A Green New Deal for Public Farmland

INTRODUCTION

Though it’s far from the only problem associated with our food and agriculture system, climate change represents an existential threat to our ability to feed ourselves. As the planet’s average temperature increases, weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable. Farmers are already feeling the effects of the instability in the form of both droughts and unprecedented flooding.[1][2] The USDA has estimated that climate change will reduce grain yields by 80 percent in the future, further threatening an economically endangered industry and the nation’s food security.[3]

American farms are also in serious economic trouble. Farm debt reached a record high in 2019 and bankruptcies are up 24 percent from 2018 levels.[4] While climate change presents serious environmental threats to agriculture, ballooning farm debt and high economic barriers to accessing farmable land represent equally existential threats to farmers and food security. Agricultural collapse — either environmental or economic — presents the country with a serious risk of famine, making this industry too important to fail.

Our food system is a major cause of climate change, but it can also be an important solution using plants’ natural ability to store carbon in the ground. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that agriculture, forestry and other land use activities account for 23 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.[5] The IPCC has stated that global emissions must be reduced by 45 percent by 2030.[6] Politicians, academics, and scientists have suggested this will require a level of nationalization mobilization not seen since World War II.[7] The “Green New Deal” is a now commonly used phrase to represent the ideas and policies that would create this mobilization. A “Green New Deal” resolution was introduced into the 116th Congress with the stated goal of creating millions of good, high-wage jobs, providing, unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all, and counteracting systemic injustices.[8] The Green New Deal resolution mentions sustainable agriculture in passing but provides no clear framework for how to achieve it. This paper offers one land management option to help achieve agricultural reform with the broad goals of the Green New Deal as guiding principles.

The agricultural system is notoriously slow to reform. Congress reauthorizes the Farm Bill every five years in a painfully contentious political negotiation. Small farmers, who lack the political influence of agricultural suppliers and large conglomerates, are usually an afterthought. Even when new bills are passed, the changes can be held up for years in the administrative rulemaking process and any lawsuits that may follow. Congress passed the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act after years of calls for reform following foodborne illness outbreaks in the early 2000s. Key parts of the legislation, including the Produce Safety Rule, still haven’t been implemented.

In the United States, almost all cropland is privately owned, making it difficult for the government to effectively manage. A preference for market-based solutions and a strong agricultural lobby has meant that effective command-and-control environmental regulations like the Clean Water Act have been used sparingly to regulate the food system.

Not all farmland is privately held in the United States. There are federal public lands across the country in places like Ohio and Oregon where private farmers lease land from the Department of the Interior and grow food that is sold at market. Because the Department of the Interior is acting as a landlord, it is free to negotiate a contract that can require agroecological best practices that reduces or eliminates fossil fuel-based inputs.

This landlord-tenant model represents an efficient solution that could match the scale of the crisis. By transitioning away from a system that produces commodity grains and replacing it with sustainable biodiverse farms that coexist with wetlands and forests, we solve more problems than just climate change.

Section II of this paper will make the case for an extraordinary new approach to land use by presenting the climate and non-climate threats to the ecosystem caused by industrial agriculture. The IPCC reports are clear, detailed, and comprehensive, so this paper will instead give equal weight to other lesser reported issues. The symptoms discussed in this section can be traced back to a single disease: an environmentally destructive industrial food system reliant on fossil fuels that grows cheap grains for processed foods and cheap meat.

Section II also lays out the myriad economic problems for American farmers, which can all be traced back to a system that has commodified land and devalued the people working it. Section III makes the case for direct federal ownership of farmland, provides examples of already existing federal farmland, and details a plan for creating and systematically expanding federal farmland that can be leased to farmers. Section IV discusses potential challenges to implementing this program and the opportunities to address these challenges.

A Green New Deal for Public Farmland will be an efficient and effective path to decarbonize the agricultural sector while providing access to land for a new generation of farmers to lead the transition.

CHALLENGES FACING AMERICAN FARMERS

Climate change

The IPCC reports on climate change paint a grim picture for farmers and eaters. Unchecked warming could lead to diminished capacity for farmers to grow food and make a living. Rapid desertification could even lead to food shortages or famine. The IPCC has made it clear: We must radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 or the Earth faces ecological collapse.[9] Some of the impacts of climate change will come in the form of more and intensified:

· Tropical storms

· Forest fires

· Droughts

· Coral bleaching

· Heat waves

· Floods

Even if do reduce emissions, farmers will continue to face increasingly challenging weather patterns caused by climate change that will make food harder to grow and more expensive.[10] This will increase the number of people in the United States who experience food insecurity, which was already more than 11 percent in 2018.[11]

The current U.S. industrial food system is heavily reliant on burning fossil fuels that contribute to climate change.[12] In the 1900s, farms began to replace human and animal labor with gasoline-powered farm equipment like tractors and combines. Following World War II, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels also became commonplace. As globalization intensified in the second half of the 20th Century, transporting food around the world further grew the carbon footprint of our food and agriculture system.

Decarbonizing the agricultural sector will not be easy and will force us to rethink the way food is grown and land is managed, but the specter of ecological collapse leaves us no choice. The IPCC recommends several land-related actions to combat climate change and its effects:

· Sustainable food production

· Improved and sustainable forest management

· Soil organic carbon management

· Ecosystem conservation and land restoration

· Reduced deforestation and degradation

· Reduced food loss and waste

The easiest way for the federal government to implement these land-based reforms will be to purchase and manage the land directly.

Other Environmental Problems with Industrial Agriculture

Climate change is not the only environmental problem caused by industrial agriculture. Even if we could somehow wave a wand and eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, our current system would still present significant and existential threats to the food security and natural biodiversity of the United States. Every one of these problems can be traced back a food system ravenous for commodity grains.

1. Nutrient Pollution

Industrial farms use massive amounts of synthetic fertilizers and animal manure to provide plants with the nitrogen and phosphorus they need to grow.[13] These same products are derived from fossil fuels and are major contributors to climate change. About 20 percent of these nutrients are lost to runoff or leach into the groundwater.[14] This nutrient pollution eventually flows to the ocean where it fuels harmful algae blooms that kill marine life through hypoxia and/or produce airborne toxins that cause diseases in human beings.[15] Meanwhile the excess nitrogen and phosphorous in the groundwater leads to a variety of human health problems including blue baby syndrome.[16] Nutrient pollution threatens the future of wild capture fisheries and sustainable aquaculture, endangering the nation’s food security. A complex system of environmental management called cooperative federalism has meant that EPA has been wringing its hands for nearly a decade on how best to manage farms, which are essentially millions of individual sources of water pollution.[17]

2. Microbe and pollinator decline

In addition to being toxic to human health, fossil fuel-based pesticides used by industrial agriculture harm the entire ecosystem.[18] Fertilizers and pesticides kill soil microbes that are essential for plant health.[19] Pesticides have been linked to the collapse of honeybees and other pollinators that plants need to reproduce.[20] Crops at least partially pollinated by animals account for 35 percent of global food production and are particularly significant in the supply of micronutrients for human consumption, for example accounting for more than 90 percent of available vitamin C and more than 70 percent of available vitamin A. [21] Mass pollinator death could lead to widespread crop failure that would threaten the nation’s food security.

Additionally, extensive pesticides use has also created superweeds that are impervious to pesticides, which necessitates new and deadlier pesticides.[22]

3. Erosion and soil health

A report produced by the White House in 2016 called soil the “foundation for civilization.”[23] A 2006 study found that the United States was losing soil 10 times faster than it was being replaced, costing the United States almost $38 billion per year in lost productivity.[24] The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United States has said that 90 percent of all the Earth’s soil could be degraded as soon as 2050.[25] Chemical degradation from overuse of fossil fuel-based pesticides, herbicides, and other toxins also represents a significant threat to soil health.[26] As we saw during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, the nation’s food supply is only as healthy as its soil. It must be protected and restored.

4. Poor health and nutrition

At least 76.4 percent of the crops produced in the United States are commodity grains such as corn, soy, and wheat.[27] Thirty-two percent of these grains are fed to animals.[28] Much of the rest goes to processed and ultra-processed food for human consumption. More than half of the population is meeting or exceeding total grain and total protein recommendations, and about three-fourths of the population has an eating pattern that is low in vegetables, fruits, dairy, and oils.[29] Ultra-processed foods made from grains have been linked to chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.[30] Our industrial agriculture system has a produced a diet that is deadly to consume.

5. Environmental justice at the site of fertilizer/pesticide production

There is an incredible human cost to the demands of industrial agriculture that isn’t captured when discussing greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen fertilizer production accounts for more than 50 percent of total energy use in industrial agriculture.[31] Ammonia plants produce 90 percent of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer.[32]

In the United States, about 98 percent of synthetic ammonia is derived from natural gas, a fossil fuel.[33] Poor communities bear the greatest environmental burden of natural gas fracking.[34] While ammonia plants pose a threat of explosion, [35] there are also phosphate-based fertilizer plants that produce a radioactive byproduct called phosphogypsum.[36] Because there is no known commercial use for phosphogypsum, fertilizer plants use it to create mountainous ponds filled with toxic wastewater. One of these piles nearly collapsed in Cancer Alley, Louisiana, in 2019.[37] Because chemical facilities like fertilizer plants are more likely to be located in low-income communities of color, the industrial agriculture system is helping to fuel environmental injustice.[38]

6. Groundwater exploitation

According to the USDA, “agriculture is a major user of ground and surface water in the United States, accounting for approximately 80 percent of the nation’s consumptive water use and over 90 percent in many Western States.”[39] Groundwater depletion is threatening some of the largest aquifer systems in the United States and could lead to future water shortages for both agriculture and drinking.[40]

Groundwater usage also causes subsidence, which is when the land compacts and sinks. Subsidence is permanent and makes land, vulnerable to flooding, erosion, and — in coastal areas — saltwater intrusion.[41]

7. Pandemics

Disease that can spread between animals and humans are called “zoonotic diseases.”[42] Some are extremely common and less serious like hookworms and tapeworms while others like the bubonic plague and Ebola are deadly. Many of the most deadly diseases like Spanish Flu and HIV/AIDS started in animals.[43] Both swine flu and SARS likely originated in domesticated animals.[44] The novel coronavirus (or COVID-19) that is currently ravaging the globe and grinding the world’s economy to a halt, may have originated in a bat or other wild animal and then spread to humans directly or via an intermediary domesticated animal.[45]

Scientists have concluded that agricultural intensification and deforestation to make room for agriculture have created or fueled zoonotic diseases like the coronavirus.[46] Unless we deindustrialize our agricultural system and stop keeping animals in extreme confinement, novel pandemics will likely continue to emerge and wreak havoc.

1. Economic and Labor Challenges for U.S. Farms

In addition to the environmental crises presented by industrial agriculture, the industrial agricultural system is economically unsustainable.[47] Farm bankruptcies and farmer suicides are on the rise.[48] Ninety-one percent of farmers cite financial issues as impacting farmers’ mental health, while 41 percent of all rural Americans say stress and mental health have become a problem in their communities.[49]

According to the most recent land values summary by the USDA, the average value of an acre of farmland is $3,160 in ($4,100 for cropland).[50] The average farm size is 443 acres.[51] If you can use the average value and average size to extrapolate, the average land value of a farm is valued at roughly $1.4 million.

More than half of the nation’s total farms produce less than $10,000 per year in sales.[52] Seventy percent of farmers make less than a quarter of their income from farming and only 46 percent have positive net income from their operations.[53] Because most farms struggle to turn a profit, accessing $1.4 million in credit to buy an average-sized farm is impossible for most would-be farm owners.

“Land tenure” is the technical term for access to and control of land.[54] The costs associated with land tenure present a significant expense for famers. Based on statistics produced by USDA, the average farmer devotes at least 11.8 percent of their expenses directly to land: 8.3 percent on rent and 4.5 percent on farm construction and improvements.[55] Another 6.2 percent of farm expenses could be at least partially related to land tenure: 2.7 percent in interest payments and 3.5 percent in taxes, which include property taxes if the farmer owns their land.

Land accounts for more than 80 percent of a farm’s overall value,[56] but that wealth is captured only by the landowner. Farmer-operators who don’t own their land are a significant portion of famers who are essentially shut out of most available farm wealth. They are the modern equivalent of sharecroppers.

1. Land theft and genocide

To best understand modern land use and ownership patterns, it’s helpful to look at the history or how land was acquired and then distributed. Prior to European settlement and colonization, the 2.27 billion acres of land in the United States[57] were collectively managed by millions of indigenous people organized into hundreds of tribal nations. Now just 56 million acres, or about 2.5 percent, are held in trust by the federal government for the indigenous population.[58] European colonization is estimated to have killed about 90 percent of the original inhabitants of the continent — so many deaths that the population reduction may have had an effect on the global climate.[59]

Much of the land taken from indigenous people was cleared and made suitable for agriculture with the forced labor of indentured servants and kidnapped African slaves. After the Civil War, the descendants of former slaves were able to buy about 15 million acres of land despite legalized apartheid in the Jim Crow South.[60] But over the course of the 20th Century, much of that land was taken back through means both legal and illegal.

In 1920 there were 925,000 Black farm operators, but by the 2012 agricultural census, there were fewer than 45,000, operating just 0.4 percent of all farmland.[61] Some estimates put the loss of black land ownership at a full 98 percent.[62] The enduring legacies of land theft and slavery permeate the modern agricultural system, and any solutions involving land tenure should attempt in some way to repair these harms.

2. Consolidation of land ownership and monopolization

The number of farms has declined significantly since 1935 when there were 6.8 million farms.[63] There are now about 2.05 million farms, representing a decline of 70 percent.[64] As the number of farms has decreased, the size of farms has increased. The average size of a farm in 1935 was 155 acres. The average size is now about 444 acres, meaning farms are nearly triple the size they were less than a century ago.

Larger farms produce more revenue, more wealth, and thus more political power for their owners. Larger farms also have greater access to credit, enabling them to buy more land, often outcompeting small farms and beginning farmers for the same property. These large farms benefit from economies of scale and drive food prices down, making harder for small farms to compete.

3. Barriers of entry for beginning farmers

Even a modest amount of land is difficult to access for beginning farmers who may have no other assets or a significant credit history. The National Young Farmers Coalition identified access to land as the number one challenge to farming and ranching.[65] 61 percent of the young farmers surveyed said they couldn’t find affordable farmland, and 54 percent said the farmland they could find was so expensive that it exceeded the value of what the farm could produce.[66] The survey also found that student loan debt was the second biggest barrier for young farmers to access farmland.[67]

The average age of an American farmer is now 58, which is 17 years older than the average worker. [68] That number has increased by 7.5 years since the early 1980s.[69] The graying of America’s farmers is seen as a symptom of young farmers’ inability to access land. The American Farmland Trust has said part of the problem may be that farmers are incentivized by the tax code to hold onto land until they die.[70]

4. Worker exploitation

Prior to the Civil War, indentured servants and slaves were forced to provide much of the nation’s farm labor. After the passage of the 13th Amendment, sharecropping and prison labor provided landowners with new sources of exploited farm labor.[71]

Children have also historically been a source of free labor for family farms.[72] But even as family farms have gradually been swallowed up by megafarms, children still represent a significant labor force on farms. The Center for Disease Control estimates that more than 328,000 children under the age of 16 are working on farms, of which about 80,000 are under the age of 10.[73] This is legal because many sections of the Fair Labor Standards Act explicitly exclude farmworkers or provide lesser protections for farmworkers.[74] Farmworkers are not eligible for basic labor rights like overtime pay or the full protection of the National Labor Relations Act.[75]

Immigrants have always been a significant source of farm labor.[76] As family farms declined in the 20th century, migrant labor has replaced the role once played by slaves and children. 76 percent of all farmworkers were born outside the United States.[77] The USDA estimates that roughly half of all farmworkers are undocumented,[78] though others have said the number is closer to 70 percent.[79] The federal government also has a special type of work visa called H-2A that allows landowners to employ temporary migrant workers from other countries. A Southern Poverty Law Center report found that workers were so exploited under the program that it was “close to slavery.”[80] The use of H-2A labor has grown exponentially this century.

A full third of farmworkers now live below the poverty line.[81] The national poverty rate ($12,784 annually for individuals and $25,465 for a family of four) is 11.8 percent.[82] Only 47 percent of farmworkers have health insurance,[83] compared with the national average of 91.5 percent.[84] This means that the agricultural labor force is about three times more likely to live in poverty and about six times more likely to be uninsured. Studies have linked lack of health insurance to early death,[85] so farmworkers are performing back-breaking work to live in poverty and die young.

