Queer Farmland: Land Access Strategies for Small-Scale Agriculture

Centering Justice in a Sustainable Food Systems Master's Program

“…Informed by Tuck and Yang (2012), we use the word anti-colonial to shift the onus as settlers attempting to dismantle colonial structures in education (Tuck et al, 2014). In doing so, these pedagogical approaches seek to address the Eurocentric epistemological dominance and colonial structures of the academy including the erasure of Queer and BIPOC voices in sustainable food system projects and scholarship (Ramírez, 2014;Leslie, 2017Leslie, , 2019.…”

Relational Agriculture: Gender, Sexuality, and Sustainability in U.S. Farming

“…This special issue, unfortunately, reproduces this pattern to an extent as all papers draw from predominantly white samples. The few examples of women and queer farmers of color in this issue indicate that patterns in gender and sexual oppression and resistance vary at the intersections of race and legal status (Leslie 2019;Wypler 2019). In addition, emerging research on sexually diverse immigrant farmers in California demonstrates how the very meaning of sexuality-related language and community imagination may vary across race, ethnicity, and culture (Lizarazo et al 2017).…”

“…There are no existing quantitative studies on queer and transgender farmers, and the government does not collect information on sexuality and gender identity in the U.S. or USDA censuses. 3 Nevertheless, several U.S. and Canadian scholars (Edward 2018;Fellows 1998;Leslie 2017bLeslie , 2019Wypler 2019) and an ecofeminist activist in Catalonia (Dur an Gurnsey 2016) have conducted qualitative studies. In addition, an interdisciplinary group of researchers in California carried out a digital storytelling project with sexually diverse immigrant farmers (Lizarazo et al 2017).…”

“…We began with a history of how the U.S. stateexemplified by 4-Hcontributed to orienting a particular set of agrarian gender and sexual relations in an effort to construct a family farm conducive to industrial agriculture (Rosenberg 2015;). As we have shown, women and queer farmers do not simply accept today's iteration of oppressive gender and sexual relations, but some actively re-orient them to create new opportunities for social justice and ecological sustainability on farms (Carter 2019;Leslie 2019;Pilgeram 2019;Shisler and Sbicca 2019;Wypler 2019). We have sought to develop an ecofeminist and queer understanding of relational agriculture as a lens for drawing attention to gender relations and also sexual relations in agriculture.…”

“…Fourth, to provide support systems for rural women and queer farmers amongst a stifling culture of hegemonic masculinity, funding should be allocated for queer and women farmer organizations, which research shows have helped queer farmers thrive (Wypler 2019) and women farmers become "changemakers" (Carter 2017). Fifth, because of the general lack of queer support networks in agriculture and the importance of queer farmer mentors to beginning queer farmers (Leslie 2017b(Leslie , 2019Wypler 2019), agricultural apprenticeship programs should offer the option for mentor farmers to list themselves as "LGBTQþ" or "LGBTQþ friendly." Sixth, states can follow California's lead in enacting legislation similar to the 2017 Farmer Equity Act to bring more socially disadvantaged farmers into the policy-making arena (Collins 2017), but should include LGBTQþ farmers in the list of groups that qualify.…”