Land Reform is a thesis by Enrico Luo and Nelly Wat. As the UK transitions away from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, smaller farms will be the most impacted. In its place, a new Environmental Land Management Scheme will pay farmers “public money for public goods”1 – the public goods being clean water, soil, air, and environmental protection and restoration. Smaller farms will be more vulnerable to this transition, given their limited ability to undertake new environmental projects, smaller agricultural output, and the substantial reduction to their income.
Our design thesis focuses on agrarian land reform in the UK to support farmers and to change the way land is managed and farmed. We propose a framework of local collaboration to support agro-ecological, small-scale farming and the resilience of farming communities. This framework is scaled up over time to support a transition towards recreating the commons.
