Landshare seeks to link people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it
What is Landshare?
With allotment waiting lists massively over-subscribed and people right across the country keener than ever to grow their own fruit and veg, the aim for Landshare is to become a UK wide initiative to make British land more productive and fresh local produce more accessible to all. But all of this depends on people like you registering their interest now.
Sign up and help Landshare build the momentum needed to launch this exciting project in early 2009. In the meantime, via monthly updates, you'll get the chance to help shape the initiative and make sure you're amongst the first to have the opportunity to be involved.
Use landshare to...
Find land where you can grow your own
Offer land in return for produce
Identify land suitable for planting
Build a growing community
Go to the Landshare website
Since the campaign started there have already been plenty of success stories...
Church land
There are more than 140 different religious groups in the UK. Out of these, the Church of England is the biggest known landowner and in fact, one of the biggest landowners in Britain, full stop.
In the early 14th century, the Catholic Church owned at least 25% of the land in England. However, it lost its assets during the reign of Henry VII, with most of them being given to the Church of England. The CoE then continued to bolster its landownings by bequests from wealthy benefactors and grants from the Government, equivalent to around £6 billion today.
Extraordinarily, no-one, including the Church, knows exactly how much land it has owned throughout history, nor how much it owns today. However, it is likely to be over 250,000 acres and in fact, could be considerably more.
The Church of England owns 112,000 acres of agricultural property. The Financial Times says that a conservative guess as to how much glebe land it must own is in the region of 129,000 acres. The CoE additionally owns a significant number of commercial and residential properties, schools, churches, cathedrals, parsonages and church halls.
There is no central body that singularly decides what church land can be used for. Instead, each individual Diocese controls the land in their area.
The Church of England has made its first commitment to Landshare. The London Diocese is now assessing their land to see how much is suitable to add to the Landshare database. If other Dioceses follow their lead, the potential is huge.
But it's not just land that's needed to make the Landshare initiative work - it's also the gardeners. So, register now for the chance to be involved. This is an opportunity for everyone to get together to help create access to fresh, local, seasonal food at a decent price.
