California At a Crossroads: Farmers and the ‘Land Equity’ Task Force

Originally published by the Daily Wire

California stands at a crossroads. The state must choose: protect the farmers who feed America or surrender its fields to ideology and bureaucratic control. California’s allegiance to bureaucrats recently became clear with the release of the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force’s draft report. The report, released this summer, calls for redistributing farmland based on race. Framed as “equity,” the plan would use state power to favor some Californians over others in determining who can buy, lease, or work farmland. What it really represents is an unprecedented intrusion into private property rights, race-based discrimination, and a direct threat to the foundation of the state’s agricultural economy.

The Task Force says it wants to expand opportunities for minority farmers, but its recommendations rely on racial preferences rather than productivity, stewardship, or need. It proposes below-market leases, zoning changes favoring “priority producers,” and new easement rules that devalue land already owned and managed by families who have farmed it for generations. California would be picking winners and losers not by merit, but by race. The consequences would reach far beyond the Central Valley. California supports a $61-billion farm economy, producing more than 75% of America’s fruits and nuts.

The plan is not only misguided but also likely unconstitutional. Federal courts have already rejected race-based agricultural programs, such as the 2021 post-COVID USDA loan forgiveness initiative for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, because they violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The same flaw runs through these recommendations — characterizing individuals according to membership in race-based groups, and then prioritizing producers on that basis.

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