Professional goal - To expand and enhance opportunities for anyone with a sincere desire to meaningfully interact with the land to be able to do so.
Context:
- Many people are experiencing some of the negative aspects of what has been a consistent migration from rural to urban and suburban areas
- Caught between generations – Not rural because they live in a relatively dense suburban area, but not urban or suburban because parents came from rural backgrounds and valued the rural lifestyle
- Over time land wealth and power has been increasingly centralized
- We now have a system of land wealth and stewardship driven primarily by corporate landowners and wealthy individual landowners
What are today's opportunities to own land?
- With land values increasingly based on non-production values, the opportunities to "compete" for land by being the best operator are decreasing
- Land ownership is increasingly limited to those who have been successful in non-natural resource fields.
The current property rights system is based primarily on exclusive use. We need to refine that system to make it a more cooperative system in accordance with eternal principles, both to increase individual use opportunities and to increase the overall quality of land management.
- Must retain incentives for stewardship and accountability.
- This proposition does not include the use of more public land.
Example: Birch Creek Ranch
- Historically owned by a single individual or family
- We are "developing" it by bringing in a total of 7 partners and allocating the use of the resource based on what the land will support
- Supported by professional management that is currently available only to the largest landowners
- Although still limited to individuals with a considerable amount of money, the entry barrier is dramatically reduced considering similar opportunities are limited to individuals with a net worth many times greater. In essence, we have created opportunities for individuals who cannot participate in the market on an exclusive use basis to take advantage of a comparable opportunity that is in most respects superior to the current alternatives.
- As the system becomes more and more refined, and is adopted by more and more individuals and organizations, the cost of land ownership will decline and resource management will improve. We will be better able to fulfill our divine stewardship to the land as well as the people it supports.