Kristina Rossi Villa

Kristina Villa is the Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the Farmers Land Trust. She is also a farmer, communicator, and community coordinator who believes that our relationship to the soil shapes the health of our bodies, our economies, and our communities. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications and Media Studies from Kennesaw State University and brings over a decade of experience in farming, storytelling, and fundraising to her work.

Kristina lives and farms in Middle Tennessee with her husband and their six-year-old son, where they grow vegetables and raise cattle and meat chickens using organic and biodynamic practices. Their farm is a place of production, stewardship and self-reliance, where they can, freeze, and dry much of their own food as part of a deeper commitment to living within and caring for the ecosystems that sustain them.

She came to agriculture through an early interest in food access and food security, seeing farming as a tangible pathway toward a more just and nourishing food system. As a young farmer, however, she encountered firsthand the barriers to land access—struggling to afford land herself while witnessing many aging farmers around her face limited, often extractive options for transitioning their land. These experiences led her to focus her work on farmland access and succession, with a commitment to creating models that keep land in active stewardship and out of speculative markets.

Over the past several years, Kristina has dedicated her professional career to helping protect farmland from development and secure it within nonprofit land-holding structures that provide farmers, ranchers, and land stewards with long-term, affordable access and tenure. 

In addition to her farming and land access work, Kristina serves on the board of Tennessee Local Food, contributing to statewide efforts to strengthen local food systems and support farmers.