Land Access Policy Research

Examining policies and programs that help get beginning farmers and ranchers onto land.

American Farmland Trust partners with Indiana University Food & Agrarian Systems to study and promote programs that financially support incoming farmers and ranchers in their pursuit to access land. 

New, young, and beginning farmers and ranchers face extreme challenges to enter agriculture and build thriving operations. Above all, steep land prices and increased competition for land often price out many new farmers and stifle opportunities to secure land tenure.

In the face of these challenges, public officials are innovating policy tools to facilitate landownership and long-term secure leasing.

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We call this array of policy innovations Land Access Policy Incentives or LAPIs.

The materials on this page share the results of our research into LAPIs in the U.S. Our research began in 2021 and will continue until 2026.  

Our goal is to understand the reach and effectiveness of three types of LAPI approaches led by states or the federal government. We hope the findings can be used to improve existing LAPIs and guide future program design to improve the viability of farms, ranches and our food systems.

Land Access Policy Incentives research is supported by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture: Agriculture and Food Research Initiative-Agriculture Economics and Rural Communities Program Area, Small- and Medium-Sized Farms priority area, project award no. 2021-68006-33892.  And North Central Region SARE program, agreement number 2022-38640-37486 and project number ENC22-218. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and service provider. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy.