Basic Concepts of the Land Trust Movement
Our strength as a society is in our ability to organize and collaborate in ways that allows us to achieve goals and accomplish tasks that alone would be almost impossible. This is the basic concept of communities and civilization. However, we are currently organized in a way that is very parasitic. We have structured ourselves in a way the drains resources from the land and ourselves. This systems siphons money out of our communities and into the hands a very small number of super wealthy individuals. Therefore it is our belief that we must re envision and reorganize the way that we deal with each other, specifically the way that we transfer in occupy land. It is this basic concept in which everything stems and which our needs can be met met. Humans require; water, food, shelter, energy and a place to work in order to be productive and make wealth for ourselves and our community. Land, labor and capital are the basic building blocks that are required to produce wealth. Yet we have made a barrier to entry monopoly on the access of land. You can see this in the aging farming population of the US, most farmers are around 60 years of age, young farmers do not have the money or ability to purchase land in a way that would allow them to setup a profitable business venture. This is one of the reasons why the Golden Seed was created. There is yet another problem with the way we hold land. Currently our mortgages and rents are sent directly out of our communities. This is a upside down way of using our resources. This does not allow the community to benefit directly from its productive capactity. If we could find a way to divert rents and allow them to circulate locally this would bring huge increases in the standards of living for all community members. Because land itself is not valuablem it is only valued if people are willing to come there and work or lived. A community actually derives its value by the community members and the services in which those members provide. An example of this can bee seen when you look at the desert that is now Las Vegas. This land was worth nothing until there was enough people around to make it a vibrant and productive community even if it is designed around gambling. The same thing is true for any community city or local, the value of the land is actually derived from the people who surround it. But yet we send monthly payments to banks in perpetuity in order to "own" a peice of land, with the hopes of some day paying this debt off and being able to either directly benefit from the work we have put into the place or perhaps allow our family to benefit. But we never really own the land do we? We are just using it for our short life times and we have been conviced the only manner in which you can do this productively is to own it. There are other ways, we beleive the Golden Seed can be the spark and impetous to find better ways. Our curreny land ownership system, has become a barrier to entry monopoly. This system has actually become a contrary to free markets. It is controlled mainly by a handful of banks and in order to access of land one must meet many requirements that usually require one or two people to have full time jobs. Access to land for small start up businesses often have a tough time overcoming barrier. This is why land ownership and stewardship is the focus of the golden seed landtrust. It is with this basic re envisioning of the way we deal with each other and deal with the land that we can provide a competitive advantage against the large corporations in a way that benefits our communities and ourselves and our families. It only requires us to change the way we organize ourselves and the way in which we derive value from our work and our land. An additional benefit appears as we re-envision the way we transfer ownership and stewardship of farmland. Currently, when a piece of farmland is sold the owners are never able to even meet the new owners. In this manner we are losing a piece of our cultural knowledge of how to be a good stewards or to tend to the land that is being transferred. Every time a piece of farmland is sold we lose a bit of our cultural knowledge on how to take care and provide for people in our community utilizing that land must effectively. Little tips of how to deal with these certain trees, or to care for this pasture are gone. The new owner must relearn knowledge that can often take an lifetime to aquire. With this new concept utilizing land trust as our mechanism of land transfer we have a way to actually be able to transfer our cultural knowledge of how to tend to and be a steward for land. This is just one of the many benefits and possible outcomes that could arise from a re-envisioning of the way we own and transfer lland. So this is a call to action for anyone who believes that there is a need for change and is willing to at least take up the philosophical arms and contribute to this conversation and legal structure, for is the one solution that we can actually act on each and every day.