A recent National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC) study finds that access to affordable land is the top barrier facing young farmers in the U.S., especially for Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, and other farmers of color. Nationwide, individual and community-led efforts are working to expand farmland access and management to address systemic barriers.
Today, the average age of the U.S. farmer is 57.5 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture 2017 Census of Agriculture. And young farmers across the board cite land access as a common barrier. The USDA reports that there are 321,261 agricultural producers under the age of 35; 96 percent are White, 0.75 percent are Black, 1.86 percent are American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.62 percent are Asian, 0.08 percent are Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and 1 percent are multi-race.
To expand land access to historically marginalized farmers, NYFC outlines a series of federal and local changes in their 2022 Young Farmer Agenda. These include improving outreach to young farmers and investing in community-led projects that center Indigenous farmers and farmers of color, preventing further land loss in communities of color, and ensuring that young farmers have access to credit so they can compete in the real estate market.
Young farmers and community-led organizations have already been working to address these recommendations. “Repairing our relationship with the soil and how we connect to food will heal a lot of the world’s problems,” Isa Jamira, a young farmer, activist, chef, and artist based in New York City tells Food Tank. Through acquiring land and building outdoor educational spaces that center Indigenous knowledge, Jamira’s mission is to empower people to take care of themselves and the Earth.
In 2022, she organized an urban Fireside Chat Series and Liberated Lands Garden Fest, bringing together farmers, herbalists, healers, musicians, and foragers from in and around New York City to “create an interactive space where people can have open dialogue about nature within nature.” She also acquired an acre of land and founded Liberated Lands Inc, which envisions a future where land stewards can access land and mutually share resources and knowledge “in harmony with the earth and all her systems of people.”
Transforming relationships and access to land is a common goal for young farmers and leaders; 29 percent of all young farmers— and 74 percent of Black farmers—report that anti-racism is central to their work, according to NYFC’s survey.
Presente! Maine, a Latinx and Indigenous-led nonprofit and farm based in Portland, ME, brings community members together to cultivate and care for the land, improve access to nutritious and traditional foods, facilitate connection to ancestral knowledge, and promote nutrition and health equity.
“The whole experience of [our] farm is not just about food security or growing food, but getting back to the dirt, connecting with our bodies, connecting with the soil, with the land, with ourselves, with each other,” Crystal Cron, Founder and Executive Director at Presente! tells Food Tank. Presente! organizes regular community gatherings, including an annual Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebration, garlic planting sessions, and herbalism classes.
“The model that we use for holding land comes out of this really long lineage that actually started back in the Civil Rights movement,” Jesse Saffeir, Co-coordinator at Land in Common, tells Food Tank. Due to historical injustices and systemic barriers, “owning farmland for private property really isn’t viable for the majority of people who want to farm,” Saffeir says.
As part of Land in Common’s commitment to enacting land justice, they collaborate with organizations across Maine that are BIPOC-led [and] focus on land, environmental justice, and farming. This includes returning land to the Bomazeen Land Trust, an intertribal Wabanaki initiative to heal their lands and people. However, Cron points out that for their community, the work of land back “is a little more complicated, because we’re displaced and landless Indigenous peoples. And I think the Latinx or Hispanic identity often strips us [of] or invisibilizes our indigeneity.”
To expand farmland access and management, Cron tells Food Tank that it is critical to cultivate authentic relationships with communities of color and poor communities over time. “I think there is a lot more interest out there from communities of color who would want to have access to land and engage with [agriculture] organizations if they knew there were resources out there and [if] they could be supported in navigating these systems, but there’s something missing in the middle.”
NYFC is advocating for these changes on a national level, primarily through policy change in the 2023 Farm Bill. This includes ensuring that farmers “have clear paths to having their voices heard and lived experiences reflected in the policy language of the Bill, something historically missing from farm bill conversations of the past,” Alita Kelly, Land Organizing Director at NYFC, tells Food Tank.
Kelly adds that funding for these issues should be at the forefront of every federal policymakers’ priority list. “Our work is to show members of Congress that investing in secure, equitable land access for the next generation is not optional—it is foundational to addressing all the challenges the next generation of farmers faces and imperative to building a future with farmers.”
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Photo courtesy of Isa Jamira
