Living soil treated as mere support
Beneath our feet live bacteria, fungi, earthworms, a network of roots and water. For a long time we treated it as an inert surface. Erosion, compaction and the loss of organic matter weaken its functions.
- solum n.
- From the Latin solum: soil, ground, foundation.
- In soil science, the set of soil horizons shaped by climate and by living organisms.
SOLUM
A foundation to protect, regenerate and pass on French farmland.
Acquiring land so that it remains farmland. Standing by those who farm it. Understanding the soil before repairing it. For thirty years, and well beyond.
Protecting what will allow France to go on living
SOLUM is a private, independent foundation committed to the common good. It will mobilise capital to acquire and protect farmland, support farmers, fund research, preserve seeds and train the generations to come. Capital is the means. Life is the purpose.
What the foundation sets out to do
-
Protect farmland for the long term
Preserve its agricultural purpose and shield it from speculation.
-
Stand by those who farm it
Make it easier to start out and to hand farms on, and give farmers lasting security.
-
Improve the ecological functions of soils
Invest for the long run in fertility, water, biodiversity and landscapes.
-
Build knowledge
Fund independent science, connect the laboratory and the field, train people.
-
Help secure the food supply
Strengthen fairer supply chains, from field to plate.
-
Bring historic places back to life
Restore châteaux and estates as places to train, research, process food and welcome visitors.
Seven principles, one doctrine
Every SOLUM operation rests on a common base. These principles are an operating doctrine, not a statement of intent.
- Agricultural purpose
- Land keeps a productive function compatible with its ecological protection.
- Voluntary participation
- No coercion, no taking advantage of anyone’s hardship. No one is ever forced to join SOLUM.
- Respect for farmers
- Farmers’ rights, starting with those arising from rural leases, are fully respected.
- No speculation
- An acquisition is never made primarily for capital gain.
- Transparency
- Investment criteria, approval procedures and conflict-of-interest safeguards are documented.
- Financial responsibility
- No acquisition without a realistic view of its holding costs and future obligations.
- Subsidiarity
- Where outcomes are comparable, SOLUM chooses the option that best preserves the autonomy of local actors.
What we are losing without seeing it
Agricultural modernisation improved food security and made many jobs less gruelling. It would be dishonest to deny it. But it left outside the scope of measurement losses that appear on no balance sheet, some of which cannot be repaired within a lifetime.
The price of land, never its value
The price of a hectare says nothing about its biodiversity, its structure or its role in the water cycle. Land can gain market value while its functions decline.
The long term sacrificed to the short term
Restoring a soil takes years, sometimes decades. Our economies think in quarters, our politics in terms of office. What only bears fruit in twenty years is almost never funded.
Farmers alone in the face of risk
Machinery, credit, specialisation and inputs lock many farms into a trajectory they no longer steer. Farmers are asked to change, without anyone sharing the risk of change.
Who will farm our land tomorrow?
Starting out takes considerable capital, beginning with land. A young farmer may have to borrow before producing anything at all. A farmer’s retirement is the moment when everything can tip.
Fertile land treated as ordinary ground
Housing, roads, retail parks: each project looks modest, together they transform the territory. A lost hectare of fertile land cannot always be replaced elsewhere.
Food sovereignty under strain
France depends on inputs, animal feed and distant markets. Seeds, water and skills can erode quietly, for lack of a vision held across generations.
Knowledge and ties coming undone
Hedgerows uprooted, landscapes simplified, varieties and know-how under threat. The distance between field and plate has made invisible the work of those who feed us.
“What we cannot measure always ends up being neglected.” France Beneath Our Feet, chapter 1
Eight programmes, one system
The aim is not to fund a handful of isolated projects, however useful. It is to build a complete system, able to protect land, support farmers, fund science, preserve seeds, train people, bring historic places back to life and rebuild a fairer food economy.
Explore the programmes in detailSub-projects, funding and a fifty-year projection, plus the institution’s budget: people and operations.
Land
Protected farmland
Acquiring farmland on a voluntary basis to protect it, regenerate it and pass it on. SOLUM acts as its guardian, never as its absolute owner.
Fifty-year target: 30% of French farmland protected, including 15% owned outright.
- Voluntary acquisitions on fair terms, after assessing agricultural value, ecological condition, succession issues and risks.
- Detailed mapping of soils, watersheds and vulnerabilities, combining science with farmers’ own knowledge.
- Stable leases that respect French tenant-farming law: farmers remain in charge of their farms.
- Partner farms that remain real working farms, not showcases.
“Buying land will never be SOLUM’s objective.”Sub-projects and funding
Farmers
The new farming contract
An alliance, not a guardianship. Whoever asks for a transformation shares its risks, pays for the ecological services provided and protects the farmer’s autonomy.
- Shared risk: equipment financing, diagnostics covered, transition support, contractual guarantees.
- Payment for ecological services actually delivered, assessed without red tape.
- A right to experiment: the farmer proposes, the researcher designs the protocol, the foundation funds it.
- An open approach to new entrants, including people from outside farming.
