March 25, 2026 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has ended a Biden-era program designed to give the next generation of farmers a leg up, terminating $300 million in contracts.

Created with Inflation Reduction Act and American Rescue Plan funding, the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access (ILCMA) Program was championed by the National Young Farmers Coalition (NYFC), which has repeatedly found in national surveys that access to land and capital are two of the biggest barriers young farmers face.

In June 2023, the USDA awarded 50 organizations—including tribes, farmer associations, and universities—five-year contracts for projects dedicated to addressing those challenges. 49 of those contracts have now been terminated as of March 26, according to letters sent to the organizations.

Politico first reported the cancellations Tuesday.

“In Iowa, we’ve seen firsthand how the ILCMA program helps bridge the gap for beginning farmers who are ready to step into land ownership but face steep financial barriers,” Breanna Horsey, executive director of Sustainable Iowa Land Trust, said in a NYFC press release Wednesday. “Terminating these projects undermines the progress communities have made to keep farmland in production and in the hands of the next generation. At a time when land costs are at record highs, pulling support from locally‑led solutions is not just harmful to farmers, it’s harmful to the resilience of our rural communities.”

As directed by Congress, projects were specifically vetted and selected based on whether they would benefit farmers and ranchers who had been historically underserved or shut out of USDA programs. As a result, many of those projects aimed to help Black, Indigenous, women, and immigrant farmers.

That put the program in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, as it sought to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. In the termination letters sent to contract holders this week, Steven Peterson, the associate administrator of the Farm Service Agency, said the awards don’t align with the agency’s goals and priorities. The programs represent “discriminatory preferences” and  “wasteful spending that did little to further lawful agricultural land purchases,” he wrote.

In the NYFC release, JohnElla Holmes, CEO and president of the Kansas Black Farmers Association, said her group had six farmers waiting for down payment assistance to purchase small farms.

In response to Civil Eats’ questions, a USDA spokesperson sent a list of seven expenditures it considered inappropriate, ranging from $10,000 to $130,000.

“Under the guise of increasing land access for producers, the ILA program included no minimum requirement for direct producer support. Instead, the program permitted the abuse of federal funds, including expenditures on the purchasing of a barbeque smoker, construction of a gazebo, massages, and for one awardee, a $20,000 budget for ink pens alone,” the spokesperson said. “To no surprise, a peek behind the curtain of this Biden-era program revealed the egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars to the tune of nearly $300 million dollars.”

The $300 million, which would have been distributed over five years, is a sliver of U.S. agricultural spending. USDA economists predict that direct government payments to farms will total $44.3 billion in 2026. The vast majority of that spending is paid to large, established, commodity farms, with no limits on how money can be spent.

Organizations have the opportunity to appeal the terminations within 30 days, and some might also choose to take legal action.

One contract recipient, Agroecology Commons, is already part of a suit that alleges the USDA cannot cancel contracts that were binding agreements based on qualifications authorized by Congress. Sources told Civil Eats that organization was the one that did not receive a termination letter.

“This is a total slap in the face for farmers and will not withstand legal scrutiny,” House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Angie Craig (D-Minnesota) said in a statement Tuesday. “The American people deserve better.” (Link to this post.)

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