The Landworkers’ Alliance is a union of farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers.

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If you have any comments, critiques, considerations, compliments, complaints, about anything the Landworkers Alliance is or isn’t up to, do let us know your thought. We love feedback, it keeps a system healthy. Please fill in this quick form.

Membership / Supporter / Donation Queries

Please contact Lauren.Simpson@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk

Requests for work, volunteering or internships

We are currently not recruiting for any roles but please read our newsletters for any announcements. We currently do not offer any volunteer or internship placements directly with the LWA, but keep an eye out in the newsletter or on the forum for any members looking for volunteers or workers.

Academic/Research Enquiries

Please look at the Agroecology Research Collaboration to see if it fits your area of research/work.

Membership Support / Advice

Currently the LWA does not have capacity or resources to help individual members or potential members on their specific projects, farms or programmes. We get a lot of requests for individual support and would love to have the time to respond to each request in full. We are fundraising for a new role for somebody to focus on membership support and services as we have identified it is a gap in our offering so please watch this space. Having said that, if your query is critical and urgent please email info@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk including the word URGENT in the subject header and it will get picked up and we can try our best to help.

Contacting Individual Staff

Please take the time to explore our staff page here to see who the most relevant contact for your enquiry is.

Our addresses format is firstname.lastname@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk

Please bear in mind we all work part time and have limited capacity to respond to enquiries outside our core areas of work.

You can also find information under the About Us header about branch and regional organising, and identity groups within the LWA membership.

Press/Media Enquiries:

For any queries relating to press please email press@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk

Merchandise/calendar Enquiries

For any enquiries to do with shop sales including the calendar please email merchandise@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk

To Include an Item in Our Newsletter:

You can fill in this quick form to submit it to be included in the next bulletin/newsletter. The deadline to submit is the end of Friday each week for the following week’s member bulletin. With the same form you can also submit to the monthly non-member newsletter which goes out in the first week of the month.

All Other Enquiries:

For any other enquiries that are URGENT please email info@staging.landworkersalliance.org.uk with the word ‘urgent’ in the subject header and we will do our best to help.

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GUIDING THE AGRICULTURAL TRANSITION

Since leaving the European Union the UK has embarked on a period of unparalleled legislative change, and changes to agricultural law and policy have been no exception.

England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are currently introducing new agricultural legislation and developing policy to replace the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and we believe that the voices of small-scale agroecological farmers should be influence this transition. See below for more information on our lobbying and policy work to guide a just agricultural transition in England, Wales and Scotland.

England

Jyoti Fernandes engages with the work of DEFRA to influence the whole of the emerging Future Farming Programme since the Landworkers’ Alliance is recognised as a key stakeholder. Jyoti is active on the ELMS Engagement Group (the EEG) to input on the impact of the emerging Sustainable Farming Incentive, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery schemes and to make the case for a number of measures to support our members including:

  • Whole farm management incentives which reward integrated pest management, nutrient management and soil health
  • Removal of the 5 hectare eligibility threshold 
  • Organic conversion and maintenance payments
  • Public engagement payments with specific incentives to diversity and inclusion for those who have less access to nature
  • Hedgerow creation and maintenance payments
  • On-farm woodland and agroforestry payments
  • Agrobiodiversity payments to keep rare-breed livestock, maintain traditional orchards and grow heritage vegetables and grains.

Together with Rebecca Laughton (LWA’s Horticulture Campaign Coordinator) Jyoti has also been working on developing Horticulture payments through the ELMS scheme through a DEFRA funded test and trial to make ELMS work for the Horticulture Sector. Learn more about the pilot scheme by watching this video.

In Spring 2021 our Future Farming Resilience (FFR) team also delivered a DEFRA funded support programme which provided advice to farmers and land managers to encourage agroecological farming and direct local supply chains. You can read more about the FFR ‘Your Farming Future’ programme here.