“Whoever asks for a transformation must be willing to share in the risks it entails.”Sub-projects and funding
Soils
A living soil laboratory
A national applied-research network built on diagnosis and long-term experimentation, distinguishing what has been demonstrated, what depends on context and what remains to be proven.
- Several hundred monitoring sites, on clay, sandy and silty soils, in oceanic, Mediterranean and mountain climates.
- A diagnosis farmers can understand, never used as an instrument of control.
- Regional programmes against erosion: cover crops, hedgerows, grass strips, agroforestry.
- Assistive artificial intelligence with verifiable results, with decisions remaining under human control.
“The land does not regenerate at the pace of our financial presentations.”Sub-projects and funding
Seeds
Living seed libraries
Contributing to a French network for seed conservation and research, alongside existing institutions, so that future generations inherit the ability to start again.
- Funding collections and their characterisation, with reliable data on origin and storage conditions.
- Testing varieties in real conditions, on partner farms across several regions.
- Developing participatory breeding between researchers, breeders and farmers.
- Ensuring responsible access to collections: a seed bank must not become a locked vault.
“We chose to protect seeds — minute objects capable of preserving immense possibilities.”Sub-projects and funding
Science
A scientific memory of the land
Making science the main instrument of agricultural renewal: connecting laboratory and field, staying independent of funders, accepting failure.
- A continuous research chain, from fundamental laboratories to the network of partner farms.
- Data series spanning several decades, governed with respect for farmers’ rights.
- Programmes on soil microbiology, water, artificial intelligence and agricultural robotics.
- Supervised exploratory research: clear hypotheses, control groups, pre-registered protocols, negative results published.
“The boldness of a hypothesis is never proof of its validity.”Sub-projects and funding
Education
The Earth Academy
The Académie de la Terre: a network of institutions, training centres and experimental sites that strengthens existing agricultural education without replacing it.
- Training twenty-first-century farmers in life sciences, agronomy, economics and technology, with hands-on farm immersion at the core.
- Bringing farmers and researchers together, and organising mentoring by experienced farmers.
- Opening the profession to those who did not inherit land.
- Training engineers of the Earth and educating the public, from the classroom to the school garden.
“Agriculture is not an activity that belongs to the past.”Sub-projects and funding
Supply chains and food
From field to plate
Narrowing the distance between those who produce and those who eat, without making food more expensive or excluding low-income households.
- Long-term contracts, volume commitments and prices that reflect real costs.
- Rebuilding forgotten infrastructure: storage, processing, logistics, shared equipment.
- Regional programmes with public catering: schools, hospitals, universities.
- Less waste, and communication limited to what has been demonstrated.
“The agricultural renaissance does not stop at the edge of the fields. It continues all the way to our table.”Sub-projects and funding
Historic estates
Living estates
Buying and restoring châteaux and historic estates to turn them into living places for training, research, food processing and hospitality.
Fifty-year target: about a hundred restored estates, roughly one per French département.
- Schools and training centres for the Earth Academy.
- Laboratories at the heart of the estates, with trial plots on the surrounding land.
- Canneries and workshops to process harvests on site.
- Hotels and restaurants that embody living well together, and a field-to-table chef school with herbalism.
A ten-step acquisition method
Every land operation follows the same documented, traceable procedure. No internal mechanism can override the rights of third parties or the prerogatives provided by law.
- IdentificationA file: location, area, legal status, uses, strategic interest.
- Pre-qualificationDoes the operation fit the mission? If not, it is set aside.
- Land and legal analysisTitles, easements, leases, occupants’ rights, regulatory constraints.
- Agricultural and environmental diagnosisSoils, water, infrastructure, past uses.
- Economic analysisThe full cost, not just the purchase price.
- StakeholdersFarmers, owners, neighbours: interests and rights examined.
- Investment decisionReasoned, traceable, reinforced above certain thresholds.
- AcquisitionUnder the applicable legal procedures.
- ManagementFarming contracts, commitments, support.
- MonitoringLegal, economic, agricultural and environmental evaluation.
Thirty years to rebuild
Thirty years is not the date by which the mission would be complete. It is the span of a first great undertaking: one generation’s time to show that another path is possible.
We will always distinguish
- what we aim to achieve
- what we have committed to
- what we have demonstrated
Everything below currently falls into the first category.
The first stone
We do not need to wait thirty years to begin. An institution that wants to act on a large scale must first show that it can act well on a small one.
Before any expansion, a first pilot operation: a farm whose succession raises a particular challenge. It will test the whole process, from identification to monitoring, and will be independently evaluated.
- Define the mission
- Bring the right skills together
- Study the legal structures
- Build the governance
- Identify the first partners
- Prepare the pilot operation
Learning to protect
The first decade is a founding period: building the institution, then trust, by keeping every commitment.
The first land operations are deliberately diverse: a farm with no successor, a farm in transition, land of ecological interest. Each is chosen as much for what it protects as for what it teaches.
- Legal structures, governance and oversight mechanisms
- The first SOLUM farms, run by independent farmers
- A knowledge base on the land supported, built with existing research partners
- The first seeds of a school: courses, grants, internships, farms hosting students
Scaling up
Acting where our means have the greatest effect, not where it is easiest or most visible.
