Identity Politics Are About to Destroy California Farming
In 21 days, the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force will release a report of recommendations for the Governor on how to increase “land equity” across our state. But, while the task force claims it is working to help right historical injustices and support socially disadvantaged farmers, their recommendations are nothing short of racial discrimination and further regulatory burden. We are peeling back all the layers today and exposing the very dangerous and radical agenda being proposed to our Legislature, and instead calling on our lawmakers to support current farmers, regardless of their identity or race.
What is Land Equity?
What is the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force? Back in 2022, the Task Force was established as part of the state’s budget legislation, through the passage of Assembly Bill 179.[1] It was created under the oversight of the California Strategic Growth Council – whatever that is – and just listen to how their website defines the task force:
“The Task Force is made up of thirteen appointed members working together to identify and address barriers and opportunities to equitably increase agricultural land access and stable tenure for Native American tribes and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in California. The members will submit a report to the legislature and Governor by January 1, 2026, that includes their recommendations on how to address the agricultural land equity crisis.”[2]
Basically, this task force was created to work over the course of 3 years to come up with and then give recommendations to the governor on how to increase equity in agricultural land across the state. That deadline is fast approaching as 2025 comes to a close, which means that in just 21 days, their report will need to be finalized and submitted. Oh, and they were given a million dollars to do it, so that’s great.
Now, you might be thinking, what sparked the need for the creation of this task force? What do they mean when they reference the “agricultural land equity crisis”? Well, never fear, because the California Strategic Growth Council has addressed this question for us as well. They say:
“Native American tribes and socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers in California from many backgrounds have faced centuries of systemic discrimination, displacement and dispossession of their land. The 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture shows that 86% of farms in California are owned by white producers.”[3]
So, there you have it! The Council believes that it is a problem that most farms in California are owned by white people. They never explain why this is a problem, and they cite zero modern laws that prevent anyone else from buying land. Instead, they rely on the assumption that if you read that statistic, you’ll immediately demand fewer white farmers. That’s not analysis or evidence, it’s pure ideology.
Now, in advance of the January 1st deadline, the Task Force put out a draft report of its preliminary recommendations for how the state of California should address this “inequity,” and that is what we need to look at today, because the findings are legitimately shocking and concerning, especially in light of the challenges our farmers already face in our state.
Preliminary Report Recommendations
The task force’s recommendations fall under a few main goals, so let me break them down for you and walk through what this would change in current practice.
The first goal is return ancestral lands back to tribal nations across California. This would make land-back policies a statewide initiative. The key move to achieve this goal would be to transfer state-owned ancestral lands directly to tribal nations, without requiring tribes to buy the land at market value or use intermediaries like nonprofits or land trusts. This means the state would give land to tribes – not sell it, not lease it, not require payment of any kind – and it would give it to tribes without going through the usual process of an intermediary who vets tribal claims, negotiates with current tenants, ensures compliance with state laws, etc. This land would go directly from the state of California to a tribal nation.
Right off the bat, this is problematic. The report forces a broad requirement to just return state lands to tribes, but it doesn’t give any specifics on how to do that, who to return it to, of how to handle complexities that arise in the process.
What happens to current leaseholders? To the farmers, ranchers, vineyards, recreation operators, conservation groups – none of this is addressed. What happens to the public’s right of access? State parks, trails, camping areas – the public’s rights are not discussed. How do tribal governments handle environmental regulation? Tribal nations are sovereign; CEQA and state resource protections may not apply. What about revenue? Some state lands generate income. Their loss affects counties, school districts, water districts, the state general fund, and more. The report gives no fiscal impact analysis. How are overlapping claims resolved? California has many tribes with overlapping ancestral territories. What precedent does this set? If identity-based entitlement to state land is accepted here, what stops similar claims from other groups, historical communities, descendants of displaced communities, or future expansion beyond “ancestral land”? This is just a complete disaster, and it’s only the first recommendation.
The second goal is to conserve agricultural land in California. Admittedly, as a general goal, this sounds good. We should conserve and protect agricultural land! We need it. But once you read the fine print in the bill, it becomes about something entirely different.
Here’s what it actually does (below sourced from the following citation)[4]:
First, it prioritizes certain racial or identity groups, not based on whether they have farming experience or a viable business plan, but simply based on group membership. These groups would get special access to state programs, state assistance, and even below-market leases on state-owned farmland. The report never analyzes whether these recipients are qualified agricultural producers, or whether these policies would keep the land productive. Second, it requires mandatory conservation easements on farmland. That means once the land is locked under an easement, you can’t change how it’s used, often forever. That might sound like protection, but in practice it can mean farmers lose the ability to adapt their operations, improve their land, or make the changes needed to stay economically viable. The report never shows these restrictions would support healthy, productive farmland.
