The National Young Farmers Coalition launched the One Million Acres Campaign, which calls on the US Congress to “invest $2.5 billion in the 2023 Farm Bill to facilitate equitable access to one million acres of land for the next generation of farmers.” The campaign grew out of a multi-stakeholder coalition and research endeavor that highlighted increasing barriers for young farmers and farm communities of color to access affordable land and fill the gaps of the aging, homogenous US farming population.

So what?

Efforts such as the One Million Acres Campaign are working to ensure that farmers committed to positive environmental impact have access to land. Young farmers and farm communities of color, who have been historically discriminated against by US policy and US Department of Agriculture programming and support, also hold the potential to steward agricultural land and play a leading role in climate change mitigation. Yet, these efforts are up against some of the world’s wealthiest landowners, who are looking to farmland as an investment asset. Campaigns such as these are vital to combat the overall trend in land consolidation across the US agriculture system.

To see how these different signals across the agriculture system are impacting the future system that we envision, keep an eye out for the upcoming report from
Growing our Future.