Common Ground: Peacebuilding through Social and Community Farming in Northern Ireland
Publisher: Local Environment
Author(s): Jonathan H. Hanson, Aoibeann Walsh, Matt N. Williams, and William Martin
Date: 2026
Topics: Renewable Resources
Countries: Ireland
This practice review considers social and community farming as similar approaches to connecting society with farming and farming with society in Northern Ireland. It outlines how both processes create diverse and multidimensional social, economic and environmental benefits, and how they have contributed to “good relations” – or peacebuilding – more implicitly than explicitly. Drawing on reflective practice, documentary review and the authors’ long-term involvement as practitioners, volunteers, founders, facilitators and researchers between 2014 and the present, the article considers how social and community farming can improve relationships between differing religious, political and ethnic communities. Four interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives – socioecological systems, cultural landscapes, landesque capital and environmental peacebuilding – are introduced as holistic lenses for understanding the interconnection of social, cultural, political and ecological factors in social and community farming, as well as the significance of land as asset, symbol and sustenance. The policy context for social and community farming, including health and wellbeing service delivery and farm diversification, is reviewed alongside the emerging environmental themes in “good relations” funding. The article also highlights the potential for cultivating “good relations” through social farming with refugees and asylum seekers and through community farming with minority ethnic groups. A personal reflection from a West African-born, longstanding volunteer at Northern Ireland’s first community-owned farm anchors these theoretical and policy perspectives. The article concludes that nurturing “good relations” through social and community farming requires holistic and integrated policy support and highlights their potential contribution to environmental peacebuilding within and beyond Northern Ireland.