SCOTLAND has the most concentrated land ownership in Europe and, as it stands, the Land Reform Bill currently making its way through parliament won’t do anything to change that.
With land prices soaring due to the coalescence of intense carbon speculation and a completely unregulated market, more and more of our land is ending up in the hands of multinational corporations and wealthy individuals who reside abroad.
In this context, it is becoming almost impossible for farmers, growers and communities to access land to produce food – or build much-needed affordable housing.
READ MORE: 'Not far enough': Taymouth Castle protest to call on SNP to strengthen land reform
The average age of farmers in Scotland is over 60 and rising, and exorbitant land prices are preventing younger people from joining the sector. Unless the land market is regulated, we’re headed quickly for a food security disaster.
The few new entrant farmers who do manage to access land often struggle to find anywhere to live within the vicinity of their work. Housing in rural areas is in crisis.
Many of our members at the Landworkers’ Alliance are feeding hundreds of families in their local communities with fresh local produce, but are doing so while living in leaky caravans or tiny temporary huts.
The Discovery Land Company’s acquisition of Taymouth Estate to build a private playground for billionaires is a perfect example of what happens when land markets go unregulated.
This huge international corporation should never have been allowed to buy up large swathes of land to build exclusive second homes in an area with a serious scarcity of affordable housing. That this is happening within the constituency of our First Minister is particularly shocking, highlighting how little control the Scottish Government currently has over land in Scotland.
While it’s promising that the SNP government has stated that it aims to reduce concentrations of land ownership in Scotland, nothing in the current watered-down proposals for land reform will help achieve this.
READ MORE: Land ownership in Scotland more concentrated despite reforms, according to new data
The only way to bring about meaningful change, and prevent more fiascos like the Taymouth Estate development, is to introduce mechanisms that regulate who can buy land, limit how much it costs, and put land ownership back in the hands of the people of Scotland.
Many different ideas have been put forward for how to do this, including introducing a tax on the value of land, subjecting all transfers of land ownership to a “public interest” test, capping the amount of land any individual or corporation can own, limiting the price of agricultural land, and restricting land ownership to those who live and pay taxes in Scotland.
To make any of this happen, we need a powerful grassroots movement for land justice in Scotland. That's why farmers, growers, foresters, and allies are converging at Taymouth Estate this weekend to demand radical land reform and an end to corporate takeover of our lands.
Dr Tara Wight is the Scotland policy and campaigns coordinator for the Landworkers’ Alliance.
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