The Ecological Land Co-operative

Text taken from Permaculture Association e-bulletin. see: www.permaculture.org.uk

If you had to name the two biggest barriers to the ability of permaculture projects to achieve their objectives, I think it is a fair bet that the market in agricultural land - rigged in favour of the rich - and the planning system - structurally unable to accept low impact lifestyles - would come out near the top. A new co-operative business is trying to find solutions to both of these problems.

The Ecological Land Co-operative plans to buy agricultural land that is suffering from or vulnerable to intensive agriculture, and convert it into low impact, residential smallholdings with planning permission. It will then sell long leases to suitable users which will give them the security of landowners, but retain the ability of the co-operative to monitor land use and maintain high ecological standards regardless of how it changes hands in the future. The proceeds from the sale of leases will enable the purchase of further land, cover the costs of planning applications and improvements, and provide a fair return to the investors that provided the funds in the first place. Our intention is to create clusters, or hamlets, of between two and six smallholdings, sharing services and facilities.

How can you be involved? In several different ways:

- The ELC is keen to include among its steward members people and organisations that are already practicing ecological land management, from the level of allotments up to whole farms. They will be vital guardians of the organisations values as it builds up its membership, and can benefit from access to collective services and support.

- You might be interested in investing - however, at this stage it is not possible to make a share offer to the public. Instead, the only investors we can work with are self certified "high net worth" or "sophisticated" investors. If you think you might fall into this category, please do get in touch for a copy of our prospectus.

- You might want us to help you get land. By all means get in touch and tell us about your requirements - but please do bear in mind that there is unlikely to be any land available for almost a year, it may not come up in the location you would like, and to begin with demand will almost certainly exceed supply.

- You might be interested in working with us. There will certainly be opportunities for volunteers to be involved working on land we have bought, and helping with the administration and planning applications. There will also be some paid work available later in the year. By all means ask to be added to our mailing list to hear more about these opportunities as they arise.

You can contact us at info@ecologicalland.coop, or by phoning Alex Lawrie on 0845 458 1473.