Usda Cancels $300 Million Program To Help Farmers Buy Land Amid Anti-dei Push

The Agriculture Department is cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from a program aimed at helping farmers buy and retain land, three people familiar with the decision confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday.

The Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program, funded by the American Rescue Plan Act, awarded roughly $300 million to around 50 projects across the country for five-year contracts beginning in 2023.

Nonprofits, tribal governments and other organizations applied for the funding to address land access issues for underserved farmers — including access to capital, market expansions, succession planning and efforts to prevent land loss.

The projects were especially targeted to address land access issues facing Black farmers, immigrant farmers, Indigenous farmers, veterans and other underrepresented groups.

According to one of the cancellation letters shared with POLITICO, USDA determined that the program "involved discriminatory preferences based on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion" as well as "wasteful spending."

The letter also cited a March 2025 directive from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins directing USDA to review existing grants to ensure they do not promote DEI and are "free from fraud, abuse and duplication."

"USDA will prioritize unity, equality, meritocracy, and color-blindness in furtherance of the Department's mission," Farm Service Agency Associate Administrator Steven Peterson wrote in the March 23 letter.

Peterson said in the letter that the grants are discriminatory, do not align with congressional intent and have "unacceptably exposed taxpayers" to waste.

The cancellations come one day after more than a dozen Democratic state attorneys general filed suit against USDA, alleging that Rollins’ new grant spending requirements — which were issued late last year and take aim at diversity, equity and inclusion provisions — violate congressional intent.

The funding cancellations come as the challenges facing farmers — especially young and beginning farmers — remain steep. The vast majority of farmland is owned by nonfarming landlords, according to an annual survey USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service released March 12.

The price of farmland, along with other agricultural inputs, also continues to rise, according to USDA’s Economic Research Service.

USDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.