Unsurprisingly, these oppressive labor dynamics in the food system have led to farmworker shortages.[86] Farmers report that crops are dying on the vine, with anecdotal evidence that the bipartisan war on immigrants is causing farmworkers to leave the country.[87]

5. Increasing ownership of farmland by speculators

Agricultural lands have increasingly become an economic investment opportunity by individual rent seekers and businesses both foreign and domestic. About 39 percent of all U.S. farmland is leased.[88] A full 80 percent of this rented farmland (or almost a third of all farmland) is owned by nonoperator landlords who don’t farm.[89] More than 60 percent of these owners have never farmed.[90]

The USDA estimates that corporate farms represent only 2.1 percent of all farms, but this small group owns 8.3 percent of all farm assets (80 percent of which is land value[91]).[92] The Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America-College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), one of the 100 biggest corporations in the United States,[93] has bought up billions of dollars of farmland. A spokesman for the company, citing a shortage of available farmland, said “Farmland is a store of wealth. It’s kind of like gold.”[94]

Foreign ownership of farmland has also doubled in the last 10 years, with 30 million acres now in the hands of non-U.S. owners.[95]

6. Hollowing out of rural America

As mechanization replaced some 11 million farm jobs over the course of the 20th century and beyond,[96] the surplus labor fled for cities. In 1900, 55 percent of the nation lived in rural areas, but by 2010, that number had fallen to 19 percent.[97] The flight of humans and capital from rural America has depleted the tax base of small towns and crippled the ability of rural towns to invest in infrastructure and retain young people.[98] The decline in rural population has led to lower property values. The median rural home is now worth about 26 percent less than the median urban home.[99]

The hollowing of rural America has also led to the closure of hospitals, increasing mortality rates by almost six percent.[100] The Center for Disease Control has reported that drug overdose deaths and suicides are now higher in rural areas than urban areas.[101][102] While industrial agriculture has increased its overall production, it’s clear that this output hasn’t translated to a higher quality of life for rural Americans.

III. A CASE FOR FEDERAL MANAGEMENT OF FARMLAND

The federal government has a long history of acquiring land and using agricultural policy to actively manage land ownership. In the 1800s, the U.S. government used European settlers to consolidate its control of the continent through colonizing the interior. It enacted a program of genocide and forced migration to eliminate the indigenous population with policies like the Indian Removal Act of 1830. That land was then given for free to European settlers with the Homestead Acts that were enacted between 1862 and the first part of the 20th century.

During the Great Depression, Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1933 to help stabilize crop prices. By strategically paying farmers not to grow crops at certain times, the government also helped prevent erosion that had caused the Dust Bowl. In the 1970s, Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz upended the New Deal model of crop price controls by opening the country’s grain reserves for sale abroad. He famously told farmers to “get big or get out” as the U.S. government ushered in the current industrial model of intense grain production which could then be exported.

These decisions helped design the architecture of our broken agriculture system described in Section II. Every five years, we make these decisions all over again when our Congress reauthorizes the Farm Bill. The environmental and economic crises currently facing our farmers again necessitate strong federal intervention.

According to the American Farmland Trust, 40 percent of the lower 48 states’ 991 million farm and ranch acres will change hands from 2015 to around 2035.[103] This represents an unprecedented opportunity for the United States to reform its land tenure system on a national scale. If the federal government does not step in, that land will be bought be industrial farms or corporate interests that are already fueling climate change.

A plan to expand federally owned farmland

1. Empower and fund federal agencies to buy farmland and lease it to new farmers

The American Farmland Trust estimates that about two percent of U.S. farmland (or approximately 18 million acres) will be transferred each year until about 2035.[104] Because so much land will be available to buy, expropriation by eminent domain might not be necessary. At an average value of $3,160 per acre, this represents $56.8 billion of available farmland annually.

The National Park Service (NPS) already has a Land and Water Conservation Fund with a process for acquiring new lands.[105] The fund is currently authorized to accrue $900 million per year, so its budget would need to be increased significantly to buy any significant percentage of available farmland.[106] Congress could empower NPS to acquire new farmland in priority areas to buy farmland from willing buyers or at auction. Other potential candidates for managing federal farmland include the United States Forest Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Bureau of Reclamation, all of which have land acquisition and management programs.

Priority areas for land acquisition should be:

· Areas close to existing federally owned lands to make management more efficient

· Parcels with large acreage

· Industrial farmland with degraded soil

· Cropland that was once wetlands, forest, or other area with high potential for carbon sequestration

The National Conservation Easement Database has an interactive map that shows where farmland is already conserved or at least managed with conservation in mind. Conservation easements are heavily concentrated in the northeast but are relatively light in the Midwestern and Southern croplands. Much of the Midwest and South also used to be wetlands and forests and should be prioritized for public farmland acquisitions.

Once the land has been purchased, the federal agency can then break up the parcels into smaller tracts for beginning farmers. Long-term leases (30–60 years) will create better stewards of the land. Long-term leases are generally thought to give tenants more security and confidence that investments in sustainable practices will eventually yield a return on the investment.[107]

Depending on the characteristics of the land, the lease should include provisions that help achieve long-term climate and environmental goals, potentially including some or all of the following:

· Restoring a portion of the land to wetlands or forest

· Utilizing best agricultural practices that reduces fossil-fuel based inputs

· Maintaining a certain level of soil health and carbon storage

· Maintaining a certain level of health per acre as described in Section III(A)(1)

· Protections for farmworkers

The lease price should factor in the ecosystem services provided so that farm operators with little access to capital can enter the industry and still turn a reasonable profit.

