Vanessa Garcia Polanco. (National Young Farmers Coalition photo)
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the average age of a U.S. farmer is 58, and “if we really think we’re going to have a sustainable thriving ag community in 20 or 30 or 50 years … then we have to reverse that trend.” She said this was something that “must happen immediately.”
As a policy director with the National Young Farmers Coalition, I could not agree more. Confirmed by Young Farmers’ landmark “Land Policy Report” and most recent National Young Farmer Survey in 2022, access to land is the number one challenge facing the new generation of farmers in the United States.
That is why in 2023, after years of advocacy, we were elated to see the first federal program investing in land access from the USDA, the Increasing Land, Capital and Market Access program. This program was the federal government’s most ambitious effort to help the next generation of farmers access land, capital and markets. Then, on the eve of National Agriculture Day, with two business days’ notice, that grant was terminated for 49 awardees nationwide.
For young farmers, this program was more than a grant. It was a commitment from the federal government to support the next generation of farmers, so that they can build careers, feed their communities and revitalize rural America.
Interested in more news on farm programs, trade and rural issues? Sign up for a four-week free trial to Agri-Pulse. You’ll receive our content - absolutely free - during the trial period.
The ILCMA program awarded $300 million across 40 states and territories to fund locally led projects. Applications submitted in 2022 totaled $2.5 billion — proof that the need vastly outpaced the funding. Forty-nine of 50 projects have now been terminated.
The termination letters claimed that “most of the awards did little to improve land access” and cited “excessive spending on outreach and technical assistance.” But for over a year, the USDA withheld the approvals grantees needed to begin land acquisition work and down payment assistance programs. The agency froze funding, blocked core activities and went dark on grant communications — then used the resulting delay as justification for cancellation. The USDA created the conditions it is now using to blame awardees.
Across the country, farmers were counting on ILCMA project funds for down payment assistance on farmland, low-interest loans, business planning support, access to reliable markets and beginning farmer training. Many of those farmers are now left without any path forward at a moment of record land costs and rising operating expenses.
Just a few weeks ago, the Tenure, Ownership and Transition of Agricultural Land Survey confirmed that 87% of landowners were landlords who do not operate farms and most non-operating landowners intend to sell relatively little land in the next five years. So, without financial support from the federal government to support the transition of land ownership and increase land access and tenure, who is going to farm in America?
Secretary Rollins was right that the aging of our agricultural workforce is a crisis requiring immediate action. But terminating the only federal program designed to address the land access crisis for the next generation — mid-project and on contracts that were already signed — is not taking action towards a solution. It is the opposite of progress. The next generation of farmers in America cannot wait.
Vanessa Garcia Polanco is the policy and campaigns director of the National Young Farmers Coalition.