcast [13] The People's Land Policy
A vision for redistributive land reform coming from within the beating heart of neoliberalism
Episode Description
Recognizing how systems of private property control new visions of land use is one thing. Working on a political process of land reform is another. Bonnie VandeSteeg of the People's Land Policy discusses the recent program outlined in: Towards a Manifesto for Land Justice.
Episode Links
Land for What? Land for Whom? by Dr Bonnie VandeSteeg
Land for the Many, 2019, UK Labour
Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority. Sikor and Lund 2009
Landscapes is produced by Adam Calo. A complete written transcript of the episode can be found on Adam’s newsletter: Land Food Nexus.
Send feedback or questions to adamcalo@substack.com or https://bsky.app/profile/adamcalo.bsky.social
Music by Blue Dot Sessions: “Kilkerrin” by Blue Dot Sessions (www.sessions.blue).
If you like the podcast please leave it a review in your podcast app.
Introduction
Much of my academic research to this point has been devoted to understanding how our systems of property and the way we relate to land end up watering down otherwise promising social and environmental solutions. Agroecological farming? Land prices too high. High speed rail? Landowner hold outs. New tenant protections? Predatory landlord lobbying. Common sense environmental regulation? Farmer protests. It’s something I’m still working on elaborating, showing how the potential of landscapes to be what we need them to be is really just closed off by the overwhelming state backed power of property. There’s more work to be done here, not just arguing this is the case, but measuring how property influences different types of social and ecological practices. This is important. If property is as powerful as I see it, all of us engaged in proposing some new model for land use or for environmental sustainability ought to be wary of how these plans articulate with the property regime.
But I’ve also started to look ahead to what is the obvious next question. If some systems of property are blocking us from a sustainable future, how do we go about changing these systems? Is it some kind of legal innovation, social movement, or political campaign?
For todays episode, I was curious to understand more about the People’s Land Policy, a group in England pushing for Land Reform from within neoliberalism’s beating heart. The group recently published Towards a Manifesto for Land Justice, a document that argues for the need to transform land relations in order to deliver social and environmental goals like affordable housing, food security, and environmental sustainability. In these documents they lay out a number of political demands … things like restoring the commons, the establishment of national land assemblies, and the creation of new powers for community ownership.
Bonnie VandeSteeg is a scholar and activist part of the PLP. I wanted to speak with her to ask, once you believe that property is the problem, how does one begin to go from there?
Interview Transcript
*The transcript has been modified slightly to improve comprehension
[Full interview transcript coming soon]