Reinventing the Common: Cross-boundary Farming for a Sustainable Future

Across Australia, farmers and rural communities are seeking ways to salvage ailing land and struggling communities. Many farms are too small to be economically viable and region's environmental issues cannot usually be resolved within a single farm's boundaries. This book suggests a potential solution, a possible means of achieving better land care, more sustainable and profitable production, and greater community. It argues that common property resource systems, where neighbouring landowners make decisions together to manage their land as a common region, should be set up, and shows how this can be done. The authors, a scientist and specialist property lawyers, explain how the old idea of "commons" works and how it fits into modern Australian real property law. They recount the experience of four grazing families in the New England Tablelands who got together to form Tilbusters Commons on their adjoining properties. They finish with two chapters discussing the major legal issues, particularly business structures and leases, and including precedents.