fotokostic / Depositphotos.com
On March 23, the USDA issued termination notices for 49 of 50 Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access (ILCMA) projects – innovative, community-based, and locally-led projects designed to tackle the greatest barriers that young, beginning, and underserved producers face in the U.S. Terminations, effective on March 26, totaling nearly $300 million across 40 U.S. states and territories.
“The ILCMA Program is the result of more than a decade of farmer advocacy for land access for the next generation of working farmers,” said Michelle Hughes, Co-Executive Director of the National Young Farmers Coalition.
“Regardless of geography or whether they grew up on a farm, secure access to farmland is the single greatest barrier facing new farmers and ranchers—and the number one reason producers leave agriculture. ILCMA is USDA’s only program designed to address the land access crisis, providing a much-needed investment in young and beginning farmers and ranchers. Terminating these contracts is irresponsible and short-sighted, and doing so at a time of record land costs, limited markets, and rising operating expenses will cause irreparable harm to the security and resilience of our nation’s farm and food systems.”
Termination letters claim that “most of the awards did little to improve land access” and that there was “excessive spending on outreach and technical assistance.”
Young Farmers says what the letters omit is that current USDA leadership spent over a year systematically undermining the program – freezing funding, cutting off communication with awardees, and withholding the approvals grantees needed to move forward with land acquisitions, farmland down payment assistance, low-interest loans, and other core project activities.
“The Trump administration actively blocked awardees from delivering critical resources to the next generation of U.S. farmers and ranchers — then cited the absence of progress as grounds for termination,” said Amanda Koehler, Manager of the Land, Capital, and Market Access Network. “After years of public investment in this program, the administration is cancelling contracts as it’s finally ready to meet its potential and calling it fiscal responsibility. The waste here is theirs.”
The National Young Farmers Coalition is a national grassroots network of young farmers changing policy and shifting power to equitably resource the new generation of working farmers.
Source: The Young Farmers Coalition news release
Comments