California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom’s “agricultural equity” advisers are finalizing recommendations for the state to redistribute farmland to non-white Californians and Native American tribes through land transfers and financial assistance programs that exclusively benefit racial minorities. [emphasis, links added]
For more than two years, the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force—part of Newsom’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation—has crafted a set of policy recommendations to “equitably increase agricultural land access.”
It will deliver a final report to Newsom and the California legislature, cementing those recommendations by the end of the year.
The task force’s latest draft report, published ahead of the task force’s August meeting earlier this month, calls to deploy state resources to give non-white Californians a leg up in acquiring farmland, an effort it portrays as a form of reparations.
The report says California should gift large amounts of state-owned lands to Native Americans, adopt indigenous knowledge practices for land management, and provide low-interest loans, downpayment assistance, and grants to fund land acquisition to black farmers.
Those and other policies, according to the task force, will help solve California’s “agricultural land equity crisis.”
Land ownership statistics prove such discrimination exists, according to the report, which laments that “82% of privately held farmland in California is owned by producers who identify as white.”
“The wealth of the U.S., including that of its agriculture industry, has been built on stolen land and the forced labor of California Tribal Nations, enslaved African Americans, and other exploited communities, who have been systematically excluded from land ownership and wealth-building opportunities,” the report says.
“Addressing these past and continuing harms requires active efforts to ensure that all people have secure and affordable access to viable land for the care and cultivation of food, fiber, medicine, and culturally valuable resources, free from systemic barriers and racial disparities.”
California Farmers are in great distress. Newsome stole the fire victims donations, so they can’t afford to rebuild.. then sent them huge tax bills and violation notices.. to steal their land.. planned before fires.. evidence? Search palesades smart city.. search open canals in…
— Bonnie Baby🌹George my Daddy (@BonnieBabyLovie) August 14, 2025
The initiative marks the latest left-wing attempt to pursue reparations through the agriculture industry.
The Biden administration and congressional Democrats, for example, allocated $5 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act to grant loan forgiveness to non-white farmers, though that initiative was held up in the courts.
In a separate program, the administration authorized more than $2 billion in payments to non-white farmers and ranchers whose applications for loans had been rejected by the USDA—rejections that the Biden administration chalked up to racial discrimination.
The initiative also comes as Newsom attempts to distance himself from some left-wing social positions ahead of a widely expected presidential run in 2028.
Newsom in March criticized the term “Latinx,” mocked Democrats who introduce themselves with their pronouns, and said it’s “deeply unfair” for biological men to play in women’s sports.
At the same time, his administration has pursued some of the nation’s most aggressive DEI policies.
While the Agricultural Land Equity Task Force doesn’t recommend cash payments to Native American and black landowners, it does call for similarly aggressive measures.
Citing the colonization of California by Europeans, the task force’s draft report concludes that Native Americans should receive tens of thousands of acres of land from the state government.
It recommends that the state fund programs to support land return and acquisition for tribes.
And it calls on the state to offer financial incentives to exclusively benefit minority landowners, including a low-interest, forgivable loan program and a downpayment assistance program.
Top photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Read rest at Free Beacon
Yes it has worked out so well in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Venezuela. And pretty much every other place it has been implemented. Then there is the fact that it’s straight up racism and bigotry.
Ah, Rhodesia was once the breadbasket for much of Africa until Mugabe took over and kicked the white farmers out and giving their land to blacks who had no idea how to farm the land. So now it’s a basket case. This not unlike what the soviets did to Ukraine and elsewhere in the Soviet Union in “collectivizing” the farmland–led to mass starvation.
One of the Democrats lame excuses for this initiative is that the land was stolen. That could not have been the case for African Americans. That also could not have been the case for immigrants from Mexico or their descendants.
The liberals have been trying to have give ways for non-whites for decades. During the Arab oil embargo there was a plan by some Democrats to have gas rationing. Part of this would distribute an overly generous number of ration coupons to black ghettos who then would be free to sell them.
Newsom’s “agricultural equity” advisers… How many of these advisers, who all make well over $100K per year plus great benefits, does California have? And what work do they do each day? Do they survey these black and native Americans to see how many of them want to farm? My guess is that few are interested in such a very hard career.
Also what are “indigenous knowledge practices”? I don’t recall that these people produced vast amounts of crops to feed more than their local tribe. And anybody who sits in an office thinks that farmers make lots of money. Every year they are at the whims of the weather and in California the whims of the state government in water allocation–gotta keep those smelt with lots of fresh water while farms wilt with no water.
As of the 2022 Census of Agriculture, Black or African American farmers made up less than 0.4% of the total agricultural producers in California.
Data from the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture shows that Asian producers make up about 5% of all producers in California.
Everyone else would have to be white since there are only three races.
Newsom will reject this if he still wants to run for president in 2028.