BREAKOUT SESSION: Food System Vitality Rooted in the Land: Lessons from Policies Nationwide and in the Northeast to Support Land Access for Young, Beginning, and BIPOC Farmers

Land is the basis for a thriving food system, but land, and the policies that drive it, present many of their own barriers to food system innovations. Farmland is consolidating, converting out of agriculture, becoming more expensive, and moving out of reach of those who dream of raising food. In contrast, what a nourishing food system needs is productive land close to markets, abundant opportunities to enter into farming and to mentor new entrants, and widespread access to wealth-building agricultural land ownership. With these food system challenges as a backdrop, this session showcased and facilitated a discussion around the policy tools governments are piloting to intervene. Land access policies aim to bring young, beginning, and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) farmers onto the land, and to incentivize landowners to rent or sell to them. States are accelerating in launching such policy innovations, and two states on the emerging cutting edge are Vermont and Connecticut. In this session, leaders of the USDA-AFRI-funded Land Access Policy Incentives Integrated Research and Extension Project explored various approaches land access policy tools are taking, what their effects are, the farmers and farms they are reaching, and sustainable metrics to determine their reach and long term effectiveness. Panelists also discussed farmers and farms who deserve to be better served by land access policies, and how these first forays into incentivizing land access through public policy can improve, to pursue more food systems priorities at once. Stemming from the team’s community-engaged research with over 1,300 farmers and landowners and the leaders of nine states’ land access programs, presenters drew on the national land access education networks they lead. Following the presentation, presenters facilitated a discussion with session attendees about policy interventions, both existing and needed, to catalyze food systems’ transformations from their roots in the land.