FOR LOCALS AND LOCAL LEADERS

When big operators buy up the farms around your town, what can you do?

When big operators buy up the farms around your town, each sale is still a family's own decision. What you can do is look at the farms around you, and ask who farms them next. Then say out loud that this district wants to stay farmed. The mayor starts it. Everyone else carries it.

Families slowing down and people who want to farm can live in the same district for years and never meet. When that happens, the farms go one at a time.

Say it the same way every time

The line stays the same: this district wants to stay farmed, it's open, and it'll try things. The mayor says it at the show, in the mayor's column and on the shire's page. Before the first try, the line is a speech. Once a try is underway, the councillors say the same words and point to it.

A family slowing down hears that their farm can stay farmed when they step back. An aspiring farmer hears that this district is worth the drive, and worth a call to the farmer down the road. Say it beside a real try, until locals say the line before you do.

Call the champions

The mayor puts a call in the paper and on the shire's page. It asks for people who care whether the farms stay farmed and who'd like to do something about it.

The champions are the ones who'll still be ringing around once the town has moved on to something else. A district can have several.

Each champion starts with something small. One rings the families who are slowing down and sits in the kitchens that say yes. Another has a yarn with the ag teacher. Another visits a farm that's winding down.

The mayor rings ahead of each hard conversation, to say who's coming and that the district wants its farms to stay farmed. When a try is slow going, the mayor backs them in public.

A quiet morning tea

Those first cups of tea in the kitchens show which families won't come to a public night. So the mayor asks the champions to arrange a quiet morning tea for them.

A local they already trust hosts it. The invitations go by word of mouth. The room stays small, no names leave the room, and the mayor stays out of it.

They hear the ways to step back, one at a time. They can stay on the farm and hand the work to someone who'll do it well, or sharefarm, so the family keeps a say while the work is shared.

Then they hear: 'There is a way to step back from the farm without selling it. Your farm moves into the Cultivate Trust, which runs it on your behalf, with the right farmer on it.'

Farm forums

An aspiring farmer and a family who are slowing down can pass each other all year in the same district and never sit at the same table. A call from the mayor can put them in the same room in the same week.

The questions from the morning tea need a wider room, which locals run. Through the year they hold a farm forum somewhere people already go, one night in the hall, another at the pub and another in a shearing shed.

A champion books the next date before people go home, and the mayor puts it on the shire's page and comes as one of the crowd. Out in the car park, aspiring farmers and families who are slowing down keep talking.

Owning a farm together

Some locals want a practical part in keeping a farm in local hands, and some would like to own a farm together, with a farming family running it. The mayor encourages a forum for them, and those locals lead the night.

Locals pool together to bring a farm into the Cultivate Trust, the right farmer goes on, and the land stays farmed and local.

People bring questions about who decides and what happens if it goes badly. Where a local has done it, a champion asks them to tell the room, and where nobody local has, the champion says so plainly.

The edge of town

On the edge of town, small blocks can't carry a family on their own. People price them as house sites, and the farming on them thins out.

The mayor asks the owners to sit down together, and a champion brings an aspiring farmer from the farm forums. That farmer could run the blocks as one farm on a sharefarming arrangement, while each family keeps its own title. The mayor says that part once, then lets the owners talk.

The pace is theirs, and leaving it alone is one of the answers.

This week

If you're the mayor, say the line this week, where people already are. Put a call out, and help the locals who answer it get going. Then sit in the second row and let the town carry it.

If you're not the mayor, answer the call, or ask your mayor to make it.

The full guide, Open for Farming, is free at cultivatefarms.com/resources.

You can build your own plan at cultivatefarms.com/plan.