In the last decade, increasing attention has been paid to land access as a key barrier for new entry farmers (Butler-Rippon, 2020; Calo & Petersen-Rockney, 2018; Cox, 2012; Figueroa & Penniman, 2020; Ruhf, 2013; Scrufari, 2017; Valliant & Freedgood, 2020). One response to alleviating this barrier has been a suite of programmatic activities, often run by non-profits or public institutions (Hersey & Adams, 2017), related to connecting land seekers with landowners. These initiatives carry out their core objectives via a range of activities (e.g., curating land listings, technical support, facilitating relationships), and are broadly grouped under the unifying theme of championing land access for farmers.

Land is also central to the reproduction of settler colonialism, maintained via dispossession and narrative erasure of those who are Indigenous to the land. Given this, how are initiatives for farmland access positioned with respect to the maintenance of settler colonial social structures? My research seeks to answer this question by exploring how the farmland access movement articulates its values and priorities, and by interrogating how those themes reverberate within and against the contours of settler colonialism. Through textual analysis of values (mission/vision) statements, I attempt a discursive examination of the narratives expressed by the farmland access movement guided by the inquiry: how do these themes reflect, resist, or relate to settler colonialism? I straddle methodologies, using content analysis as a systematic, descriptive approach to deriving meaning from language (Green-Saraisky, 2015) and critical discourse analysis to situate meaning within historical and social processes (Fairclough, 2012). By applying the theoretical lens of settler colonialism to the discourse of farmland access advocacy, I probe narrative constructions around how land is held, and by whom.

Overall, my findings suggest that while the discourses of the farmland access movement are positioned in contrast to the harms of industrial agriculture, they assert entitlement to land in ways that often fail to refute Indigenous land dispossession. I identify themes of generational futurity, farmland preservation, sustainability, stewardship, community, and others. In my discussion, I examine these themes alongside a settler colonial past and present, and bring them into juxtaposition with Indigenous thinkers and frameworks. Emphasis on land transfer from one generation to the next reproduces a “knowable future” in which settler colonial structures of Indigenous erasure remain unchanged and unchallenged. Representing farmland as threatened, or in need of preservation, fails to acknowledge that agrarian land-grabs were a mechanism by which settler colonialism unfurled across the North American continent. While emphasis on ecological stewardship and community relationships echoes Indigenous epistemologies informed by land, these discourses do not in and of themselves constrain settler colonial structures.

Challenging settler colonial structure requires a reckoning with the cultural logics that persistently deny sovereignty and restoration of land to Indigenous peoples. This calls for an examination of all aspects of “business as usual.” This research seeks to make visible the taken-for-granted “embodied practices” (Barker, 2021, p. 3) of settler colonialism within the specific arena of farmland transfer and advocacy. “Inhabitants of Canada and the United States take these nations' settler colonial contours so much for granted that the systems of ordinary dispossession and domination are made invisible to settler people or recede both figuratively and literally into the landscape” (Barker, 2021, pp. 4–5). Farmland access initiatives represent a moment of transfer: land is changing hands. Perhaps this moment of transfer also represents an opportunity to 'do' differently. This paper concludes by presenting frameworks of land rematriation and ‘land back’ as actively undoing narratives of settler colonialism, illustrated by organizations oriented towards relationships on and with land.  

Field edge hedgerows have long been promoted by UC Cooperative Extension and other organizations as a way to bring needed biodiversity to California farms. However, adoption of hedgerow planting still falls far short of available edge capacity. Our study explores a new multifunctional model of hedgerows that combines production with environmental conservation goals by considering the revenue potential of harvesting blue elderberry. Blue elderberry is a drought-tolerant native species well adapted to multiple microclimates in California and the western United States. The growth of elderberry herbal products and specialty foods markets is currently skyrocketing nationally and globally, and blue elderberry may offer a promising entry into these markets. Blue elderberry is also sought out by Indigenous people as one important component in efforts to restore cultural and food sovereignty. A field demonstration trial in the southern Sacramento Valley found that elderberry yields from 1,000-foot-long multi-species hedgerows could potentially provide from $2,000 to $3,000 in net annual revenue within 3 to 5 years, with much more possible as the hedgerows mature.

The article “Native blue elderberry in hedgerows bridges revenue and conservation goals” focuses on the commercial potential of western blue elderberry (Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea) plantings, primarily on private farmland in California. While blue elderberry is little known as a commercial agricultural crop, it is anything but new to the Indigenous people of this place. Many of the nearly 200 tribes that live in California have been in relationship with elderberry, and the land it grows on, since time immemorial, seeing all living beings as their own kin, rather than merely utilitarian resources. For non-Indigenous farmers and researchers working with elderberry, it is important to be aware of our state’s history of land dispossession and non-Native land management practices, which have often diminished California Native peoples’ access to and sovereignty over traditional foods, medicines and cultural materials.

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