Access
latest opportunities are posted to our blog and facebook page - if you have or know of any more please contact us by email or post to our facebook page
jobs
Jobs on the land are advertised throughout the year. The web is the best place to look; websites of note include:
www.soilassociation.org/organicmarketplace - you can be proactive on here and advertise yourself!
biodynamic association job vacancies
Online forums can be good places to look, e.g. the LWA forum, OGA forum (must be a member to post, but free to read), WWOOF news and WWOOF forum (membership required). WWOOF hosts occasionally offer longer term 'traineeship' positions - keep an eye out on their profiles for info. The classifieds section at the back of the WWOOF quarterly newsletter is also a good place to look.
Contacting farms in person or by email is a proactive way to get work. You may have better chances at busy times of year e.g. before lambing, or when the growing season in kicks off in April.
Groundspring endeavor to share all the jobs we get wind of on our facebook page and blog.
land
If you are looking to start small, and get some practise in, then Landshare is a great place to start. Ranging from small urban gardens, to larger field-size plots; some spaces are offered for free and some charge rent.
WWOOF is a good place to look for land opportunities. Smallholders sometimes advertise plots or land share opportunities in the newsletters, and some profiles offer land or gardens for people to take-over for a seasons' practise. You ned a membership to view profiles, and the most recent newsletters, but you can view the newsletter archive here. The classifieds section is at the end.
Farm Starts
The Fresh Start Land Enterprise Centre released a booklet about land access and partnerships. They are beginning land matching services for those with a business plan seriously looking to start a business.
'Farm Start' programs link novice land workers with land, shared resources (like water and electricity sources, machinery and shared barns) and markets. Plots are often small in the first year, with the opportunity to expand in the following years. Farm Start programms include the Kindling Trust in Manchester and OrganicLea in London.
Some farmers are now leaving their land in perpetuity to Land Trusts, including the Soil Association and Biodynamic Association Land Trusts. You can register your interest in aquiring land to start a business on through their websites. If you are looking for land to start a community project on, you can contact the Community Land Advisory Service. The Ecological Land Coop are a trust set up to create affordable groups of smallholdings with shared infrastructure. Their first project is Greenham Reach in Devon (3 holdings); they have secured funding to buy land for the next lots, and will presumably be advertising them sometime in the future.
Beacon Farms are working to connect growers to agricultural land around Bristol. They have a land matching questionnaire you can fill out here.
Land offers and partnerships sometimes come up on the Soil Association marketplace.
I've had farmers tell me that they would be interested in land and business partnerships, but that they want to build up trust informally with a potential partner first. Consider building up a relationship with a potential land owner over several months or years with regular visits and discussions about what you both want from your partnership.
capital
Crowdfunding with sites like bzzbank, crowdfunder and crowdshed can be a good way to fund your project, especially if it's a community project. Example crowdfunding projects include Street Goat, HempenOrganic and School Farm CSA. Crowdfunding is great for raising smaller amounts of money, and don't require the in depth business plans that a bank might demand, plus the money usually works as a donation rather than a loan, so you don't have to pay it back.
Ethical bank Triodos offer business loans to organic farms. This is an option for those with a solid business plan looking to borrow £100k+; more info here.
Grants are available to support sustainable land work, especially for community food projects, for example the Just Growth Funding campaign that ran in 2015. Campaigns come up or there are funds and foundations that can be applied to year-round. Organisations to investigate for grants and loans include:
Funding Enlightened Agriculture
Visit www.grantsforhorticulturists.org.uk for information on grants and bursaries available from organisations in the United Kingdom for horticultural projects, exchanges and travel