USDA Terminates Funds for Community-led Project Designed to Tackle Barriers for the Next Generation of Farmers
The decision eliminates $13 million in federal investment tied to the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access program, cutting pathways to farmland ownership across the United States. United States – April 1, 2026. On March 26, 2026, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) terminated Agrarian Land Trust’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access (ILCMA) award, which funded an innovative, community-based, and locally led project designed to address the greatest barriers facing the next generation of farmers. The decision impacts community-led acquisitions and implementation support across the country.
Farmers and producers had been depending on these funds for beginning farmer training, land-access pathways, business development support, farmland succession planning, and the opportunity to move from formal education into long term land ownership and agricultural production. For many, the award represented their clearest path to securing the farmland and financial support they need to make a life in agriculture.
“The termination of this USDA award represents a significant loss not only for our partners on the ground, but for communities across the country working to build equitable land access,” said Nathan Galaviz of Agrarian Trust. “This decision eliminates a transformative opportunity to implement a nationally innovative model for economic development, land access, and food security.”
The termination comes after more than a year in which USDA repeatedly delayed program approvals, froze funds, and communicated inconsistently. Projects were required to move forward during that period without the ability to close farmland transactions. Agrarian Trust and its partners maintain that the absence of completed land transfers under those conditions is not evidence of program failure, yet it reflects a federal system that actively prevented delivery.
A Year of Delays to Real Farmland Access
In Nebraska, the Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim (CMPI) and its subsidiary, the Maya Economic Development Corporation (MEDC), are among the organizations absorbing the direct impact of the decision. The termination results in the immediate loss of approximately $3.5 million in federal investment intended for the state; this funding was designed to create an integrated pipeline from farmer training to enterprise development to land ownership, with an anchor in North Omaha and reach across rural Nebraska.
“What’s been lost here is not just funding; it’s a vision for how urban and rural communities can build shared pathways to land, livelihoods, and resilience,” said Luis Marcos, CMPI Co-Founder and Executive Director. “This project would have created a fully integrated pipeline from training to enterprise development to land ownership and regional food system participation. Anchored in community and expanding toward a Nebraska Agrarian Commons, this was a model designed for long-term stewardship and shared prosperity.”
CMPI also raised concerns about the loss of the initiative’s role in building food security and economic opportunity in historically underserved communities. The project would have built pathways to land ownership for immigrant and Indigenous farmers who have long faced systemic barriers. “This was about building a food system that is local, responsive, and rooted in the community,” the representative said. “Its termination halts the development of a system intentionally designed to address longstanding structural barriers to land, capital, and markets.”
Bridging the Gap Between Training and Land Stewardship
Agrarian Trust’s subaward partner, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, an initiative of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, has worked to connect farmer training with land tenure pathways, bridging the gap between land-based farmer training and land access.
New Entry’s work builds key relationships and plays a critical role in preparing farmers and farmer training organizations with technical assistance and program delivery models so that land access outcomes for transitioning farmland would be met with farmers prepared to manage economically viable businesses on working farmlands. These are essential components of a thriving and just food future.
This is Larger than One Program
Agrarian Trust and its national network of partners are calling on policymakers and supporters to recognize what is at stake in eliminating this program. Land access is directly tied to food access, local production, and regional nutrition outcomes. When land transitions fail, the effects ripple outward while reducing local supply, limiting market participation, and weakening community-based food systems at a time when they are already under pressure.
The termination of ILCMA does not just close a program. It breaks a chain of trust between the federal government and the farmers, trainers, land stewards and communities who believed that the investment was real and acted accordingly.
___________________________________________________________________________
Agrarian Trust is a national non-profit dedicated to supporting farmland access and stewardship for the next generation of farmers through community-based models, including agrarian commons, land access programs, and farmer support networks. Learn more at agrariantrust.org.
For press inquiries: Nathan Galaviz – [email protected]
Donate to Agrarian Trust for our land access work
Donate to New Entry to support the FIELD Network
Tell Congress to RESTORE LCM!