2. Federal agency should partner with other institutions and organizations to use best available science.

Writing the leases described above requires specialized knowledge that may have been lost over time or may not be readily available to land managers. Our land-owning federal agencies aren’t experts in agronomy, but even many of our agronomists are not experts in sustainable farming. Transitioning away from industrial agriculture will require looking to both the past and the future.

Some farmers and indigenous still have traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) about land characteristics, native plants, and farming techniques that have been passed down through generations.[108] Perhaps the best known example of agroecology is the indigenous system of intercropping often called the “three sisters,” in which corn, beans, and squash are grown together with little-to-no inputs. Experts in TEK should be consulted to develop a guide to best practices based on the specific characteristics of each region and should compensated for their time and expertise.

Agricultural universities and other government agencies can use existing technology to analyze each parcel of land, determine optimal crops to grow, and identify opportunities for wetland or forest restoration. Research institutions can continually help inform best agricultural practices as sustainable farming techniques are improved upon. New crops can be developed to cut down on labor and input. For example, The Land Institute, a private organization in Kansas that has worked closely with government and research institutions, has developed a perennial wheat that requires fewer inputs and stores more carbon that traditional annual wheats.[109]

3. Federal agency partners with other institutions and organizations to recruit new farmers.

Many existing young farmers and farmworkers (including H-2A guest workers) are already trained to move into farm ownership. But as we decarbonize our agricultural sector, many more people will be needed to perform the necessary labor of weed control, crop rotation, and other tasks that have previously relied on fossil fuel-driven machinery. Without significant education and recruitment, labor shortages are possible. Farm work is both backbreaking and highly skilled, so it requires investing in workers.[110] To find enough farmers, the federal government will have to work with other organizations to recruit them.

Land grant college universities, tribal colleges and universities, historically black colleges and universities, or other agricultural programs can both train farmers and help recruit them to sign leases with the agencies managing federal farmland. A federal job guarantee under a Green New Deal could lure millions more people into agricultural work. But perhaps the greatest source of new available labor could be climate change itself.

143 million people or more could be displaced by climate change.[111] The United States, the world’s largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, has a moral duty to take some of these people in.[112] But even if that weren’t true, it would still need a new source of agricultural labor. Many climate migrants will come from developing nations and likely have agricultural experience that makes them well suited to work federal farmland. The Department of Homeland Security and immigrant-focused nongovernmental organizations could help direct farmers to a federal farmland leasing program.

4. Incentivize large landowners to sell land

The faster that land is purchased by the government and re-leased with conservation provisions, the faster we can decarbonize the agricultural system. While some of this land will available to purchase from willing sellers in the coming years, it will not be enough to reach our climate goals by 2030. To encourage more land transfers, large landowners practicing industrial farming should be incentivized economically to sell their cropland. Direct taxes of land acreage are unconstitutional,[113] but there are other ways to incentivize megafarms to sell, including lowering the threshold of the estate tax and excluding capital gains taxes if selling to a public agency, tribal nation, or land trust.

Large landowners own the farms generating the most income. Large-scale family farms ($1 million or more in income) accounted for about 3 percent of farms but 46 percent of the value of production.[114] They are also the largest recipients of government assistance in the form of agricultural subsidies and tax breaks.[115] By prohibiting the largest farms from taking advantage of subsidies and tax breaks, larger landowners will be incentivized to sell some or all of their holdings.

Benefits of federal ownership of land

1. Restore and protect wetlands and forests while improving soil and human health

The federal government has long struggled to develop meaningful conservation tools for the agricultural sector. J.B. Ruhl, a longtime professor of environmental law, wrote about what he calls the “anti-law” of farms and the environment:

Farms are one of the last uncharted frontiers of environmental regulation in the United States. Despite the substantial environmental harms they cause — habitat loss and degradation, soil erosion and sedimentation, water resources depletion, soil and water salinization, agrochemical releases, animal wastes, nonpoint source water pollution, and air pollution — environmental law has given them a virtual license to do so.[116]

The Clear Water Act is considered one of the boldest and most successful environmental acts in the United States. [117] It also explicit exempts industrial agriculture from many of its provisions.[118] “Command and control” legislation like the Clean Water Act has largely fallen out of fashion in favor of market-based solutions and the kick-the-can approach of cooperative federalism.

While some are still advocating for universally applied regulations, others have advocated for private and public easements to limit destructive usage of land. Conservation easements are voluntary legal agreements in which farmers are compensated for agreeing to set aside a portion of their land for some non-agricultural purpose. The two most common types of public conservation easements are the Agricultural Conservation Easement Program that protects farmland from development and restores wetlands and the Healthy Forests Reserve Program that protects forests.[119] In the 2018 Farm Bill, Congress allocated $450 million per year for conservation easements to help farmers defray their costs to preserve wetlands and improve soil health.[120]

In addition to these direct payments to farmers for ecosystem services, the federal government could invest money in purchasing land outright. As the owner of the land, the government would have wide latitude using contract law to require ecological best practices or establish metrics for soil health. The leases could require wetland and forest restoration and help re-integrate biodiversity into farmland. While some of the economic return on this investment could come from cash rental payments from tenant farmers, the ecosystem services and climate change mitigation will more than cover the initial investment.

There are already existing models for this arrangement that will be discussed in further detail below. But one example is the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio in which long-term tenant farmers contract to use sustainable agricultural practices that are comparable to USDA organic farming standards.

