1. Black/Land:
New Questions
From the NOFA-VT Winter Conference
February 12, 2012
The Black/Land Project
www.BlackLandProject.org

2. Is this land?

3. How would you describe your relationship to land and place?
What forces shape that relationship?

5. Key Questions about Land Loss
• How has government defined my relationship to
land in positive ways? In negative ways?
• Do I value relationships to land other than
ownership? What are they?
• Where have new Vermonters established a
sense of belonging to place? Where have they
not? Why?
• Who, other than farmers, cares about laws
governing access to land? How am I connected to
these people?

7. Key Questions :
Historical Trauma
• How do we talk with people about the value
of organic farming when their history in
agriculture is a source of pain?
• How have you transcended your peoples
historical trauma related to land? What
helped you to do that?
• What past grievances about land and place
still shape your community today? How does
this grief show up?

8. Who developed and
popularized the U-Pick
and CSA models for
financially sustainable
small farms?

9. Key Questions:
Expanding the Narrow Frame
• Where do you have a narrow frame about
relationship to land? What has it kept you
from seeing?
• What are all the different ways people in your
community have a relationship to land?
• What historically black models and sources of
knowledge inform your organic farming
practice ?

10. BlackLandProject.org