Which farmers does the USDA serve?

A response to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, published in Civil Eats

Over the last few years, I played a marginal advisory role to a state-appointed body called the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force. The group was established by the California Legislature, tasked with delivering evidenced-based policy proposals to the Governor’s office by January 1, 2026. The 13 member Task Force conducted a statewide survey, met with farmers, held public meetings, and consulted experts, ultimately presenting 26 policy proposals. These proposals suggested ways to reverse trends of farmland financialization, improve land tenure insecurity, and provide land access to all of California’s farmers, especially those who have been historically dispossessed. In my estimation, the final proposals represent measured land policy—compromise positions shaped by the politics of the possible.

The Task Force was created by the CA Legislature, but has no power to turn the recommendations into law. The Legislature has no time limit to respond to the final report. It could be years before the policy ideas make their way into some kind of policy, if ever. The work of the Task Force is policy brainstorm, backed by fact-finding.

Given the language of equity and justice, I expected that some right-wing and libertarian publications might sense blood in the water. This is California. There is a potential presidential candidate at the helm and a national retreat from the tarnished practice of DEI. Those with an eternal desire to besmirch Blue State policy would not pass up an opportunity to attack ideas that challenge the status quo.

The Daily Wire wrote that the report was a call for “race-based land redistribution” that would “devastate California agriculture.” Their analysis characterized the Task Force’s work as a “social experiment” akin to the land systems of South Africa, alleging it represents an “unprecedented intrusion into private property rights.”

The Washington Free Beacon, whose tagline is “Covering the enemies of freedom the way the mainstream media won’t,” labels the initiative as a “left-wing attempt” to pursue reparations through “aggressive DEI policies” and critical race theory.

I expected the reactionary approaches from the likes of The Daily Wire. But then, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins sent a letter to the California Governor, threating “immediate legal action” if the Governor were to adopt the recommendations from the Task Force. The Secretary argued that the proposed policies would unconstitutionally discriminate against farmers based on race and ethnicity, violating the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Fifth Amendment’s Takings Clause.

A rebuttal in Civil Eats

With Madeleine Fairbairn, an expert on the perils of farmland consolidation and financialization and author of Fields of Gold, we’ve challenged the arguments found in the USDA letter. Our rebuttal of the facts is warranted. Yet, what I want to reflect on here is what this conflict means for the future of land politics.

At the heart of the Task Force proposals is a call to make strange the way farmland property is controlled by so few and the implications of that inequality on food production, rural wellbeing, and ecological resilience. The aggression from the USDA Secretary and the media response may appear like smart tactics to highlight progressive visions as out-of-touch folly. On the contraty, I think the reaction reveals a political weakness within dominant agricultural policy waiting to be exploited.

The Secretary states:

The right to own private property and our nation’s agricultural heritage are an inseparable cornerstone of the American dream and ingrained in the very fabric of our nation.

What’s really going on here is a call to uphold an unjust status quo shielded by a naive defense of private property.

In the essay in Civil Eats we discuss the problems with this view, but I want expand onsome on the partisan dimensions of the defense of property.

In this moment, there is a search to develop public policies that activate dormant coalitions. When administration officials are spending their energies to defend to the few over the many, there is a policy opportunity ripe for the taking. The norms of property have been too long thought of as untouchable and off-limits for experimentation. Sensing a challenge to property entitlements, the reactionary opinions against the Task Force proposals give the sense a clear wedge issue has been found to lambast wokeism and ridicule the left.

Yet, I think this exchange reveals how a policy that goes directly to the heart of the progenitor of all wealth could be potent and timely. Reforms that challenge the monolith of property perform a crucial move that turns farm policy into class politics.

If control over land delivers social, economic, and political power, then pointing out the implications of poorly distributed land control brings together all who don’t benefit from the deep legal infrastructure that protects asset ownership. Antonio Roman-Alcalá suggests that building an identity of “landlessness” is the first step to deep coalition bulding.

In the paper Land reform in the United States: Lost cause or simply a cause that has been lost? he writes:

Developing a sense of “landlessness” can seed the awareness that society’s structure starts with lack of democratic access to land as a means of production and belonging (rather than as a financial asset).

Perhaps the USDA getting involved in this fight is a sign of the reactionary media machine driving national policy. But to me, this reads as a classic case of a hasty display of force hiding a deep weakness. Perhaps the Secretary of Agriculture doesn’t want land reform policy because it will be a losing issue for the current administration. One way of viewing much adminsistration policy is actions that protects the landed against the landless. A coalition of the landless is growing. It just needs to be awakened.