This booklet has been written by the European Access to Land network in cooperation with Urgenci, the network for Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), based on CSA members’ stories from across Europe.

Land and communities – new building stones for European food and agriculture. In the last 10 years alone, Europe has lost 4 million farmers, and over 3 million farm jobs. For over 60 years, the modernisation of agriculture has meant investing in specialisation, mechanisation, capital-intensive approaches, exports and land concentration to ensure viable farms and cheap food. This has been a global and not merely European feature of food systems. Land grabbing is rife from Africa to the Amazon, and the mainstream food system features the industrialisation of agriculture, processing and selling through hypermarkets. And Europe is no exception to this phenomenon. The results of this trend are manifold, from the loss of peasant agriculture to the spread of non-communicable diseases in consumers the world over. But the paradigm has changed. Consumers are increasingly looking for local, clean food. The adverse impact of intensive agriculture on the environment is now widely recognised, and becoming a major concern. And many farming sectors are hardly viable without public lifelines. A new sustainable system is not yet in place. Every day, throughout Europe, our networks are witnessing social innovations and mobilisations to create and support sustainable food and farming. This movement has many faces and many names – but its commonality is that it is based on food sovereignty, peasant farming and agroecology. It also includes important aspects of solidarity economy.