Third, the state wants to lease out about 300,000 acres of its own grazing land at rates so low they don’t even cover the cost of managing the land. So, taxpayers would be subsidizing uneconomic leases that don’t pay for themselves, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife, which manages much of that land, would be stuck with the bill. Fourth, the report recommends zoning changes that would limit what landowners can do with their land, which almost always lowers land values. If you tell farmers they can only use their land one way, and never develop or diversify, the value of that land goes down, and so do the local tax revenues that fund schools and services.
The biggest problem with this so-called “land conservation” is that the report assumes all these restrictions will “protect” farmland, but it never proves that the people gaining access to the land can successfully run farms, or that the land will stay productive under these new limits. And as we will cover more in-depth in a minute, California is already idling millions of acres of farmland because of water shortages and regulatory pressure. Adding more restrictions could accelerate that trend.
Now, the third and final goal that we will look at is the most important and most dangerous – and that is the overarching recommendation to change the zoning and land-rights laws to favor so-called “socially disadvantaged farmers.” The Task Force recommends that local governments be incentivized to adopt zoning that favors leasing agricultural land to racial minority producers, restricts who can purchase private land, limits how the land can be used, and imposes minimum lease lengths that tie up land for years. These rules would directly reshape local property markets and local authority – and it would do all of it in favor of Black, Latino, and Native American farmers.[5]
These changes would distort land markets and limit land access for everyone. When the government dictates who can lease, how long they must lease, what the land can be used for, and which identity groups get preferential access, it affects land values and individual ownership rights. The consequences are predictable: land becomes harder to sell, harder to lease flexibly, less attractive to finance, and more difficult for future farmers of any race to purchase. Even current owners’ property rights would be restricted.
And despite all this intervention, there’s no evidence it helps farming. The report doesn’t show that increasing “land equity” produces increased crop yields, improved soil health, better ecological outcomes, or stronger farm profitability. Without evidence, the risk is that these policies could actually harm California’s existing billion-dollar agricultural economy, one of the largest and most productive in the world, for no benefit at all.
This is just wrong, and it leads to more inequity than already exists. Proponents of this “land equity” agenda think that it’s wrong to favor one group over another – they think it’s wrong if there are more white farmers than minority farmers. But to fix that, they begin to favor other groups, minority groups, over existing or future white farmers. It doesn’t make sense, and it has serious constitutional and moral questions.
How to Think About Land-Back Policies
When it comes to responding to these recommendations, there is a lot to consider and unpack here, because there are just so many red flags and issues at play. First let’s look at the issue of land redistribution to tribal communities. Like we just talked about, the draft report cites, “more than two centuries of land theft, violence, and discrimination,”[6] as well as historical injustices as the basis for the idea of redistributing land to tribal nations. In fact, the report uses the term “cultural humility” five times to describe how to approach the issue. So, do we need to just have this “cultural humility” when thinking about granting land to tribal nations? Should we feel guilty about California’s past, and let that guilt drive our policy priorities? This can be a tough issue to speak to, and a confusing one to approach logically, biblically, and prudently, all at the same time. I want to give you some guiding principles for how to think about the “stolen land” narrative.
Land ownership is a fundamental pillar of liberty in America. It is deeply important for citizens of our country and residents of our state today to have private property rights and ownership of the land they live on and faithfully farm. Any policy that changes that ownership should trigger our suspicion and cause us to pause and ask questions. State-mandated redistribution, especially when framed as being done for the purpose of correcting past injustice, has serious implications for us. Under the rule of law in our country, our current legal frameworks, treaties, contracts, leases, and titles matter. Policies that rely on vague historical grievances without clear legal claims are often a sign of current injustice being done for the sake of virtue signaling.
There are three categories of tribal land claims that we can consider.
1. The first is actual treaty obligations. If the United States legally broke a treaty with a tribal nation, then the government should honor its contracts and obligations. How? Usually, the remedy would be federal compensation or a specific negotiated return – but blanket land transfers are not included in that. This category looks specifically at the contractual obligations of the government and refuses to make decisions based on broad-sweeping historical guilt. The California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force is not doing that. They are not pointing to specific treaties or legal obligations broken by the California government. They are assuming that we all understand collectively that we have just harmed tribal nations into perpetuity and forever owe them restitution.
2. The second category is individual claims of injustice. Again, in this case, if there is a case to be brought then this is why we have a justice system. These can be resolved via litigation, a formal claims process, and direct compensation for proven, legally documented losses. But again, the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force is not doing this either. This is group-based generational claims without individualized evidence. It is a retroactive collective reparation model that has nothing to do with tangible, legally proven harms.