Requiring agricultural best practices is just one method to encourage soil and ecosystem conservation. Rather than regulate the methods of agricultural production, managers could instead simply set firm conservation goals and then allow farmers the flexibility to meet that goal however they see fit. For example, the USDA already extensively surveys and classifies U.S. soil.[121] One measurement the USDA uses is soil organic matter.[122] A federal farm lease could require a minimum threshold of soil organic matter.

Soil health is just one possible metric to use when evaluating the successful output of a farm or the public health benefits of more sustainable farming. The USDA’s data has typically focused on economic productivity or yields per acres, which doesn’t factor in the nutritional impact of the crops produced. In 2016, Navdanya International released a report in which it quantified “health per acre” in India’s agricultural system.[123] Health per acre incorporates the micronutrient content (vitamins and minerals) of food when measuring a crop’s yield. Incorporating health per acre goals into federal farm leases would diversify the farms’ outputs and lead to better health outcomes for eaters.

2. Reduce barriers of entry and create jobs for new farmers

As we transition away from industrial agriculture that relies on fossil fuels, farms will require more human labor. Organic agriculture already creates more jobs than conventional agriculture because organic agriculture needs people to manage crop rotation and weed control.[124] Any rapid decarbonization of the agricultural sector will require less fossil fuel-based machinery and weed control. This will therefore necessitate bringing in many new farmers and farmworkers.

Many beginning farmers and current farmworkers who aspire to own farms lack the savings or access to credit to afford farmland. This pushes farmers into lease agreements with nonoperator landlords who are motivated by profit. If the federal government were to buy farmland and re-lease it to new farmers, the federal government’s primary interest in owning farmland would be in combatting the environmental and economic crises in the national agricultural system.

In consideration of the valuable ecosystem services being provided by farmer-stewards, the federal government could charge much less than market rental rates for cropland. With almost no barriers of entry to land tenure, farmworkers and other aspiring farmers would be able to become farm operators without the burden of mortgage debt. A whole class of current sharecroppers would become small farm business owners.

3. Reverse consolidation and restore degraded farmland

Industrial farming is the major driver of the environmental and economic crises in American food production. The farm consolidation trend that emerged after Earl Butz’s tenure at USDA has been most extreme in the commodity croplands of the Midwest. Many of the same areas with the highest areas on farm consolidation have also experienced the highest rates of erosion and soil degradation.

These same areas have experienced the most extreme wetland losses resulting from agricultural development. As a result of the wetland losses, these areas also experience some of the worst annual flooding, which is being exacerbated by climate change.

[125]

[126]

Wetland soils store more carbon than almost any other type of soil.[127] To combat climate change, it is imperative that wetlands are restored in the agricultural Midwest. In other areas, reforestation will be more desirable.

Restoring wetlands and forests will help farmers and the general public by capturing floodwaters and reintroducing natural predators that can reduce the need for pesticides.[128] Both wetlands and forests provide for increased hunting opportunities. Forests produce timber and wild foods like mushrooms. Wetlands not only serve as habitat for freshwater fish, they improve water quality by filtering farm runoff.[129] But without a financial incentive to restore wetlands or forests or extensive federal regulation, farmers will continue to plant “fencerow to fencerow.”[130]

By expanding federal ownership of farmland and re-leasing it in smaller plots, the government can help reverse the trend of consolidation that has forced so many people out of farming and small business ownership. If each lease contains provisions to restore wetlands, forests, or other carbon sinks, the U.S. agricultural system can be one of the most important solutions to climate change while providing new opportunities for diversified revenue.

4. Protect land from commodification and real estate development

Foreign corporations and Wall Street investors will continue to invest in farmland ownership for as long as it is profitable, but they aren’t the only buyers looking for farmland. The American Farmland Trust has documented the amount of farmland that has been lost to suburban development. More than 31 million acres of farmland was lost to development between 1992 and 2012.[131]

The continued loss of farmland endangers the nation’s food security. Nearly all of these transactions are between private actors and beyond the control of any government agency. Municipalities and counties could limit development through local zoning laws, but most permit conversion of agriculture lands to real estate development to increase their tax revenue and attract private infrastructure investment.[132] Buying farmland could protect it forever from speculative investment and real estate development and ensure that the United States is able to feed itself in the future.

Existing models of federally owned farmland

The U.S. government already permits extensive food production on federal lands, though it should be noted that not all of it is environmentally sustainable. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) allows 18,000 permit holders to graze livestock on 155 million acres of land.[133] The United States Forest Service (USFS) allows another 6,250 permit holders to graze livestock on 193 million acres. In addition to BLM and USFS, other federal agencies including National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense allow for grazing on a total of four million acres.[134] BLM’s grazelands alone account for seven percent of all land in the United States.

While most of this food production is on non-irrigated grasslands in the Western United States, the federal government also allows for for-profit crop production on some of its public lands.

1. Cuyahoga Valley National Park

Cuyahoga Valley National Park is a patchwork of 33,000 acres of forested hills and farmland in the area along the Cuyahoga River between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio.[135] The park was designated a national recreational area in 1974 but did not become a national park until 2000.[136] Just before it became surrounded by protected land, the Cuyahoga River had gained national notoriety for being heavily polluted. The river regularly caught on fire and is often cited as a catalyst for the creation of the Clean Water Act and the first Earth Day.[137][138]

Long before it was ever a symbol of environmental degradation, Indigenous people had been living and hunting on the land on for more than 12,000 years. The original inhabitants, whose names we don’t know, lived and farmed in and around the site of the park until the 1600s.[139] The Lenape and several other tribes were forced off their lands in the East Coast by settler-colonists and relocated to the Cuyahoga Valley in the 17th and 18th centuries.[140] Just 10 years after signing the Treaty of Greenville which promised the Cuyahoga Valley to the Lenape, the United States government broke its promise and forced the Lenape to leave the area in 1805.[141] Settler-colonists continued to farm in the area until present day, save those that were converted in the 20th Century for residential development.

