Cymraeg Our Vision
We have a vision of a future where producers can work with dignity to earn a decent living and everyone can access local, healthy and affordable food, fuel and fibre – a food and land-use system based on agroecology and food sovereignty that furthers social and environmental justice.
Our Mission
The Landworkers’ Alliance is a union of farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers. Our mission is to improve the livelihoods of our members and create a better food and land-use system for everyone.
Who We Are
We are a democratic member-led union, run by producers for producers. All our policies, representation and training comes from farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers who have direct experiences of the issues we work on.
We operate across the UK and are organised into branches and regions. The governance of the organisation is driven by a democratically elected coordinating group of people from across the country that aims to represent a balance of sectors and regions whilst maintaining gender parity and inclusion.
We are members of La Via Campesina, an international organisation of over 200 million peasants, small-scale farmers and agricultural workers unions around the world. We work with them to achieve a global vision of agroecology and food sovereignty.
What We Work For
We work for a food and land-use system where everybody, regardless of income, status or background has access to local, healthy, affordable food, fuel and fibre from producers they can trust.
Where farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers earn a living wage and a fair livelihood working in a safe environment, free from all forms of exploitation and discrimination.
We work for a food and land-use system that operates within the finite limits of our earth, regenerates natural resources and cools our planet without compromising the ability of others around the world or future generations to provide for themselves.
We want to see power put back in the hands of producers and communities rather than supermarkets and industrial processors.
We believe that producers organisations and communities must be at the heart of decision-making and have a strong voice in agricultural and forestry policy making.
Our Theory of Change
The Landworkers’ Alliance supports a social change model based in grassroots organising and social movements as drivers of social and political transformation. We believe in bringing people together to build collective power that can create practical and political solutions to the issues we face.
On the ground we work to build the social, economic and environmental elements of the solutions we want to see. This work is rooted in the principles of solidarity and mutual aid, which bring together people working to create solutions and develop pathways step by step, integrating elements of the future we want to see into the day to day of land-based work.
At the policy and governance level we work to develop and defend legal and policy instruments that protect and advance the changes necessary for the society we are building. Our policies are created by collective decision making of people who have direct experience of the issues that are talking about. We work to implement these changes and local, national and international levels.
We organise under four key frameworks:
Food Sovereignty
Food Sovereignty underpins the vision and perspectives of our work. The framework of Food Sovereignty was drawn up by La Via Campesina and provides common ground to the positions of farmers and agricultural workers unions, and social movements around the world. Through the organisations that now make up the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty over 300 million food producers stand behind the vision of Food Sovereignty.
Having an agreement on the principles of Food Sovereignty gives us a coherent starting point from which to work. La Via Campesina define Food Sovereignty as:
“The right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. It puts those who produce, process and consume healthy and local food at the heart of our agriculture and food systems, instead of the demands of market and transnational companies”.
La Via Campesina agree on 6 pillars of Food Sovereignty which we have adapted to reflect the UK context.
Agroecology
Agroecology is a framework for describing the knowledge and practices of food producers working in resilient and sustainable food and land-use systems. Agroecological farming and land management is place based, sustainable and deeply integrated with local ecology and environment.
The term was coined by social movements that situate it not just as a set of agricultural techniques but also within land-based cosmologies and within democratic social and political relationships. Agroecology is now recognized by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and provides a framework for ecologically, economically and socially regenerative agriculture systems and includes a wide range of farming techniques and scales.
The Landworkers’ Alliance uses agroecology as a framework for describing holistic ways of producing food, fuel and fiber that integrate sustainable food and resource production with environmental land management.
Right to Food
The right to food is a human right recognised under international human rights and humanitarian law in article 25 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
The right to food sees access to food as a public good and aims to protect the rights of everyone to live free from hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition regardless of their income or social status. This approach places the state as a guarantor of people’s right to food, obligated to ensure everybody has financial and geographical access to adequate, safe, nutritious and culturally appropriate food, with dignity and choice now and in the future.
The Landworkers’ Alliance supports a rights-based approach to food as a legally defined framework to be built upon.
Social Justice
A Social Justice approach to the issues we work on highlights the unequal distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society and focuses on challenging structural power inequalities to ensure that all people have access to the same rights and resources regardless of their income, identity or background.
