COMMUNITY FARM OWNERSHIP Community models for farm ownership
- Mark Walton
- Apr 7
- 7 min read
Updated: Sep 15
 | Mark is the founder and Director of Shared Assets, an infrastructure organisation working to create a socially just future through practical projects that build new relationships between people and the land. |
Mark explores how community ownership models such as land trusts could provide farmers with an alternative to the potential issues of farm sale or inheritance and be of benefit for farm protection, food security and people. One particularly knotty issue is provision of housing for the retiring farmer and the farm successors. |
When farmers are approaching retirement, the two main options for them when considering succession - or the future of their farms - are commercial sale on the open market or passing the property on to their children. However, both options can raise complex issues.
Retirement itself can have a different meaning for farmers. Research by the University of Exeter’s Centre for Rural Policy Research (1) found that only 19% of respondents planned on fully retiring. Of those who did have plans for full or semi-retirement, 48% planned to retire after the age of 70. Reasons for putting off retirement included practical issues such as where to live and how to finance retirement.
The same research found that 27% of farmers have not discussed their retirement plans with anyone and only 28% of those with a successor had a formal succession plan in place.
Given that farmers in the UK have an average age of 59, and 40% are over 65, there is clearly a potential farm succession issue looming. This has arguably been complicated further by forthcoming changes to the inheritance tax system, which will see inheritance tax relief for business and for agricultural assets capped at £1m.
The system of farm inheritance also reinforces structural inequalities in access to and ownership of land. 99.8% of principal farmers in the UK are white (Office for National Statistics 2022), with the inheritance system perpetuating this racial inequality on an intergenerational basis. Women are also often excluded under this system; a large majority (72.3%) of farmers surveyed identified a son as the person most likely to succeed, compared with only 17.7% choosing a daughter, despite an almost even split in the proportions of respondents with sons and daughters.
Within this context, Shared Assets has been working with Stir To Action (https://www.stirtoaction.com/), Ecological Land Cooperative (https://ecologicalland.coop/) and the Community Supported Agriculture Network (https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/) on a project funded by Farming the Future (https://www.farmingthefuture.uk/), to explore how community ownership models such as ‘land trusts’ could provide farmers with an alternative to sale or inheritance.
Such models have the potential to ensure that agricultural land is kept in production, contributes to our food security, and offers more communities opportunities to access land for food growing through democratic ownership models.
What is an agroecological land trust?
A land trust is not a legal structure but is more a description of what an organisation does; it holds land in trust on behalf of a community or future generations. In this research, we looked particularly at Agroecological Land Trusts (AFTs) which own land and utilise agroecological methods on their land.
AFTs can operate at two distinct scales: Multiple Farm Trusts and Single Farm Trusts.
Multiple Farm Trusts: may own a portfolio of farms spread over a wider geographical area, often because they are part of a national wider movement for farmland protection. They grow their portfolio by actively seeking and purchasing farms on the open market or by receiving gifts of land and property. They are unlikely to operate the farms themselves, usually leasing them to one or more individual farmers or farm businesses.
An example of a multiple farm trust is the Ecological Land Cooperative (ELC) which owns a number of farm sites across England and Wales. The land is managed and farmed ecologically by their steward members. ELC supports them in buying the land, gaining planning permission and establishing key infrastructure.
Single Farm Trusts: are more likely to be place-based and interested in purchasing or receiving a single farm or a small number of properties in a specific local area. They may operate the farm themselves or lease it to one or more individual farmers or farm businesses. While they may work as part of a wider approach to food system change, they exist within a context of economic regeneration in an individual place or region.
An example of a single farm trust is Canalside Community Benefit Society (https://www.canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk/) which owns and runs a 12-acre community supported agriculture scheme near Leamington Spa with a £100,000 turnover, and five part-time staff. The land, which the society has rented for 10 years, was bought at a cost of £125,000 with money raised through the sale of community shares to 168 shareholders.
Opportunities and challenges of community ownership models
Both multiple and single farm models create new opportunities for farm succession but also present some key challenges. The research looked particularly at:
The financial models of the trusts
Securing ownership of the land
The financial models of the individual farms
The provision of housing.