3. The last category is present-day tribal sovereignty. Whether you agree with the approach or not, tribes are often given self-governance on existing reservations and some level of freedom from government interference. But while one could support de-regulating tribal businesses and land management, this does not have to be done through redistribution of land by the state to tribes, or forcing local communities to bear the cost of “historical healing.”
So really, what we see in all of these potential situations related to tribal claims is that the best way to consider them is on an individual basis, with legal basis in question and fair compensation available – the same way that any legal or property dispute is handled in our court system.
But I want to take it a step further, because tangible land disputes aren’t really what’s at play here. The California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force is just citing broad “historical grievances.” That can feel hard to respond to because guilt is a very powerful thing, and no one wants to come off as uncaring about events that happened in history. But we need to be honest about the past, and we need to be honest about American conquest. Every group in human history has experienced conquest, migration, displacement. No region on earth, including the Americas, was a static map of permanent, unchanging ownership. It’s the history of the world, and was even the history of native tribes before America was formed. Before Europeans arrived, indigenous groups were not a single unified nation. There were tribal wars, land disputes, and the tribes that conquered were the ones who then had claim to the land at the time. If historical displacement is the standard for restitution, then every tribe displaced by another tribe also has a claim. Where would the hierarchy of claims end? How far back do we go? Who adjudicates ancient conflicts with no living witnesses and incomplete records?
You cannot rewind human history and restore every people to every piece of land they ever occupied. Civilization has always evolved through conflict, negotiation, and cultural blending. If land claims from centuries ago can override current legal ownership, then property rights become unstable — not just for tribes, but for everyone. Modern governments should focus on issues of present law, current ownership, the functioning of today’s economy, and the rights and responsibilities of living citizens – not symbolic attempts to “restore” historical boundaries that were never fixed or agreed upon in the first place. This isn’t to dismiss the reality of past injustices, but it is to reject the idea that history alone provides a workable basis for modern land policy.
Additionally, land-back policies often presume that if you are a tribal member today, then you are automatically entitled to land, regardless of individual circumstances, contribution, or demonstrated need. But this is identity-based redistribution that undermines merit and individual rights. Land is not being allocated based on income, demonstrated land stewardship, individual legal claims, or specific historical documentation – ownership would stem from simply being part of a tribe, group membership in essence. But if belonging to a specific ancestor-defined group is sufficient to receive land, that is a form of race-based entitlement. Government policies should apply equally to every citizen, without racial classifications, ancestry-based preferences, collective guilt or collective entitlement. If a 23-year-old Californian with no personal historical connection to a specific parcel is entitled to that land solely because of bloodline enrollment in a tribe, this violates the American principle of individual equality under the law.
A tribal member in 2025 may live in an urban area, have no family history connected to the specific land, be economically secure, have no personal claim to displacement – yet they would still be considered entitled. Meanwhile, non-tribal farmers who have stewarded leased lands for generations, and who rely on them economically, would lose access. This replaces historical harm with present-day harm, rather than addressing documented injustices through targeted, individualized remedies. As a country, you cannot retroactively correct all historical injustices without creating new ones. Public policy must be based on present-day law and evidence, not collective guilt.
If land-back ideas are justified on broad grievance grounds, we are left to ask: Where does it end? Who decides which groups have valid historical claims? Why only tribes? Why not descendants of Spanish Californios? Early rancheros? Chinese laborers? Again, it isn’t rooted in actual, tangible examples of injustice – just the broad-brushed idea that native tribes had legal claim to the land California is on simply because they were here first.
Hidden Race-Based Discrimination
And really, that leads into the main problem with these recommendations collectively, and that is they introduce race-based discrimination into farming practices. Whether it’s ancestral land claims or agricultural land redistribution to BIPOC, Black, and Latino farmers, the principal behind all of it is that government is using racial identity as a qualification for land access.
This is clearly a problem in our country, because we have fought for centuries to overcome race-based discrimination. The 14th Amendment says that government cannot treat people differently based on race unless there is a compelling state interest, and the policy is narrowly tailored. When the state explicitly prioritizes land access or grants based on race, this triggers the highest level of constitutional scrutiny. California would need to prove not only that the current disparities in land ownership are directly caused by intentional discrimination by the state, but also that these new race-based rules are the only way to fix them. Courts have repeatedly said that’s an almost impossible burden. And we see that the California Strategic Growth Council didn’t even do that when it established the Task Force back in 2022. They just cite high rates of agricultural land ownership among white farmers as a problem, but they never cite compelling evidence that shows this disparity is based on some sort of injustice or intentional discrimination.
