Tenure measured in years
A lease long enough to plant perennials, build soil, train a cohort through more than one season, and borrow against a plan. Length is negotiated per partner and is not set yet.
Partners
Ground you can plan around.
Most farm leases run a year at a time. You can’t build a wash station on a one-year lease. That’s the problem we exist to solve.
Three Field Commons is in formation. We do not own a parcel yet, so nothing on this page is an offer. It is the shape of the arrangement we are building toward, and the terms are written here as openly as we can write them while they are still open.
What we offer
Rent below the market
We are not trying to earn a return on the ground. Rent covers what it costs to hold and maintain the parcel, not what the land could command from the highest bidder.
Land already permanently protected
The agricultural restriction is recorded before you sign. Nobody can sell the ground out from under a wash station, a hoop house, or a perennial planting.
A landlord with your mission
We hold the land in order to see it farmed by operations like yours. When your program grows, that is the outcome we were formed to produce.
Who this is for
Types of operation, not a list of organizations. We have no partners yet and will not imply otherwise.
- Farmer-training and land-access programs
- Food banks and gleaning operations
- School and market garden programs
- Small commercial farms feeding this region
- Culturally specific agricultural programs serving communities that farm here but rarely own here
What we ask in return
Below-market rent comes with mission conditions. These four are examples of what a condition can look like, not a checklist you have to satisfy.
Food benefits accepted at point of sale
If you sell direct, taking federal and state food benefits where you sell — farm stand, market stall, CSA.
A share of production donated
An agreed portion of the harvest going to food access channels rather than to paying customers.
Training slots held open
A set number of positions each season reserved for beginning farmers or program participants.
Soil practice standards met
Cover cropping, rotation, and residue practices written into the lease and checked the same way any landlord checks a building.
Conditions are negotiated per partner. We do not have a template to impose, and a condition that fits a training program would be the wrong ask of a food bank.
How the lease works
Every value below reads TBD or negotiated, because none of it is set. When a term firms up, this table changes.
| Term | Where it stands | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Term | TBD — multi-year, negotiated | Long enough to justify what you build. The floor and ceiling are not decided. |
| Rent basis | TBD — negotiated | Below market. Whether it is set per acre, as a share of the holding cost, or on a sliding scale is still open. |
| Improvements and who owns them | Negotiated | Who pays, who holds title during the term, and how a departing partner is made whole are all per-partner terms. |
| Maintenance | Negotiated | Our working assumption is that we carry the fixed infrastructure and you carry day-to-day operations. Not settled. |
| Renewal | TBD — negotiated | We intend renewal to be the default rather than the exception. The mechanics are unwritten. |
| Exit, including what happens to what you built | Negotiated | Notice periods, unwind of improvements, and what a successor operator inherits are written per lease. |
Nonprofit and for-profit
Both are welcome. A commercial farm feeding this region is doing work worth protecting ground for, and so is a nonprofit training program. The terms will differ — the rent basis, the mission conditions, and the length of the lease all respond to what an operation can carry. The standards do not differ. Whoever farms the ground keeps it in production, meets the soil practices in the lease, and delivers on the conditions they agreed to.
Tell us what you’d need
This is the most useful thing you can do for the project right now. We are choosing what to look for, and an operator’s actual requirements — acres, water, buildings, county — are better guidance than our assumptions.