Access To Land
TERRAE has implemented a land bank on the basis that landowners usually trust Local Councils more than unemployed people and outsiders. These lands, currently 108 hectares, are offered to entrepreneurs when they have to leave the municipal gardens. The land bank www.tierrasagroecologicas.es/bancodetierras has currently more than 1700 users, with 240 demands, most of them not yet met. There are largely more entrepreneurs than land offers: this is one of the main challenges that Municipalities involved in TERRAE try to solve.
The central element of the TERRAE approach is the role of the DILAS (local agroecological facilitators) usually public advisors or an elected body from the Local Municipalities. They are responsible for integrating plots in the land bank, looking for places for municipal gardens, arranging training resources from regional institutions, also interviewing and following unemployed people and contacting and exploring potential interest from restaurants and local food retailers. Local municipal councillors decide the target group of beneficiaries (whether people handled by social services, excluded, young unemployed, etc). They also specify subjects, food sovereignty and other criteria according to the characteristics of the territory (gardening, grazing, fruit trees, etc.) The main task of DILAS advisors in TERRAE adherent councils, is to define what they call Local Agroecological Policy (LAP). This LAP, instead of CAP (Common Agriculture Policy) exemplifies the real local engagement of this method and the municipal networking.
