This year we platformed new justice themes including workers’ rights, queerness, anti-fascism and neurodiversity, as well as continuing to offer space for discussion and learning around anti-racism and reparations. 

2025 is the fourth year that Shared Assets has co-hosted the Justice Strand. Previously called the Justice Hub, and based mostly in one room, this year the newly branded Justice Strand ran 12 sessions in four different locations of the conference in Oxford, reaching new audiences and levels of visibility.

SALT Union joins the Justice Strand 

Our partners SALT Union teamed up with original partners of the Justice Strand, Land In Our Names (LION), to discuss class and race in the food and farming sector, arguing that the demand for cheap labour to keep food cheap has its roots in slave labour, and continued racial oppression and exploitation today. In groups, there were discussions about how racism has shown up in our workplaces, how to recognise this and build class solidarity. 

A panel on an anti-fascist farming movement discussed racism and nationalism in the UK and how transforming the food and land systems needs to counter and create alternative structures to fascism. Drawing on a new draft report from Seeding Reparations called Little Book of Legacies, Tom Wakeford proposed that that UK’s organic and agroecological movements urgently need to do more to address injustices within the food and farming system, particularly given the historic associations between the UK farming and the far-right. The panel also included reflections from Sagari Ramdas from the Food Sovereignty Alliance in South India, a movement that has been critical of the food sovereignty programme run by the authoritarian Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. She shared how the Andhra Pradesh Community-managed Natural Farming (APCNF) fails to protect Dalit workers, contribute to land reform, or support agroecological food distribution to the public. More than half of Indians are landless food producers and she argued that such movements as APCNF should be accountable to these people.

Themes of exploitation were picked up again in the session on neurodiversity in landwork. Systemic capitalism puts endless pressure on humans to be machine-like in their productivity. The ‘high-yield, low wage’ culture which says if you work faster and more consistently you are a better worker puts people into shame mode, especially those with disabilities - who can otherwise find landwork suited to them. 

Marginal identities in landwork

The Justice Strand invited a panel of people with LGBTQ+ perspectives in agroecology. Um and Ali from the Teasel Cooperative (based in Cardiff), Anna from Out on the Land (an LWA identity group), Shane, the Director of Slow Food UK, and Ben (who helped to set up Agrespect), spoke about the ways in which being queer interacts with efforts to be on the land. Projects like Teasle Cooperative, Out on the Land and Agrespect make it possible for queer people to feel belonging and solidarity in land connection and farming. An interesting observation around the lack of visibility of gay men generated a conversation on how patriarchy influences collectivisation differently between genders. 

“Queer is a verb. How can we challenge ways of doing something to create new beautiful constellations? We come from many places and belonging is complex, even more so for queer people. How can we develop new land-based cultures?” - Ali from Teasel

The recent report Pathways to Land for Black and People of Colour (BPOC), from Stir to Action, was presented by two of its authors Jo Kamal and Nicola Scott. They highlighted that access to finance and land is a constraining factor for Black and People of Colour to access farmwork, amongst other factors, such as racism and lack of training. Recommendations which came out of the report included: mentoring and support, finance and land security tailored to BPOC needs and a move towards a reparations framework in the sector - a process of repairing, healing, and restoring a people, environment or ecosystem harmed because of their group identity. 

“The most important finding from this work was the desire for BPOC growers to collectively own land, and the lack of clear frameworks to enable that in the UK" - Jo Kamal

In the evening, there was a unique opportunity for people identifying as queer to socialise in the Magic Common Room. And upstairs in the Link Room, lights were dimmed for queer compost exploration where people were invited to compost things they were holding onto and search and play with Welsh compost to reveal wisdom underneath while chatting about the earth.

New frameworks for a land justice movement

On day two, we started with a reparations session, hosted by Seeding Reparations. The session was framed around reparative justice, a reformulation of justice aimed to repair harm that has and is being done in racialised capitalism and colonialism. People were asked to reflect on what reparative practice means, bringing in their own examples of work already going on or being dreamed of. 

Shared Assets ran the first of two sessions on movement-wide strategy, with independent facilitator Ali Taherzadeh. This gave people the opportunity to understand movement ecology as a framework to work with each other and across difference, and a chance to reflect on what roles individuals, and more importantly organisations, have in the movement, and what connections - and boundaries - could be made to strengthen our common strategies. 

The second of these two sessions delved into what defines ‘home’ and ‘coalition’ spaces, and how conflict can help build collective power. It was (near) the beginning of a process to build a more shared strategy - and it felt like there was a readiness to move with each other, and work through the tensions in the movement. 

This was the first year that we held fuller organising spaces, designed to carry the momentum and learning from this milestone conference onwards through the year. This year gave voice to more people who find themselves marginalised by land and food systems - and by the movement itself - with hope for building a just movement through strategic collaboration.