Recently Shuttered USDA Program Grantees Join Suit to Restore $125M+ in Illegally Canceled Grants

Washington, D.C. —

24 organizations and local governments who had grant agreements under the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access (LCM) Program have joined a lawsuit aiming to restore their illegally canceled grants. The new plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would reverse their grant terminations and compel the USDA to honor its grant agreements with them. In August 2025, the initial plaintiffs in this case whose grants were canceled in the same manner had their motion for a preliminary injunction granted by the court. 

The plaintiffs joining the USDN v. USDA case today are 2020 Farmers Collaborative, African Alliance of Rhode Island, Agraria Center for Regenerative Practice, Agrarian Trust, Black Oregon Land Trust, Center for Heirs’ Property, Cultivate Kansas City, Four Bands Community Fund, Heru Urban Farming, H.O.P.E For Small Farm Sustainability, Iowa Valley RC&D, Kansas Black Farmers Association, King County, WA, NDN Collective, NOFA-NJ, Ourspace World, RAFI, San Diego Food System Alliance, Sustainable Iowa Land Trust, THRIVE Santa Ana, Urban Oasis Project, Viva Farms, Workin Rootz, and World Farmers. 

The initial plaintiffs in the case are Agroecology Commons, the Institute on Agriculture and Trade Policy, Oakville Bluegrass Cooperative, Providence Farm Collective, and Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN). They are all represented by Earthjustice, Farmers Justice Center, and FarmSTAND. RAFI and Agrarian Trust are also represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center. The grants the new plaintiffs are suing to restore total $127 million. 

The USDA’s LCM Program was created to help the next generation of farmers do what has become nearly impossible: secure affordable farmland, capital, and markets. It was designed to invest in community-based, locally-led projects that provided down payment assistance, low-interest loans, technical guidance, beginning farmer training, equipment, infrastructure, cover crop seeds, procurement agreements, succession planning support, and more.

King County, Washington’s now-terminated LCM grant, for example, had helped about 120 new and beginning farmers to establish or expand businesses on County-owned farmland. NOFA-NJ’s grant went towards helping more people in New Jersey become organic grain farmers.

But for over a year, the Trump Administration systematically undermined the program. The USDA froze funding for months, withheld required approvals for core project activities for over a year, and failed to provide basic grant management communication for a majority of 2025. 

After over a year of obstruction, the USDA has now terminated 49 of 50 projects – essentially killing the federal program with the greatest potential to dismantle the steep barriers that young, beginning, and underserved producers are struggling to survive.

Termination letters to LCM grantees make vague references to “DEI preferences,” and include incorrect claims that the programs don’t align with congressional intent or that the grants represent “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Over the course of this litigation, the government has repeatedly failed to substantiate “waste, fraud and abuse” in terminated grants.  

USDN v. USDA was originally filed in June 2025. It alleges that following several 2025 Trump executive orders targeting climate action and efforts to support diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, USDA and DOGE “began engaging in a policy, pattern, and practice of unlawfully terminating federal grant awards.”

In August 2025, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction restoring six grants held by the plaintiffs at the time, and suggested that many more grants canceled in the same manner could be eligible for the same relief. It ordered DOGE and USDA to produce the administrative record of the termination process to help it determine whether relief for more USDA grantees was warranted. 

The documents the defendants have produced show that the “process” for finding grants the administration deemed worthy of termination was essentially a simple search through grant documents for words it associated with diversity, equity, inclusion, or climate change, as detailed in FarmSTAND’s Deep Dive resource on revelations from the record. The USDN plaintiffs have moved the court to order the defendants to complete the administrative record or to issue sanctions for failure to comply with their legal obligations.

“The USDA must be stopped from continuing its cruel rampage against underserved farmers and ranchers. USDA is continuing to unlawfully and unjustifiably terminate grants, most recently targeting those designed to help organizations provide land access and training to farmers, said Carrie Apfel, Deputy Managing Attorney, Sustainable Food and Farming program at Earthjustice. “As the court already recognized, these organizations and the communities they serve have suffered and will continue to suffer grave and irreparable harm because of USDA’s illegal action. This administration continues to hurt—not help—American farmers.”

“The Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access program was a lifeline for the people building a fairer and more sustainable food system in their communities,” said Hannah Wolf, FarmSTAND Staff Attorney and counsel for the plaintiff groups in USDN. “This court already enjoined grant terminations USDA and DOGE made in this manner, and it must also enjoin the termination of these LCM grants.”

“The LCM program was the federal government’s most meaningful attempt to address the compounding challenges the next generation of producers like me face,” said Amanda Koehler, young farmer and manager of the Land, Capital, and Market Access Network. “Awardees were building the financial, social, and physical infrastructure required for young and underserved producers to actually succeed – and the Trump administration unlawfully pulled the rug out from under them. With record farmland costs, a gutted USDA workforce, an aging agricultural population, and an extremely fragile farm economy, it’s imperative that the courts hold them accountable.”

“Farmers served by the LCM program have historically not had access to government support that would help them thrive as farmers and we must protect this program to help all American farmers thrive,” said Scott Carlson, Executive Director of Farmers Justice Center. “These grant termination could hardly get any worse. USDA is shuttering underserved producers’ access to land, capital, and market access during a poor farm economy suffering from uncertain markets. Land access is critical to farming. The courts must again stop this administration from continuing to harm rural America.”

“Organizations like RAFI and Agrarian Trust were a year into their grant work when USDA terminated the Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access. Their plans to purchase land or help farmers in the Southeast and the Caribbean were forced to an abrupt halt,” said Kym Meyer, litigation director at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “This is the latest example of this administration’s repeated, unlawful attacks on work intended to uplift underserved communities and combat climate change and it will not stand.”   

 

Earthjustice is the premier nonprofit public interest environmental law organization. We wield the power of law and the strength of partnership to protect people’s health, to preserve magnificent places and wildlife, to advance clean energy, and to combat climate change. We are here because the earth needs a good lawyer.

FarmSTAND is the only legal advocacy organization in the country dedicated solely to taking on all industrial animal agriculture. It is focused on dismantling the structures that enable the consolidation of corporate power and extractive practices in our food system and supports a vision of animal agriculture that is regenerative, humane, and owned by independent farmers.  

Farmers Justice Center is a national nonprofit law firm that supports and defends family farmers and their communities to help keep farmers on the land. It provides legal services, litigation, advice and counsel, and conducts activities supporting family farmers, rural residents, and others who are without sufficient means to adequately maintain or enforce their legal rights.

The Southern Environmental Law Center is one of the nation’s most powerful defenders of the environment, rooted in the South. With a long track record, SELC takes on the toughest environmental challenges in court, in government, and in our communities to protect our region’s air, water, climate, wildlife, lands, and people. Nonprofit and nonpartisan, the organization has a staff of 250, including more than 160 legal and policy experts and advocates, and is headquartered in Charlottesville, VA, with offices in Asheville, Atlanta, Birmingham, Chapel Hill, Charleston, Nashville, Richmond, and Washington, DC. selc.org 

The Land, Capital, and Market Access Network is an independent network of 48 awardees and numerous subawardees of the USDA’s Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access Program. The LCM Network’s goal is to tangibly improve access to land, capital, and market access for young, beginning, and underserved farmers and ranchers across the U.S. by resourcing innovative, community-based, locally-led projects.