Hedgerows do way more than just provide a border between fields. They provide shelter protecting live stock and reducing the impact of wind on crops. They increase the biodiversity of the farm and provide refuges for a range of beneficial insects and other animals that eat pests. In modern agriculture there is often a desire to remove hedgerows to ease the use of machinery and increase scale. Often when this has been done farm productivity has actually gone down. You tend to only see hedge rows in Australia on the edges of farms and roadsides. We will use hedgerows internally as just one of many strategies to increase productivity in an environmentally friendly way. Particularly by forming them with a range of plants to provide bee forage. They are also a metaphor. We want to create a mosaic of farming enterprises.
What is Hedge Row Farm?
The way I explain Hedgerow Farm is that it’s just like an office building or co-working space except it’s a farm. In an office building tenants may lease a whole floor or just one office. Co-working spaces take it a step further and you can just lease a desk and share services like a photocopier and receptionist. Hedgerow Farm is exactly the same except its a farm. Instead of a co-working space we can have a co-farming space.
The biggest benefit to the farmers is secure and affordable access to land. Everyone gets their own space secured by their own commercial lease. Just like someone setting up a factory the commercial lease gives co-farmers the confidence to invest in their soil, fences, irrigation, orchard or whatever they desire for the long term.
More than just Access to land
In addition to getting access to your own patch of land there are a number of other key benefits that can flow from co-farming.
Farming can be a lonely profession and farmers normally spend much of their time working alone. Even people who can afford to buy land have said they find the OH&S and mental health benefits of co-farming attractive. The sharing of resources such as the farm shop fosters relationships and community between the co-farmers, just like in a co-working space.
Another benefit is that having a bunch of interesting, vibrant and diverse independent farming operations on the same property can help brand new farmers attract their first customers. Transport to wholesale markets can be shared and collective branding at farmers markets and other retail outlets can ensure more profit for new small scale farmers. Many aspiring farmers just want to lease their own patch and get on with farming. However, everyone we have spoken to can see the logic of collaborating to organise a farm shop. They can appreciate that a regular stream of people will be attracted to the farm and having a diverse range of produce will help everyone get more sales.
Not a Cooperative its a Collaboration
Hedgerow Farm is not a cooperative its actually a company. Investors are the shareholders, the tenants are the co-farmers. Some people are both investors and co-farmers.
It is very likely that when a whole stack of aspiring farmers come together there will be many opportunities to collaborate and cooperate. Down the track co-farmers may decide to collectively build a packing shed, share a tractor or workshop. That will be great but its important to remember everyone signs their own lease for their own patch. The main aim is getting aspiring farmers secure access, to affordable land. Anything extra that people may or may not want to organise between themselves is cream. This caters for people who just want to do their own thing while enabling those who want to collaborate even further.