Part of the reason the park was created was to protect against urban sprawl from neighboring Cleveland and Akron.[142] The government acquired the land piece of by piece, which took decades. By 1986, just 14,000 acres had been acquired, which was less than half of the planned total area.[143] The process was mired by disputes over the use of eminent domain to expropriate land and the question of whether homes in the park area would be razed.[144]

In 1999, just before the area officially became a national park, Countryside Food and Farms was created to help preserve the agricultural character of the area.[145] The organization worked with the National Park Service to identify 14 farms within the park to be rehabilitated and then rented out the land to private farmers who live and work in the park. Ten farms are currently leased and produce a variety of goods including fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, and flowers.

The farmers sign long-term leases (typically 60 years) and must use NPS-approved agricultural practices that limit pesticide use and other destructive practices.[146] The model lease uses a formula to determine fair market rent for the housing and another formula to determine a fluctuating rent based on a fair share of the farm’s profits that factor in the farmer’s stewardship contributions. The farmers also agree to participate in weekly farmers markets and open their farms for educational events. After two decades, the program is going strong, and the CEO of Countryside would like to expand the model to other parks.[147]

2. Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex

The Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge Complex is a network of public lands in northern California and southern Oregon managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Bureau of Reclamation under the Department of the Interior.[148] Two of the parks within that complex, Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge in California and Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge in California and Oregon, allow for farming.[149] The Tule Lake refuge permits row crop farming under the Kuchel Act.[150] Currently about 37,000 acres, or about 40 percent of the parks’ land, is farmed, with about 10 percent that land in row crops.[151]

There are two models of farming within the parks: cooperative agriculture and direct leasing to farmers. Under the cooperative agriculture model, FWS permits crop production in exchange for a portion of the crops (at least 25 percent) being left as food for the abundant waterfowl on the park. No money changes hands, and FWS maintains total control of the land. It’s a model used in other wildlife refuges around the country.[152]

Under the direct lase model, farmers pay rent to the Bureau of Reclamation in five-year increments.[153] The program has been in place since 1914 and produces mostly grains.[154] The model lease prohibits the use of pesticides and requires other conservation measures.[155] Park managers have worked with the farmers to periodically flood their crop fields and create wetland habitat for the park’s waterfowl. Farmers have discovered that the flooding increases soil fertility, naturally controls weeds, and increases crop yields.[156] Farmers in the basin have also seen increased prices for their crops because the flooding technique allows them to immediately qualify for organic certification. Other farmers in surrounding areas have reportedly begun to emulate the park’s farmers and are converting their own operations to organic.[157]

3. Minuteman National Historic Park

Minuteman National Park sits on about 1,000 acres of land near the towns of Lexington and Concord outside of Boston. The park has been managed by the National Park Service since 1959.[158] For years, it leased five acres of land on an annual basis to a local farm. The park initially leased the land for free but eventually imposed a rental fee of $40 per acre.[159] The farm supported a 200-member community-supported agriculture program and four fulltime employees.

The farm and national park eventually cut ties over a disagreement about whether the farm should be leased long-term or used as an incubator to support other beginning famers.[160] The park was also reluctant to allow agricultural improvements like a greenhouse or irrigation system. The experiment at Minuteman showed that the public farmland model can be used to support quasi-urban agriculture and that even a small amount of land can support a productive small farming business. It also shows that short-term leases may not provide farmers with the stability needed to create sustainable operations.

ISSUES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPLEMENTATION

1. Indigenous Rights

As earlier sections have noted, all land in the United States was stolen from indigenous people. First Nations should have a say in what happens to industrial farmland. It may be that the best course of action is for the federal government to return some or all of this land to the tribes that have claims to it. It may be possible for First Nations to comanage this land with the federal government. The proposal in this paper is not in opposition to land repatriation/rematriation or respecting existing treaty rights. It can be used as a complimentary policy for restoring degraded industrial farmland and increasing land access for historically disadvantaged farmers.

2. Funding

As with any ambitious federal program, there will be those who balk at the cost. The total acreage of U.S. farms is 899,500,000 acres.[161] Using the USDA estimates of average cost of $3,160 per acre, this amounts to $2.842 trillion. So even if the U.S. government bought every last acre of land in the country, the cost would still be less than half of the federal reserve bank bailout in 2008.[162]

The costs of not doing anything to combat climate change are too great to contemplate. But even ignoring the costs of climate inaction, the return on investment of purchasing federal farmland will likely justify the cost. The quantifying of ecosystem services is helping us properly value wetlands and forests. And even with below-market leases, the revenue generated by rental income will more than pay for the purchase price of the land if the government holds it indefinitely.

3. Inadequate rural infrastructure

This paper argues that transferring our industrial agriculture system to sustainable food production will require the creation of new farm jobs and a repopulation of rural America. Unfortunately, rural hospitals have been closing,[163] rural roads are crumbling,[164] and many rural grocery stores have shuttered.[165] Some areas are not well equipped to handle a sudden increase in population.

