By Jeffery W. Fogg II
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision this week to cancel a $300 million program designed to help farmers acquire and retain land is unlikely to immediately shake the balance sheets of most Kansas producers. But over time, it may quietly reshape who gets to farm in the state at all.
The program — known as the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program — was funded through the American Rescue Plan Act and awarded roughly $300 million across about 50 projects nationwide beginning in 2023. Its purpose was not to subsidize commodity production or bolster crop insurance, but to address a more structural problem: access to land, capital and markets for farmers who historically struggle to obtain all three.
According to internal communications obtained by POLITICO, the USDA justified the cancellations by arguing the program “involved discriminatory preferences based on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” and constituted “wasteful spending.” Agency officials said the department will instead prioritize “unity, equality, meritocracy, and color-blindness.”
The cancellations come at a moment when the barriers to entering agriculture are widely acknowledged — including by the USDA itself — to be rising.
A March 2026 report from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service found that a significant portion of U.S. farmland is owned by non-operating landlords, while the USDA’s Economic Research Service continues to document increasing land values and input costs. In practical terms, that means fewer opportunities for new farmers to buy in, and higher financial thresholds for those who try.
For Kansas, where agriculture remains both an economic backbone and a cultural identity, the implications are less about today’s harvest and more about the next generation.
Most established Kansas farmers are unlikely to feel direct effects from the program’s cancellation. Traditional USDA support mechanisms — including crop insurance, Farm Service Agency (FSA) lending programs and conservation initiatives like EQIP — remain intact. For producers with existing land, credit relationships and operating scale, the federal safety net is largely unchanged.
But the canceled program occupied a different lane entirely.
Rather than direct payments, the funding flowed through nonprofits, cooperatives and regional organizations that worked with farmers on issues that are harder to solve with a standard loan: down-payment assistance, succession planning, market entry and financial readiness. These intermediaries often served beginning farmers, veterans and smaller operators who lack inherited land or established capital.
Amanda Koehler, manager of the Land, Capital, and Market Access Network, told POLITICO that the USDA had “actively blocked awardees” from implementing projects before ultimately canceling them, adding that the agency then cited “the absence of progress as grounds for termination.”
Critics of the cuts argue that eliminating these programs will accelerate trends already underway.
“If we want our country’s agriculture production to continue to work, we have to support new and emerging farmers,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said in a statement. “Otherwise, big corporate Ag entities are happy to continue gobbling up small and independent farms as more farmers retire.”
That dynamic is already visible in parts of Kansas.
An aging farmer population, combined with rising land prices, has made entry increasingly difficult without family-owned acreage or substantial capital. When smaller operators cannot compete for land, it is often purchased by larger farms or investors — a shift that can increase efficiency but reduce the number of independent producers.
Over time, that consolidation has broader consequences. Fewer farmers means fewer locally rooted decision-makers, fewer small-business ecosystems in rural towns and less diversity in production models.
Supporters of the USDA’s decision counter that federal programs should not be structured around demographic targeting and argue that resources should instead be distributed through neutral, market-based systems. A USDA spokesperson described the program as “an egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars” that lacked sufficient requirements for direct producer benefit.
The legal and political fight is far from settled. More than a dozen Democratic state attorneys general have filed suit against the USDA, arguing that the cancellation violates congressional intent behind the American Rescue Plan funding.
For now, however, the practical effect is clear: a pipeline designed to help new farmers enter the industry has been abruptly shut down.
In Kansas, where agriculture is both business and legacy, the question is not whether current farmers will survive this policy shift. Most will.
The more consequential question is who replaces them.
And after this week, the answer may be fewer, larger and better-capitalized operations — not because of a single policy decision, but because one of the few programs designed to counter that trajectory is no longer there.