Even outside of the 14th amendment, we can go a step further and look at our own state’s constitution. Proposition 209 added Article I Section 31 to the California Constitution in 1996, which says, “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”[7] Our state constitution is even clearer and more specific than the federal constitution, in that the state can’t give preference in government programs, leases, or contracts based on race. Yet these new agricultural recommendations explicitly do exactly that by prioritizing grants, leases, and zoning access for certain racial groups.
So, when you hear the Task Force talk about ‘equity,’ what they’re really doing is embedding race-based preferences into land allocation, zoning, and agricultural policy. Not only is that likely unconstitutional under both federal and California law, it also conflicts with basic principles of fairness and property rights that every Californian depends on. This means that any of these “recommendations” that our legislature attempts to implement through new laws will likely get tied up in court, wasting years, legislative energy, and taxpayer dollars.
Current Challenges Facing California Farmers
One other point we have to consider is that these “land equity” recommendations are coming to California at a time when farmers across the state are already facing severe challenges. In the five year period from 2017 to 2022, California saw a 10.5% decline in state farms due to issues like “water shortages, regulatory burdens, and soaring compliance costs that have risen as much as 1,400% for some growers over two decades.”[8] As the costs of maintaining farms and producing agriculture have risen dramatically, farmers have chosen to leave the state. That has major implications for our state because as farmers leave, so do their outputs and their profits. Per the US Department of Agriculture, dairy production has declined in California in the last 20 years, with the number of dairy cows decreasing by 160,000 since 2008.[9] Plus, specifically related to agricultural land, since the 1980’s we have lost 7.95 million acres[10] due to large-scale renewable energy projects like solar and wind farms, regulations like the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, restricted farmland for ecological purposes like salmon recovery, further regulatory and economic pressure.
Here's the thing that our lawmakers and representatives need to understand: farming is not a social experiment. It’s not a diversity initiative. It’s not a symbolic gesture. Farming is an economic system that keeps millions of people alive. And when you undermine that system in the name of identity politics, everyone loses – not just the farmers you pushed aside, but every Californian who depends on them.
This Task Force report is the perfect example of what happens when policymaking becomes detached from reality. It’s full of lofty language about “equity” and “restoration,” but none of it deals with the actual conditions farmers are living under. None of it addresses water scarcity, regulatory overload, statewide acreage loss, or looming food security challenges. In fact, it makes all of those problems worse!
If California genuinely cared about stewardship of the land, it would start by respecting the people who have stewarded it for generations, the farmers who know how to grow food, who actually keep this state running, and who right now are begging for the state to stop making their job harder. They would stop worrying so much about what race they are and start realizing that inequity does not automatically mean inequality. But today, equality is being replaced by racial preferences, and competence is being replaced by ideology.
That is not how you protect farmland. That is not how you build a sustainable agricultural future. And that is definitely not how you run a state that relies on its farmers for food, jobs, and economic stability.
As this Task Force prepares to release its final report in 21 days, we must urge our lawmakers to reject their recommendations. We must urge them to support our farmers and help to expand agriculture across California through de-regulation and not based on racial discrimination. Because unless we change course, we’re going to wake up one day and realize the people we pushed out were the very people we depended on most.
References:
[1] Wilson, T.J., and Kip Tom. “The Real Costs of California’s Agricultural Land Heist.” The America First Policy Institute, November 25, 2025. https://www.americafirstpolicy.com/issues/the-real-costs-of-californias-agricultural-land-heist.
[2] Hawkins, Nelson, Ruth Dahlquist-Willard Ph.D., Thea Rittenhouse, Qi Zhou, and California Strategic Growth Council. “Agricultural Land Equity Initiative.” Agricultural Land Equity Initiative, n.d. https://sgc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/20240823-ALEI-FactSheet.pdf.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Wilson and Tom, “The Real Costs of California’s Agricultural Land Heist.”
[5] Ibid.
[6] California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force. “Report and Recommendations of the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force,” January 6, 2025. http://sgc.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/20250601-June_2025_Draft_Report.pdf.
[7] CA Constitution, art. I, sec. 31.
[8] Tom, Kip, Mike Garcia, and T.J. Wilson. “California at a Crossroads: Farmers and the ‘Land Equity’ Task Force.” The Daily Wire, November 25, 2025. https://www.dailywire.com/news/california-at-a-crossroads-farmers-and-the-land-equity-task-force?author=Kip+Tom+Mike+Garcia+and+TJ+Wilson&category=News&elementPosition=8&row=0&rowType=Vertical+List&title=California+At+A+Crossroads%3A+Farmers+And+The+%E2%80%98Land+Equity%E2%80%99+Task+Force.
[9] Wilson and Tom, “The Real Costs of California’s Agricultural Land Heist.”
[10] Ibid.