When North Dakota’s shale oil production attracted a population boom, the state wasn’t able to handle the influx and experienced housing shortages and traffic overloads.[166] But North Dakota was eventually able to leverage the increased tax base and revenues to invest in local infrastructure.[167] The need for more housing in rural areas presents opportunities to build more energy efficient housing stock, potentially in collaboration with the agencies responsible for implementing the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act when it passes.[168]

Many rural cities and counties rely on property taxes for revenue. Luckily, the federal government already has a program in place (PILT) to reimburse local governments for property tax revenues that the federal government would otherwise be exempt from paying.[169] Consumption taxes like sales tax would increase along with population increases. Therefore, a Green New Deal for Public Farmland could provide a much-needed economic stimulus to rural states in the form of an increased tax base.

4. Political opposition

Many members of Congress are ideologically opposed to federal ownership of land and have fought for years to sell off the federal government’s vast portfolio of public lands in the western United States.[170] The current head of the Bureau of Land Management, which owns vast swaths of federal lands, long campaigned against federal ownership of land and once wrote an article titled, ““The Federal Government Should Follow the Constitution and Sell Its Western Lands.”[171] The backlash from this faction will be intense. So too will the opposition from groups representing industrial agriculture interests that benefit from the current system.

On the other hand, the policy itself presents new opportunities to organize farmers and farmworkers who would benefit from such a policy. Just as the Green New Deal has become a rallying point for climate and labor activists, a call for publicly available affordable farmland can become a policy that can bring together environmental advocates and farm/farmworker organizations. And if a Green New Deal for Public Farmland was successfully implemented, the demographic shifts in rural populations could lead to a lasting political realignment not seen since the original New Deal.[172]

5. Capital flight

The United States must recognize that in a globalized economy, it is possible that existing corporate landowners, both foreign and domestic, may one day suddenly choose to withdraw their money from the United States. The process of money rapidly leaving a country due to an economic event is called “capital flight.”[173] One of the economic events that can trigger capital flight is tax increases or economic uncertainty within the country where the money and assets are located. For example, capital flight was observed in South Africa after the fall of apartheid.[174]

The Green New Deal will require unprecedented levels of government spending to save human lives and prevent catastrophic losses to the economy. Its proponents say it could also create 20 million jobs.[175] Though the Green New Deal has not been fully fleshed out into proposed bills (with some notable exceptions like the $180 billion Green New Deal for Public Housing Act),[176] the most ambitious of the plans proposed by 2020 candidates for President estimated $16 trillion in spending.[177] Government spending is generally thought to be inflationary, but raising taxes would offset this inflation.[178] Green New Deal plans typically call for raising taxes on the wealthy and large greenhouse gas emitters, who are one and the same.[179]

The United States must be prepared to combat capital flight. Some ideas that have been offered include collaborating on tax policy with developing nations that may be tax havens[180] and increasing public ownership of corporations.[181]

6. Competing/complimentary models

Both community land trusts and the use of conservation easements have been successful models that are preserving farmland and protecting the environment. Sometimes these two approaches are used together.

Community land trusts are nonprofit, community-based organizations designed to ensure community stewardship of land.[182] They typically purchase land (or receive outright donations of land) and impose some sort of collective management that ensures affordability, sustainability, and public access.

Sometimes land trusts also place easements on the property that legally restrict the permitted uses of the property forever. One tool land trusts sometimes use is an Option to Purchase at Agricultural Value, which is designed to permanently tie the value of the land to its profitability in agriculture. This tool can keep land affordable for young and beginning farmers.

The problem with community land trusts is that they rely on individual donations and grant money and lack the federal government’s power to collect taxes or — most importantly — to print money. Community land trusts lack the necessary capital to purchase enough land for the nation to achieve its decarbonization targets. If the community land trust ever loses funding, the land or the right to manage land may have to be sold to an entity not interested in conservation.

Conservation easements are voluntary, legal agreements that permanently limit uses of land in order to protect its conservation values.[183] Typically, a land trust or government pays a private landowner to set aside a portion of their farmland for wetland or forest restoration. Some agricultural easements protect the land from development or require certain soil and water conservation practices. The easement runs with the land, so subsequent landowners are bound to the legal restrictions of the easement. The 2018 Farm Bill allocated $450 million for conservation easements.[184]

An estimated 40 million acres of land is protected by conservation easements.[185] The land must be monitored to ensure that landowners are complying with the terms of the easement, but easements can be difficult to enforce. Conservation easement holders may lack monitoring and enforcement capacity, and their only recourse for a violation of the easement is to sue under contract or tort law, which can be a lengthy and expensive process. Furthermore, if the easement holder is a private land trust, the easement exists only as long as the private land trust exists.[186] Federal ownership can exist in perpetuity.

Conservation easements cost less money that purchasing land outright, but they also freeze the use of the land in the moment in which the easement is granted. If climate change alters the character of the land, there is no way to modify the conservation easement. Some lands that are currently subject to wetland/forest easements may eventually be better suited for agriculture, or vice versa. Federal ownership of the land would build in flexibility with regards to its ideal usage because all leases eventually expire or can be renegotiated at any time.

CONCLUSION

We have no time to waste when it comes to decarbonizing our agricultural system if we want to achieve the IPCC’s greenhouse gas targets in time to avoid climate catastrophe. The meaningful reforms required to decarbonize the agricultural system will produce immeasurable other ecological benefits that will improve the nation’s food security.

Federal land reform will be the most effective and swift method of transforming our agricultural system and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Creating more access to land will create thousands or even millions of jobs and provide a necessary economic lifeline to a struggling sector that is too important to fail. There are already successful models of leasing public farmland that can be replicated and applied to existing farmland. Because so much of this farmland will be on the market in the coming years, it’s imperative that decision makers act quickly to empower federal agencies to start buying this land. The future of the nation’s farm economy and the planet’s health can still be saved.

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[64] Id.

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