Case Studies

Case studyCountryRole of LALine of summary

Belgium

Landowner

The city of Leuven shifted from selling its local farm land to allocating it for local food production, offering plots for organisations or individuals to set up agricultural initiatives that are sustainable, economically feasible, innovative, and adding value to the local community.

Belgium

Landowner and Regulator

The city of Ghent is currently creating a vision with regard to the local farmland owned by the local Public Centre for Social Welfare (OCMW) with the goal to protect and strengthen open space and agriculture in Ghent.

Mouans-Sartoux: from organic food for schools to land and food policy

France

Landowner, Regulator and Facilitator

The Mouans-Sartoux municipal council gradually converted a municipal estate into a farm producing vegetables for the town’s school cafeterias. In addition, the council has deployed a proactive land policy to favour the creation of new farms on its territory.

Belgium

Landowner and Regulator

The municipality of Ohey has about 90 ha of agricultural land in the form of

of "essarts" (private domain of the commune). These are small parcels of about 0,25 ha which were historically intended for use by poor families for subsistence agriculture. Over time, the land came to be leased to less than ten professional farmers. In 2015, the municipality’s council created a new regulation to reallocate the land. Under this new regime, more than 30 farmers now benefit from the essarts land.

Belgium

Landowner and Facilitator

The project (in progress) consists of providing food aid to 400 families in the municipality of Florennes from vegetables produced on the land belonging to the Social Welfare Center.

Italy

Landowner and Regulator

The Cooperativa Coraggio campaigns for a better use of public land while also developing a pilot agricultural project on 22 ha belonging to the municipality of Rome. This exemplary project associates social, organic, multifunctional agriculture by young people and capacity development facilities.

Spain

Facilitator

Red Terrae is an inter-municipal network of about 40 local authorities throughout eight regions of Spain. The network supports local authorities to foster sustainable agriculture and food practices within their local contexts, notably through the establishment of local land banks.

Spain

Facilitator

The local authority Consorci del Lluçanès and the association of local forestland owners set up the « Boscos de Pastura » (grazing forests) initiative to facilitate access to private forests as grazing lands for local farmers and to prevent wildfires.

Romania

Facilitator

The local authority of Sancraiu facilitates access to land managed in a common stewardship to consolidate the activity of a young sheperd in rural Transylvania.

UK

Facilitator, Landowner and

Regulator

Three multisectorial and integrated actions are carried out in this case study, led by policy-makers at the Glasgow City Council and local community organisations grouped under an umbrella local network - the Glasgow Community Food Network - GCFN

UK

Regulator

The Cornwall Council established an integrative and participative policy to manage its Farms Estate and promote the development of land-based businesses and services.

France

Regulator (and Landowner)

The Grenoble metropole has long had proactive land and agriculture policies. In particular, they have used regulatory tools at their disposal to create protection perimeter for agricultural and natural areas

France

Regulator (and Facilitator)

Since 2013, the commune of Moëlan-sur-Mer has been working on reclaiming fallow land along the coastline to encourage the development of sustainable agriculture. Using a “rehabilitation of uncultivated land” procedure from the Rural Code, local authorities were able to to identify an area of 120 ha of fallow land and call on owners to recultivate them.

France

Regulator

The department of Ille-et-Vilaine (Brittany region, France) uses different levers such as temporary banking of land and mutually agreed exchanges of plots to encourage new farmers to set up agricultural activities and to support local farms.

Germany

Regulator

The agricultural programme is a political action plan of the city of Hannover to achieve the following objectives: coordinating spatial planning and development with farming, maintaining economically viable farms, supporting the conversion to organic agriculture, establishing regional marketing of food and fostering nature and landscape conservation.

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