Financial models in use by Agroecological Farmland Trusts
AFTs have (at minimum) a need for two streams of finance, which are interconnected. The first is the core costs of the organisation itself – staff, overheads, etc. The second is the capital cost associated with each farm or parcel of land, especially the upfront money needed to purchase or acquire that land and to invest in buildings and infrastructure.
Finance is typically obtained from grants, loans, and equity in the form of community shares (2). The research identified the need for patient low interest loans, repayable grants, and sources of capital grants.
Securing ownership of the land
While some AFTs - especially multiple farm trusts - receive donations of land, in most cases the trust has to purchase the farm. Community shares have been used by the majority of single farm trusts to raise the capital to purchase the land. For this reason, most communities have chosen to establish a community benefit society (a specific legal structure that enables the issuing of community shares) in order to undertake their buyout. Even once capital has been raised to purchase a farm, further funds are often required for renovations, infrastructure, housing and equipment. These costs may also be covered by community shares or through crowdfunding, grants and loans.
Beyond raising the capital there is still the challenge of developing a business model that generates enough revenue to pay farmers fairly, pay dividends to shareholders, and repay loans.
Financial models of individual farms
Many community owned farms develop ‘collective enterprise’ models where several different businesses work together on one farm. This can create benefits such as reducing costs for shared equipment, enabling joint marketing, making more effective use of land and buildings, and building a circular economy on the farm, where waste products from one business are used by another. Collective working can also reduce isolation.
While these models can often substantially increase the employment opportunities offered by a single farm - with one farm reporting that employment had increased from six people in 2008 to 119 in 2024 - they can also lead to, or exacerbate, issues of housing provision.
Housing provision
The issue of rural housing provision was identified as a key limitation on the expansion of AFTs. It can be difficult to obtain planning permission for new agricultural dwellings, and while seeking permission, land workers often have to live in poor quality temporary housing.
As outlined above, the models of farming being supported by the trusts tend to be labour intensive and often entail several farm businesses operating on what was once a single family farm, meaning that more housing may be required.
We have also previously identified that practical issues, such as where to live and how to finance retirement, are a significant challenge for retiring farmers. A farmer who is considering gifting or selling their farm to an AFT may wish to keep the farmhouse in order to provide themselves with a home for their retirement. In other cases, there may be a requirement for the farm house to be sold to enable them to purchase a new home elsewhere, or for the benefit of family members.
Taken together these factors create a lack of housing supply which is a barrier to the expansion of the AFT model as a vehicle for family farm succession.
Meanwhile, there is a thriving sector of Community Land Trusts (CLTs) which provide an existing model for the development of community-led housing, including in rural areas (https://www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk/). By bringing together representatives of the CLT sector and AFTs to explore how they might work to address the housing barriers to the transfer of farmland from family to community ownership, we identified that AFTs could act as:
a land provider, making land available to a local CLT which would lead the delivery of new housing on the land
a CLT themselves and work with a housing association to provide the homes on site, and
as a registered housing provider themselves, enabling them to access funding for the development of affordable homes on their land.
While CLTs in the UK are most closely associated with housing provision, they also provide a community-led and democratic model for the ownership and management of land for a wide range of other purposes, and the sector is actively exploring the potential for CLTs to manage more land for food production and nature restoration. There is great potential for closer collaboration between Agroecological Farmland Trusts and CLTs, such as through the sharing of resources, expertise and data.
Alternative models for farm succession
Many farmers do not have children who wish to take on the responsibility for the family farm. Others fear that sale on the open market may mean an uncertain future for the land itself. Both inheritance and sale on the open market also sustain dominant and inequitable models of private land ownership.
Community land stewardship models have the potential to pave the way for a more equitable and regenerative land system, as well as providing farmers with the security of knowing their land will be sustainably farmed in perpetuity. However there remain challenges to be overcome with respect to adequate provision of sources of accessible capital funding, planning, and housing provision.
More detail on this research and briefings on each of the issues raised can be found at: https://www.stirtoaction.com/family-farm-succession
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