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AFSA’s Agrarian Trust project

AFSA is working towards the establishment of an Agrarian Trust. The vision for an Agrarian Trust is:

Farmland held in commons, providing First Peoples and agroecology-oriented farmers secure tenure and equitable access to farmland, and promoting fair, just and sovereign local and regional agri-food systems

The Agrarian Trust will be an entity that acquires and stewards agricultural land, providing secure farming tenure to small-scale agroecology-oriented farmers. Housing for farmers on the land is also envisaged. Place-based, farmer and First Peoples-led stewardship and governance is envisaged.

Read the Vision and Mission Statement for the Agrarian Trust.

The vision closely follows that for the Agrarian Trust USA:

Agrarian Trust is an organisation to decommodify land, to take it out of the private property regime and hold it in community, with community governance for permanent agroecological stewardship…
It operates as a set of constraints on what its use will be …. In the age of dominion and commodification, you have the right to destroy, the right to extract, the right to mine, the right to intensify, the right to have monoculture. …..but in the Agrarian Trust framing you have a right for regeneration, a right for restoration . . for polyculture, for local food access such that its a spiritual home for its surrounding community of eaters”.

Severine von Tscharner, co-founder of Agrarian Trust USA and Board Chair and President

Agrarian trust: key features

Permanent agroecological stewardship

Agroecology harnesses, maintains and enhances biological and ecological processes in agricultural production, reducing the use of off-farm inputs that include fossil fuels and agrochemicals and creating more diverse, resilient and productive agroecosystems, while promoting everybody’s right to democratically participate in food and agriculture systems.

For further information on agroecology see AFSA’s People’s Food Plan – The Solution: Agroecology .

In keeping with the principles of agroecology, conservation is integral to AFSA’s Agrarian Trust project. Existing quality native bush on Agrarian Trust properties will be protected through various means, which could include:

  1. Permanent protection via covenants such as, in Victoria, Trust for Nature’s Conservation Covenant and its new pilot Farm Covenant
  2. Property management plans that set parameters for farming practices so as to promote agroecology oriented farming that enhances the ecological values of the farming areas and the bushland areas. These parameters could be built into the leases to farmers.

Place-based stewardship and governance

The use and stewardship of Agrarian Trust land will keep governance in the hands of the community closest to it, including local farmers and First Peoples.

The aim is place-based stewardship that respects and harnesses the value of deep connection to and knowledge of place among First Peoples, farmers and local communities.

Secure tenure for farmers

Land access and security of tenure are the most significant barriers for aspiring farmers committed to agroecology in Australia. Rising costs of land, conversion of land away from farming uses, and insecure short-term farm leases drive this problem.

The Agrarian Trust will hold and steward land to convey affordable, equitable leases for the purposes of agroecology oriented farming for secure local food access, ecological sustainability and community benefit.

Progress to date

Funding has been sourced for Stage 1 – the legal structuring phase – which is scheduled to run for 18 months from June 2025. A consultancy firm, Co-operative Bonds, has been engaged to assist with developing a legal structure and governance processes, creating the founding legal documents (constitution, membership rules etc), and establishing the legal entities. It is envisaged that during Stage 1, legal, accounting and tax professionals will also be consulted. A Project Lead, Michele Sabto, has been engaged to guide the project through Stage 1.

The newly formed Steering Committee, which succeeds the Working Group which ran the project for approximately two years until May 2025, had its first meeting on June 16 2025. The second of two 3/4 day workshops facilitated by Co-operative Bonds was held on 16th November 2025 in Central Victoria.

To assist the Steering Committee in its role of providing advice and direction in Stage 1, Michele Sabto has produced a Landscape Review document looking at key international examples of similar farmland-access and commonsing projects internationally.

Join us

Stay up to date with progress on the project by subscribing to our email newsletter.

AFSA’s Agrarian Trust working group welcomes expressions of interest from potential collaborators and interested parties – email project lead Michele Sabto

AFSA’s Agrarian Trust project also has a Slack Channel for those interested in the project to talk to each other. To join the channel, please email Michele.