Landing Young People
In this episode of Unconfined, Michelle Hughes despairs over federal funding freezes for land-access programs and rebounds with an optimistic vision for the long-term future in which young farmers regenerate not only soil, but the industry as a whole.
Young Farmers Want to Build Soil Health and Grow Better Food. All They Need Is Land
By Christine Grillo Subscribe to Host Notes
When you interview the co-executive director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, of course, you have to talk about the policy and funding landscape. The organization focuses on the policy wins that can usher in the next generation of young farmers and ranchers, and two of the most critical pieces of legislation are the Land, capital, and market access program (LCM), initiated in 2022, and the Increasing Land Access, Security, and Opportunities (LASO) Act, a bipartisan bill, which, if authorized, would expand the former significantly. (In June 2023, the LCM awarded approximately $300 million for 50 selected projects. The LASO Act would authorize $100 million per year for five years.)
During my conversation with Michelle Hughes, the co-executive director, we kept coming back to land access, which is what those two pieces of legislation aim to improve. For young farmers, everything hinges on it. Like most budding entrepreneurs, young farmers are often constrained by how much land they can afford to buy, how much money they have to spend on the necessary equipment and work force, and how much of their own health care they can afford to provide. The LCM is making good strides toward helping with this, primarily by enabling land acquisition and farm improvement. But as Michelle said, “It’s very expensive to rent or lease land, and it’s extremely expensive to buy land.”
Since the start of the Trump Administration, funding for many programs supported by the LCM has been frozen. On the ground, this means that some expensive farming infrastructure projects have had to be halted mid-way, or that farmers are using their own capital to keep going, or that there are outstanding payments on expenses that were incurred before the new administration came into power, or that farmers are defaulting on loans. Despite a federal court injunction to un-freeze the spending, the money is held up in court through appeals. “It’s having devastating impacts,” says Michelle.
Despite the current federal bleakness, Michelle stays positive. One of the nice things about focusing on young farmers is that, as she puts it, we still have a long runway. “There is a lot of time ahead of us still,” she says. And she feels that young farmers are especially energized right now because all of a sudden they’re seeing the rug pulled out from under them. The issues they care about—conservation, climate change, environmental justice—are issues that they have to keep fighting for, and they’re willing to do so.
According to the 2022 USDA census of agriculture, the average age of the American farmer is about 58 years old, and more than a third are older than 65. But Michelle says there is an influx of young people coming into farming from different walks of life that don’t have a traditional agriculture background. Some are coming from veterinary medicine, some are coming from public health, some are coming from nutrition.
And the great news about all these young people coming to farming is that, for the most part, they’re climate leaders. Michelle says they’re smart, and they’re dedicated to conservation.
“We've never worked in agriculture with a stable climate,” she says. “So, to us, it's just a normal thing that we need to accept and embrace and just be dynamic and adaptable about.”
For young farmers, she says, farming and conservation are synonymous. “They won't farm without some sort of conservation,” she says.
The conservation practices can take many forms, and they’re tailored to context. Conservation farming in New Mexico, for example, is going to look different from conservation farming in New England. Across the board, she’s noticed a keen interest in soil health and in indigenous practices that can regenerate soil.
But this enthusiasm brings us back to the conundrum of land access.
“There's no conversation to be had about conserving land that you don't have your hands on, or soil that you don't have your fingers in,” says Michelle. “It's just a nonstarter.”
In her—and my—dream world, young farmers would have access to the land they need, and thus being freed from the hustle and scramble of trying to access land, they would be able to focus on conservation and soil and climate. But that’s not the world we live in currently. The way she sees it, land access is a huge barrier to conservation.
Which is why she—and many other climate leaders—are doing what they can to support the LCM and LASO, even as it’s being dismantled in real time. This administration’s actions—and especially the normalization of it all—is taking a toll on everyone, far beyond young farmers. But Michelle believes we’ll look back on it one day and be glad to be living in a better reality. “Until then, we build momentum and keep our heads up,” she says.
If you’d like to engage with the issues that are important to Michelle and other young farmers, there are plenty of advocacy opportunities that are communicated through the coalition’s newsletter, so consider signing up.