The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has selected 50 projects for potential award, totaling approximately $300 million. These innovative projects will help improve access to land, capital, and markets for underserved farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners. The Increasing Land, Capital, and Market Access (Increasing Land Access) Program, which is funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, works to increase access to farm ownership opportunities, improve results for those with heirs’ property or fractionated land, increase access to markets and capital that affect the ability to access land, and improve land ownership, land succession and agricultural business planning.
The tentative selectees include national, regional, and local projects that cover 40 states and territories including Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. USDA will work with the selected applicants to finalize the scope and funding levels in the coming months.
In South Dakota:
Project Lead Applicant: Four Bands Community Fund Inc.
Project Geographic Area: ND, SD, MT, WY
Target Audience: Tribal Farmers
Project Description: The proposed project will serve tribal areas across a four-state region comprised of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming – four of the least and most sparsely populated states in the nation, but with some of the highest concentrations of Native American people. With a focus on land access and capital access, Four Bands Community Fund has designed the proposed 5-year project to overcome historical challenges so that at least 25 underserved, low-income agricultural producers in the tribal areas of the Mountain Plains Region can start, expand, or sustain a profitable agricultural operation. This overarching goal will be achieved by:
- Delivering 500 hours (approximately 20 hours annually to each participant) of customized one-on-one technical assistance to agricultural producers through a variety of methods, including in-person, telephone, or video conference.
- Deploying $6,603,750 in lending capital for the purposes of land purchase, land loss prevention, or tribal trust mortgages.
- Disbursing $733,750 in equity bundles to support land purchases, land loss prevention strategies, or tribal trust mortgages.
See the full list of Increasing Land Access Program selected projects at www.fsa.usda.gov/programs-and-
These projects will likely result in the purchase of land, construction of farm infrastructure and other activities that could have potential impacts on environmental resources. USDA has developed a Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the Increasing Land Access Program to evaluate the program’s overarching environmental impacts as they relate to the National Environmental Policy Act.
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