Within this framework we use Environmental Justice to highlight the unequal distribution of environmental benefits and risks in peoples home and working lives and aim to equalise these factors whilst ensuring rights to land and resources. We use Food Justice to highlight the structural inequalities that cause food insecurity and hunger and aim to ensure that everyone has access to enough healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food by challenging the power dynamics that create this marginalisation and creating alternatives based on equal access to rights and resources.
What We Do
We organise our work around 4 strategic lines of action. Download our latest annual report to see what we’ve been working on. ** INSERT LINK**
Social Networks and Solidarity
Building social networks and solidarity between members is key to our aims of increasing the number of agroecological land-based businesses in the UK, reducing rural isolation and supporting our members wherever possible.
To achieve these aims we organise events, farm walks, parties, trainings and exchanges around the country and work to put people in contact with others around them. We also work with other organisations to improve rural social networks and support services and work with La Via Campesina and allied organisations in other countries to organise exchange visits and events.
Training and Exchange
We aim to increase the skills and knowledge of our members in respect to agroecological farming and land management as well as in union organising, campaigning and lobbying. To achieve this we organise and encourage both formal and informal training, skill shares and exchanges.
We are working on setting up resources and coordination to help meet the need for Agroecological training and mentoring on a number of priority areas:
- Farm Start – We are working to build a network of best practice and exchange between organisations and farms offering incubation or Farm Start opportunities
- Traineeship Network – We are working to build a network of producers offering traineeships and apprenticeships and to improve the quality and consistency of the trainees experience through co-learning, teacher training and curriculum design
- Mentoring Groups – we are working to create a mentoring system where new entrants can access affordable mentoring support and advice from experienced practitioners in their field
- Farmer-to-Farmer Exchange Groups – We are working to develop local and regional farmer-to-farmer groups for skill-sharing and exchange on a low-cost peer-to-peer model
- Accredited training and Short Courses – We are working to put in place more appropriate and accessible accredited training in agroecological farming, forestry and land management and to support organisations offering quality short courses to teach relevant skills.
- Farm Hacks and Land Skills Festival – We are working to organise and facilitate farm hacks and exchange events, including a summer land skills festival
Political Training and Movement Building
We are working to organise trainings in the necessary skills for organising as a union and social movement, representing our work to the media, campaigning and lobbying.
Media and Communications
We aim to improve the public’s’ understanding of the social, environmental and economic benefits created by our members work, and to highlight the challenges they face. In addition we aim to raise the public profile of agroecology and food sovereignty as solutions to social and environmental crisis.
To achieve this we work to increase the visibility of our members work through both formal and informal media, and to develop the reach and content of our own communications channels.
Campaigning and Lobbying
We aim to increase the numbers of farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers in the UK and to increase the political and policy level understanding of both the issues our members face and the solutions they represent.
In addition we aim to improve the sovereignty, resilience and sustainability of our food and land-use systems and to increase peoples access to local, healthy and affordable food, fuel and fibre.
To achieve these aims we lobby and campaign for policy that will support the infrastructure and markets central to our members’ livelihoods, as well as opposing policies that would have negative effects.
We work to build relationships with with civil servants, political parties and decision makers at local, national and international levels and are engaged in numerous official and unofficial campaigning and lobbying processes in the UK, and in Europe and Internationally though La Via Campesina.
Coordinating Group
Adam Payne
Adam is a cofounder and grower at Southern Roots Organics, a diverse market garden running a CSA and local wholesale in Devon / Dorset / Somerset. He has previously managed a small Organic livestock farm and was a coordinator and spokesperson for the European Coordination of Via Campesina (ECVC) in 2014-2016.
Gerald Miles
Gerald has farmed at Caerhys with his family for over fifty years. The farm is a mixed Organic farm in Pembrokeshire growing heritage grain crops, vegetables and Welsh Black suckler beef herd and pigs. The farm formed the first CSA in Wales – www.coca-csa.org. Gerald has been involved as an Activist against GM Crops and Agri-Businesses for many years. In 2003 he was involved in the Tractors & Trolleys demo in London where he drove a tractor from his farm in Pembrokeshire to No 10 Downing Street. In 2018 he supported a young farmer to drive a tractor to Westminster as part of the Landworkers’ Alliance’s ‘Good Food Good Farming’ march.