We are also supporting Urban and Peri-urban farms (farms on the perimeter of cities) through our Fringe Farming Project together with Sustain and other key partners. You can read our report here.

We also lobby for capital grants schemes which provide support appropriate to the needs of agroecological farm businesses and horticultural enterprises, as well as more support for agroecology in the Agricultural Research & Development budget.

Scotland

Tara Wight leads on our Scotland policy and campaigns work, and has been working with allied food and farming organisations in Scotland to ensure that Scotland’s post-Brexit agricultural legislation and policy paves the way for just transition for our farming system, founded on principles of environmental and social justice.

In 2021, the Scottish government carried out a consultation on agricultural transition in Scotland, responses to which will feed into the development of new agricultural policy. LWA members from across the country contributed their thoughts and experience to respond to this consultation, ensuring the voice of agroecological landworkers was heard at this key stage of policy development. We demanded substantial reform of agricultural subsidies, including an end to unjust area-based payments, and advocated for support and training for farmers to transition to more ecologically and socially sound farming systems. We also focused on the need for support for ‘land-sharing’ practises such as agroecology, which support the improvement of biodiversity on farms, rather than ‘land-sparing’ practises in which ‘rewilding’ of certain areas is coupled with intensification of agriculture in others.

Our full response to the consultation on agricultural transition in Scotland can be found here.

Cymru (Wales)

Following Brexit, the subsidy scheme for farmers in Wales will be changing.  Welsh Government have proposed a transition away from the current Basic Payment scheme, where payments were based primarily on area of land farmed (a grossly unfair system that rewarded wealth and excluded small farmers entirely) to one in which farmers and other landworkers will be paid for actions that create environmental benefits such as carbon sequestration, flood management and biodiversity. If agreed, these changes are expected to start from 2025.  

Welsh Government has been consulting on these changes since 2018. Holly Tomlinson has been leading on LWA Cymru’s policy work and responding the Welsh Government’s proposals, highlighting:

  • The ways in which our members are already demonstrating many of the benefits welsh Government is seeking to achieve; 
  • The challenges that our members face; and 
  • Policies changes that could help create a better food and farming system and support sustainable, living, working woodlands.  

You can read our summaries of Welsh Government consultations and our responses to them here.  

OUR CAMPAIGNS

View Campaign
Agrobiodiversity = Resilience
A campaign to revive agrobiodiversity on UK farms
View Campaign
Public Engagement on Farms
The new Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) in England offer a perfect opportunity to support this important place-based learning.
View Campaign
A New Deal for Horticulture (2019 – ongoing)
A campaign to upscale the agroecological production of fresh fruit and vegetables in the UK.

 

RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS

View Campaign
LWA Welcomes New ELMS Commitments, But Ambition Still Lagging (27/01/23)
The Secretary of State for farming recently announced new commitments for the SFI and Coyntryside Stewardship schemes for ELMS. Our Campaigns Coordinator Jyoti Fernandes comments.
View Campaign
LWA Response to the Scottish Agriculture Bill Consultation
View Campaign
LWA Submission of Evidence for the EAC Inquiry: Environmental Change and Food Security (15/12/22)
View Campaign
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH ELMS?
There have been recent rumours that the Environmental Land Management Schemes being developed and piloted in England will be scrapped by the new Farming Minister, Mark Spencer,
View Campaign
LWA Statement on UK food security concerns in light of war in Ukraine (31/03/2022)
View Campaign
Making Food Soverignty A Reality (2017)
Recommendations For Post-Brexit Agricultural Policy
View Campaign
The Promise of Agroforestry: Lessons From the Field (2021)
This report makes the case for more substantial government support for agroforestry in the UK, drawing on eight different case studies to explore the lessons that can be learned from...
View Campaign
Why We Need Small Farms (2017)
A Document Outlining The Multifunctional Benefits Of Small Farms
View Campaign
Whole Farm Agroecology Scheme (2019)
A position paper outlining the case for policy to support agroecology.

 

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