Purchase becomes the main instrument, but not the only one: half of the protected land will be secured through long-term leases, environmental covenants and partner land trusts. Caps per region keep local markets from being drained.
- A map of needs, updated regularly
- A French network of living farms: partners, not possessions
- A revival of infrastructure: processing, storage, shared equipment
- A new generation of researchers and larger-scale scientific programmes
Handing on and consolidating
Showing that SOLUM can function beyond its founders, and accounting for what has really been achieved.
A thorough evaluation, carried out with external evaluators and the farmers concerned: which land have we protected, which ecological functions have improved, what mistakes have we made?
- A new generation of leaders, free to question the rules
- Proof in the landscape: protected land, better-structured soils, restored hedgerows
- Proof in people’s lives: farms taken over, vocations born, rural businesses
- A standing question: are we still useful, still fair, still faithful?
Measuring without reducing
The number of hectares held will never be the main indicator of success. Each result will be read in light of local conditions, and compared wherever possible.
- Land protection
- Land actually protected, strength of the mechanisms
- Succession
- Farms taken over or kept running
- Stability
- Length and security of contractual relationships
- Farm economics
- Income, costs, capacity to invest
- Soils
- Physical, chemical and biological indicators
- Water
- Infiltration, consumption, quality
- Biodiversity
- At plot and landscape scale
- Satisfaction
- Farmers’ feedback, quality of relationships
- Financial efficiency
- Full cost and sustainability of interventions
- Governance
- Compliance with procedures, conflicts of interest, incidents
One field after another. One farm after another. One study after another. One generation after another.
A foundation, so that the mission outlives its founders
Some ambitions are too important to depend on the length of a lifetime, the interests of a shareholder or the decisions of a government.
Not a company
A company belongs to its shareholders, who can change strategy or sell the assets. Protecting the land must be written into the very structure of the institution.
Without waiting for the State
Political time is not the time of living systems. Public authorities remain indispensable: SOLUM acts without waiting for them, and works with them whenever goals converge.
A third way
Not a foundation that hands out grants, but an institution able to own, protect, finance, invest, research, teach and act.
Five layers of protection
No private statute alone can guarantee that an asset will remain dedicated to its mission forever. The aim is to make any drift difficult, controllable and legally challengeable.
- StatutoryThe mission and the conditions for holding or selling assets
- ContractualCommitments suited to each piece of land and each party’s rights
- GovernanceReinforced procedures for sensitive operations
- OversightIndependent verification that commitments are kept
- FinancialReserves so that no essential asset ever has to be sold
Organising power in order to limit it
- A body that safeguards the mission
- It sets direction, approves major commitments and oversees risk, without running day-to-day operations.
- An executive management
- Responsible for operations, and separate from those who oversee it.
- A scientific council
- External reviews, declared conflicts of interest, publication rules set before projects begin. Science must be able to contradict SOLUM.
- A farmers’ council
- Arable, livestock, market gardening, orchards, new entrants and experienced farmers: a formal voice, not a decorative council.
Decisions no one takes alone
Changing the mission, selling strategic land, committing exceptional resources: qualified majorities, independent analysis, cooling-off periods. These rules apply first of all to the founders.
Funding that preserves freedom
An endowment whose income supports the work, donations, and investments compatible with the mission. Never dependence on a single donor. A donor supports a mission; they buy neither land nor conclusions.
What SOLUM will never become
- An instrument of land speculation
- A private bureaucracy turning farmers into mere executors
- An ecological pretext for concentrating power
- A funder of research whose conclusions are written in advance
- An organisation more concerned with its image than its results
- The indirect property of its donors
- An institution that mistakes its growth for proof of success
The final legal form will be decided after a thorough analysis of French rural law and foundation law.
Land must not become the symbol of our power. It must become the measure of our responsibility.
The founding essay
SOLUM was born from a book. Fifteen chapters to understand what we are losing, imagine what we could rebuild and describe the institution able to do it.
“We will never rebuild what we have not first dared to imagine.”
- Prologue: The land I refuse to see die
- IThe France we have forgotten
- IIUnderstanding what we are destroying
- IIITaking our destiny back into our own hands
- IVRebuilding an agricultural civilisation
- VSOLUM: from vision to reality
- Epilogue: The land we will leave behind
Build it with us
SOLUM is starting small, without thinking small. We are bringing together, now, the people who will lay the first stones.
Farmers
You are preparing a handover, a new start or a transition. No farmer will ever be forced to join SOLUM: let’s talk first.
Researchers
Soils, water, seeds, farming systems: we are building independent, long-term research with public protocols.
Donors and investors
Patient capital, dedicated to a mission, with clear rules for accepting gifts. Your support builds a heritage that will belong to no one.
Regions and partners
Local authorities, chambers of agriculture, cooperatives, schools and associations: SOLUM strengthens existing actors rather than replacing them.
Write to us
For a meeting, a partnership or any question about the project. Every way to reach us is on the contact page.
contact@solum.foundation