This page is full of links to useful websites and interesting organizations. If you want to:
- Find land for farming by partnering with a land trust or looking at these resources for farmers needing land.
COMMUNITY LAND TRUSTS AND COMMUNITY ECONOMIES
The National Community Land Trust Network
The National Community Land Trust Network is a new organization-officially conceived in 2005 and incorporated in July 2006. While we are young in age, we have many years of experience behind us. The people who formed the National CLT Network represent the oldest and most durable community land trusts in the country.
The Institute for Community Economics
The Institute for Community Economics (ICE) is a national community development organization promoting economic justice through community land trusts (CLTs) and community investment. As the originator of the CLT model, ICE has supported the growth of CLTs across the United States and Canada. ICE is also a certified Community Development Financial Institution with a loan fund which provides financing to CLTs and other non-profit groups. ICE has assisted hundreds of grassroots organizations to build or rehabilitate thousands of units of permanently affordable housing in both rural and urban neighborhoods throughout the country.
The EF Schumacher Society
The E. F. Schumacher Society, named after the author of Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered, is an educational non-profit organization founded in 1980. Our programs demonstrate that both social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by applying the values of human-scale communities and respect for the natural environment to economic issues.
Equity Trust
Equity Trust is a small, national non-profit organization committed to changing the spirit and character of our material relationships. We help communities to gain ownership interests in their food, land, and housing, and we work with people to make economic changes that balance the needs of individuals with the needs of the community, the earth, and future generations.
LOCAL CONSERVATION LAND TRUSTS IN WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust protects significant natural, agricultural, and scenic areas and encourages land stewardship in North Central and Western Massachusetts for the benefit of the environment, the economy and future generations.
Franklin Land Trust
The Franklin Land Trust is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that assists farmers and other landowners who seek to protect their land from unwanted development. The Land Trust does not seek to own land, but instead encourages private stewardship
Valley Land Fund
Valley Land Fund protects threatened forests, farms, wetland, and wildlife habitat in the Connecticut. River Valley of Massachusetts. Collaborating with local communities, conservation groups, and government organizations, we provide loans, grants, and technical support to help preserve our special places for future generations.
RESOURCES FOR FARMERS NEEDING LAND
New England Land Link (NELL)
NELL is a program to help farmers and landholders locate and transfer farms in New England. Finding and transferring farms are among the biggest challenges that New England farmers face. Since 1994, NELL has helped hundreds of entering and relocating farmers find farms. Through NELL, farm owners and managers have found farmers for their valued farm properties.
Growing New Farmers
Growing New Farmers (GNF) is a support network for Northeast new farmers. As members of the GNF Service Provider Consortium, almost 200 organizations and agencies are committed to improving services for our region's diverse new farmers
Massachusetts NOFA - Unclassified Ads
NOFA/Mass is a community including farmers, gardeners, landscapers and consumers working to educate members and the general public about the benefits of local organic systems based on complete cycles, natural materials, and minimal waste for the health of individual beings, communities and the living planet. The "unclassified" ads on their website include a section for land wanted and offered.
COMMUNITY AND GROUP LIVING OPTIONS
The Fellowship for Intentional Community
The Fellowship for Intentional Community nurtures connections and cooperation among communitarians and their friends. We provide publications, referrals, support services, and sharing opportunities for a wide range of intentional communities. Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing communities, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.
The Cohousing Association of the United States
The Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US) mission is to promote the awareness and development of cohousing and to provide sustenance to existing cohousing communities in the United States. Cohousing is a type of collaborative housing in which residents actively participate in the design and operation of their own neighborhoods.
The Cooperative Development Institute
Cooperative Development Institute (CDI) is the Northeast's center for cooperative business education, training and technical assistance. CDI's mission is to build a vibrant co-operative economy through the creation and development of successful co-operative enterprises in diverse communities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, Rhode Island and New York.
