Last year, the Land Stewardship Project celebrated the historic investments in emerging farmers that we won at the Minnesota Capitol. One of these wins included doubling the funding for and prioritizing emerging farmer applicants within the Minnesota Farmland Down Payment Assistance Program, which the Land Stewardship Project worked on with the Midwest Farmers of Color Collective and Latino Economic Development Center. “Emerging farmers” are farmers from historically underserved communities, including Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), immigrants, women, veterans, persons with disabilities, young and beginning farmers, LGBTQ+ farmers, and others.  

When the program was first launched, it was clear that demand for the program was significantly higher than the available funding. In 2023, for example, only 66 of 172 applicants were able to be funded. Since resources are limited, prioritizing emerging farmers, which are historically underserved, is not just the right thing to do. It benefits all of us. By diversifying our farming population, we are building a more resilient, just and sustainable farm and food system. 

This was an important step towards not only recognizing the importance of emerging farmers, but reckoning with our state and country’s history of generations of disenfranchisement of historically underserved populations, particularly BIPOC farmers engaged in our farm and food system. But, as we all know, sometimes making history garners backlash based in the discomfort of shifting away from the status quo. 

Earlier this year, a right-wing, California-based law firm began waging a “discrimination” lawsuit over the prioritization of emerging farmers. They recruited as their plaintiff one of the 106 applicants in August of 2023 who did not receive a Down Payment Assistance Grant — it was a white, male farmer from northern Minnesota who does not fit into the “emerging” definition. While this was a disappointing development, it isn’t an isolated one. A few years ago, a few white farmers claimed they had been discriminated against and sued the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to challenge a debt forgiveness program that targeted socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, including Black farmers. Lawsuits like these are driven by white supremacy. These lawsuits wouldn’t exist if these programs were only prioritizing veterans or young and beginning farmers.  

As members, organizers, and allies of LSP wrote in a Star Tribune commentary published recently: “Lawsuits like this are a distraction from what we should really be asking: Why are we allowing industrial agriculture to swallow up a massive majority of public funding in our farm and food system while the rest of us are left fighting over the crumbs? For example, of the $48 million in new spending included in the 2024-25 Minnesota Agriculture Budget passed by the Legislature, $25 million (52%) was for biofuel incentives and infrastructure while only $4.4 (15.7%) million was for grants and services for beginning and emerging farmers. In 2023, it would have taken just $2.58 million to fund all qualified applicants for the Down Payment Assistance Grant, getting 172 new farmers onto the land.

“When lawsuits like this are filed, it’s important to ask: Who benefits by maintaining the status quo? In this case, corporate interests. By keeping us fighting over the scraps of public resources, corporate interests pit emerging farmers and small and mid-sized non-emerging farmers against each other. This helps distract the public’s attention away from how much public support is shoveled into corporate welfare. Rather than scapegoating emerging farmers, we have an opportunity to build solidarity and change how the system is failing all of us, no matter our backgrounds.” 

Rather than fighting over a tiny sliver of the pie, we can make the Upper Midwest the best place to start a farm by providing all the resources, capital, training, and technical assistance aspiring, beginning, and emerging farmers need to start and sustain successful farms. Rather than be distracted by a culture war, emerging and non-emerging small and mid-sized farmers need to band together and fight for more. 

However, the lawsuit requires legislative action. It’s not a position we should be in — we’re in it because of racism, racism that is pervasive within our court system, especially the U.S. Supreme Court. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings on affirmative action in higher education, both the state of Minnesota and legal experts that Midwest Farmers of Color Collective and LSP consulted agree that it is unlikely that we will win this lawsuit if the Legislature does not make the statute around the Minnesota Department of Agriculture and Rural Finance Authority grant programs “race neutral.” Going forward with the lawsuit not only puts this program at risk, but programs like it across sectors (i.e. education, housing) and states. The Legislature has no choice but to amend the statute. 