Roz Corbett
Roz is a farmer at Taybank Growers Co-operative in Perthshire, Scotland and does fundraising work for Urban Roots in Glasgow. She is also a founder of the Scottish Farmland Trust and was previously the Scotland Development Manager for the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens. Roz is passionate about people being able to do meaningful work that is connected to a more ecologically sound way of being, and that this requires a radical transformation of our food system.
Olly Craigan
Oli Rodker
Oli works as Site Developer and is a director at the Ecological Land Cooperative. Over the last twenty years Oli has also worked – and continues to work – on a variety of environmental projects and campaigns. Previously Oli co-founded Equinox Housing Co-op in Manchester and Landmatters Co-op, a 42 acre permaculture community in Devon. He is a director of Knott Wood Coppicers, a workers’ co-op specialising in woodland management and tree planting.
Jyoti Fernandes
Jyoti is an agrecological smallholder farmer based in Dorset, UK. The farm runs a micro dairy and produces a wide range of products from cheese and meats to cider, juice and preserves. The farm is part of a local smallholders cooperative that shares collective processing facilities and markets the products of the members’ smallholdings collectively. She was on the coordinating committee for the European Coordination of Via Campesina between 2014-2016. Her work with La Via Campesina includes being a part of a facilitation committee to enable civil society to engage with the work of the Food and Agriculture Organisation and to promote Agroecology Training Networks to support grassroots farmers organisations to develop and create training networks about regenerative farming methods.
Charlotte Steel
Charlotte has been a member of the LWA for a few years now and is always inspired by how practical, passionate and proactive an organisation it is. At this pivotal point in UK agriculture she hopes to contribute to the vital policy and campaigning work – highlighting how important smaller-scale, agroecological producers are to achieving a fairer food system for people and planet. Having started a career in growing as an apprentice and working her way up to managing a community farm growing organically produced veg for box scheme customers in south London, reconnecting people with food growing and the outdoors. She is also keen to champion the training and mentoring aims of LWA – helping aspiring new entrants get started, and making sure those already farming get the support they need to thrive.
Rebecca Laughton
Rebecca has many years experience in small scale farming and currently runs an Organic market garden at Tamarisk Farm in Dorset. She has worked on a number of research projects in the past and wrote ‘Surviving and Thriving on the Land: How to use your time and energy to run a successful smallholding’.
Staff Roles
Dee Butterly
Change this content. years experience in small scale farming and currently runs an Organic market garden at Tamarisk Farm in Dorset. She has worked on a number of research projects in the past and wrote ‘Surviving and Thriving on the Land: How to use your time and energy to run a successful smallholding’.
Steph Wetherell
After spending a couple of years farming in the UK and Canada, Steph works part time supporting small scale producers in and around Bristol with accessing land, skills and markets. She also writes about food and farming for a number of different websites and magazines, working to connect people with where their food comes from. As Farm Start Network Coordinator Steph is working to build a network of farms and organisations offering farm-start opportunities. This involves working with existing organisations to create a best practice guide to setting up farm start opportunities for new entrant farmers. Steph will also be working on a feasibility study for developing mentoring and accredited training.
Lauren Simpson
Lauren is a new entrant landworker in West Wales with her partner Phil working on setting up a market garden to provide ingredients for their fermented foods business Parc y Dderwen as part of a mixed small holding under the Welsh ‘One Planet Development’ planning policy. Lauren also works for the Ecological Land Co-operative and before taking on the role of LWA Membership Secretary in January 2019 she was the LWA Membership Database Coordinator for the past year. Lauren is an excel wizard and her work focuses on managing the membership database, and offering technical support for newly joined and existing members, and providing logistical support for regional communication.
How We Organise
The Landworkers’ Alliance is constituted as a non-for-profit, cooperative company limited by guarantee and operates as a democratic, grassroots union.
Coordinating Group
The Coordinating group is composed of up to 12 Directors who are elected by the membership at the Annual General Meeting. They are responsible for coordinating the strategic, financial, governmental and political work of the organisation and for representing the LWA politically.
The Coordinating group aims to represent a balance of sectors and regions whilst maintaining gender parity and inclusion.
Branches and regions
The membership of the LWA is organised into branches and regions according to where members live and work. Active members in branches and regions form teams to develop the local work of the organisation.
For more information about our organising structure have a look at How the LWA works: A Handbook for Members
