Wild Minds Weekly: What does the land grab mean for you?

Hello beautiful people,

The UK government is making some concerning moves. 

I think we can all agree that reading the news is not the best use of your time.

But I feel compelled to bring this to you because it impacts your food security, which impacts you and your family's wealth (and health, most importantly).

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill was introduced into Parliament on March 11th. 

It's framed as a solution to The Housing Crisis...but there are darker implications.

"The government recognises the importance of making effective use of land and is keen for authorities to make greater use of their compulsory purchase powers to support the delivery of housing, growth and regeneration of their areas."

“The compulsory purchase process – which allows land to be acquired for projects that are in the public interest – will be improved to ensure important developments delivering public benefits can progress.”

What does this mean?

Three things:

1) The government want to enable local authorities to forcibly buy your land without having to seek approval from the Secretary of State.

2) They want to make it cheaper for authorities to buy your land by getting rid of 'hope value' - what the land may be worth in the future.

3) Natural England will be able to forcibly buy land from farmers or other landowners - this isn't explicitly stated, but we can guess from their reference to 'Environmental Development Plans'.

The government has had the ability to forcibly buy land since at least 2008, but now they want to make it even easier.

What then?

New homes, roads, rail and renewable energy projects (ie. solar and wind farms). 

You can read the official guide to the bill here, in particular Part 5 (Compulsory Land Purchase).

You can also find the 2008 Planning Act here that tells you exactly what circumstances your land can be bought (page 6).

Sadly, that's not all.

The Climate and Nature Bill is up for debate in Parliament which is further along the process of being approved. This one is far more vague, and on the surface appears to benefit British farms, but is still concerning, you'll see why.

What's the goal?

"Require the United Kingdom to achieve climate and nature targets"

I'll link the full bill down below so you can read it yourself, but there's three  things you need to know:

1. While it talks about "supporting" farmers to help nature, the reality is it could force many to give up productive land for rewilding projects. Section 2 basically tells farmers they need to prioritise avoiding "nature loss" in everything they do - which makes sense... until you realise it allows the government to restrict the way you can farm.

2. The bill throws around phrases like "ecosystem restoration" but is pretty vague on exactly how farmers will be compensated when they're asked to turn fields into wildlife habitats.

3. It promotes "community" renewable energy projects over "large-scale" projects. Except that the limit on what is classed as "community", 100 Mega Watts, is larger than most solar farms. So the end result? Large fields that could be used to grow food, covered in solar panels.

Here's the link to the full bill.

So between these two bills, and other factors that we'll explore another time - otherwise this newsletter would be far too long, it seems the very foundation of our freedoms, land, is being threatened.

What can you do about it?

Alone? Nothing. 

None of us will be able to keep our freedom if we try and go it alone. 

But as a community? As a collective of landowners, farmers, smallholders, off-grid pioneers, we will be much stronger and far more resilient. 

That's why we're creating more resources to help you break free from the mainstream system; We want more of us, more smallholders, more farmers, more land-owners, and more communities. 

If you want to join our community, join our waitlist for Wild Minds Premium and we'll be in touch as soon as we open more spaces.

Click here to check it out.

To your freedom and independence,

Rob

Wild Minds Community

PS.

If you want a lower-cost option to get you started on your journey, we're releasing a new and improved resource to help you so stay tuned! 

Oh, and as for The 12 Month Farm Method? Customers that bought that will get this new resource for free as a thank you for being one of our early customers.