Because LSP has the capacity, legislative experience, and relationships with lawmakers to dedicate to this issue, we have helped coordinate a group of emerging farmer-led and emerging farmer-serving organizations to ensure the new statute is strong and to raise our voices in hearings about the pervasiveness of racism in our farm and food system. While we have taken a leadership role in coordination, as a white-led, majority white organization, it’s important that we uplift our BIPOC allies and follow their lead. We are following the leadership of BIPOC organizations when it comes to bill language, strategy, and narrative. 

This process was initially very challenging. When legislative activity began on this a couple months ago, policymakers writing the new language had minimal communication, consultation, and collaboration with emerging farmer organizations. Together, we made sure emerging farmers would be heard in this process. In other words, we took the stand of insisting that there be “nothing about us without us.” Moreover, until the first hearing in the Senate, there was no public comment from any policymakers about why we’re in this position. Our BIPOC farmers deserve, at bare minimum, acknowledgement that white supremacy is the cause of the erasure of BIPOC farmers in these state statutes.  

While we shouldn’t be in the position of choosing between the future of critical programs and the prioritization of emerging farmers within them, we are. Therefore, LSP and our partners have come together to workshop language with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture that works for emerging farmers. 

At this point, both the House and Senate are both proposing to maintain the definition of an emerging farmer for the purposes of the Emerging Farmers Working Group and Emerging Farmers Office. Otherwise, the House and Senate proposals differ. 

The House’s proposal: 

• • For the Farmland Down Payment Assistance Program, replace the prioritization of emerging farmer applicants with the prioritization of eligible applicants with limited land access who raise specialty crops, hemp, or cannabis or had less than $100,000 in gross sales in the previous year.  
  • For the Beginning Farmer Equipment and Infrastructure Grants, replace the prioritization of emerging farmer applicants with the prioritization of applicants with limited land access or limited market access. 
  • For Technical Assistance Grants to community development financial institutions (CDFIs) that participate in USDA loan or grant programs, eligible entities serve small farmers or farmers experiencing limited land access or market access, rather than emerging farmers. 
  • No changes to the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit. 
  • The proposed definition for “limited land access” includes those farming under a lease or other rental arrangement of no more than thee years in duration (not including those leasing/renting from a relative by blood or marriage) or is farming by renting land from an incubator farm that primarily raises specialty crops. 
  • The proposed definition of “limited market access” includes those who sell a majority of their annual farm produce direct-to-consumer. 

The Senate’s proposal: 

• • For the Farmland Down Payment Assistance Program, replace the prioritization of emerging farmer applicants with the prioritization of applicants with limited land access or those with gross farm profit of $100,000 or less in the previous year. Eligibility is also limited to those who have participated in the business operation of a farm for at least three years. 
  • Currently, the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit sets aside 50% of funding for those who sell or rent land or agricultural assets to emerging farmers. It also provides a 12% tax credit, rather than 8%, for those who sell or rent land or agricultural assets to emerging farmers. The Senate’s proposal would instead focus the set-aside and increased tax credit on those who sell or rent land or agricultural assets to beginning farmers experiencing limited land access. 
  • For the Beginning Farmer Tax Credit, replace the increased tax credit for the sale or rental of agricultural land or assets to emerging farmers with the prioritization of applicants with limited land access or those with gross farm profit of $100,000 or less in the previous year. 
  • For the Beginning Farmer Equipment and Infrastructure Grants, replace the prioritization of emerging farmer applicants with the prioritization of applicants with limited land access. 
  • No changes to Technical Assistance Grants to CDFIs that participate in USDA loan or grant programs. 
  • The proposed definition for “limited land access” includes those farming without ownership of land and (a) is under a lease or other rental arrangement of no more than three years in duration (not including those leasing/renting from a relative by blood or marriage), or (b) is farming by renting land from an incubator farm, or (c) is farming with not current lease or other rental arrangement, or (d) is farming where access to land is constrained by Tribal ownership patterns, treaties, or federal and Tribal laws and regulations. 

LSP and partners engaged on this issue are working with each other, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, and the House and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairs to finalize language that works for Minnesota’s emerging farmers. Please let us know if you have feedback!  

LSP policy manager Amanda Koehler can be reached via e-mail.