By Katy Grimes
[California Globe] Gavin Newsom created a task force to address ’the agricultural land equity crisis’
For a peek into how California Governor Gavin Newsom would rule the country if elected President, look no further than his California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force. This ambiguous agency was buried within the state budget in 2022 during Newsom’s statewide Covid lockdown, when media was not allowed near the governor or Legislature.
"Established in the California Budget Act of 2022 (AB 179, Ting), the California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force is an independent 13-member body directed to ’submit a report (by Jan. 1, 2026) to the Legislature and Governor...that includes a set of policy recommendations on how to address the agricultural land equity crisis.’"
You read that right. Gavin Newsom created a task force to address "the agricultural land equity crisis."
WHAT AGRICULTURAL LAND EQUITY CRISIS?
The report the Equity Task Force recently released recommending a land grab from white farmers reads like a "How To" Marxism 101 manual at UC Berkeley.
One of their primary grievances is that "demographic trends in landownership differ greatly from those of agricultural labor in California;" i.e. not enough farm workers own the land on which they work.
By that logic, not enough teachers own the schools where they teach, or not enough dockworkers own the ships they load and unload.
This is their definition of agricultural land equity:
"Agricultural land equity is when all people have secure and affordable access to viable land for the care, relationship with, and cultivation of food, fiber, medicine, and cultural resources without systemic barriers, disparities, or exploitation."
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins just sent Gov. Newsom a letter demanding that he "reject and abandon any attempt to pursue the illegal recommendations in the Equity Task Force’s report. It is unconscionable that hardworking farmers are being demeaned and shut out of opportunities simply because they don’t meet the state’s definition of ’equity.’"
Rollins says Newsom is violating the Fourteenth and Fifth Amendments — the equal protection and takings clause, as well as a violation of California’s Proposition 209, a ban on affirmative action, passed by California voters in 1996, which prohibits discrimination or preferential treatment by the state, public universities, public employment, or other public entities, and banned affirmative action policies, enshrined in the California Constitution. In 2020, voters even reaffirmed the ban on affirmative action policies and practices by voting down Proposition 16, 57% to 42%.
Gavin Newsom is concocting new ways to drive up food inflation by handing over land and natural resources to California Native American tribes, minority groups and the who they deem as generally aggrieved.
The report even recommends the development of local ordinances to restrict citizens from purchasing land unless they are part of a certain minority group.
The California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force names the statewide California Reparations Task Force in their report, created by legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, which formally recommended that the state legislature repeal Proposition 209.
The Globe reported in 2023 that the state’s Reparations Task Force was pulling a bait-and-switch on Californians — with talk of a "racial wealth gap," "racial terror," "race-based traumatic stress," and "guaranteed income for dependents of slaves."
But what these progressive know-it-alls are really promoting is social justice reparations and nothing more than a redistribution of wealth.
This is Marxism.
Secretary Rollins said, "This policy would encourage the state and nonprofits to outbid legacy farms at auction and then only offer agricultural leases back to minority farmers after the purchase. Tax credits, debt forgiveness, special funding, and even priority in important farm conservation programs would only be allowed to benefit a few select minority demographics."
"In a move we’ve come to expect from the radical left, the report even encourages the adoption of laws requiring ’climate’-related agricultural practices for the new minority landowners."
Secretary Rollins warns not to dismiss this report as some kooky leftist dream. "Newsom and his cronies are reckless fools, but they mean business. This report is thought out and comprehensive."
Here is another sample of "agricultural land equity:"
"Advancing agricultural land equity requires changing policies, practices, systems, and structures to address concentrated market forces and ownership of natural resources to achieve meaningful improvements in the lives of producers and land stewards who have been historically and systematically excluded from secure land tenure."
The report is riddled with complaints of "Historical injustices" and "contemporary disparities," "atrocities," "extreme disparities," "inequities," and exploitation of "Indigenous communities," "displacement" and "unequal distribution of land."
You see where this is going... it’s the DEI of California’s agriculture industry, which Democrats haven’t been entirely successful in destroying...yet. This comprehensive business plan requires more illegal reparations in the form of hostile land "takings" seizures, this time for "indigenous" tribes and farm workers.
Gov. Newsom also created the California Truth & Healing Council, by Executive Order N-15-19, which is under the Governor’s Office of Tribal Affairs, to assist with this scheme.
Imagine 500 more Indian casinos on former food-producing agricultural land... because that is where the Tribe’s leaders make the most money — not on tilling the soil. Adding the tribal leaders bottom line, Tribal land no longer pays property taxes, so California taxpayers will be on the hook to make up for the tax losses.
As for accountability of this California land takeover? None. It’s the fox guarding the henhouse.
"Effective progress toward agricultural land equity requires a nuanced and community-centered understanding of how various forms of prejudice intersect to produce specific barriers to land access, while also shaping the relative impact of potential solutions across socioeconomic, geographic, and historical contexts.
Rather than a singular checklist of required components, progress toward agricultural land equity must be designed and led by individuals and communities that land equity is intended to serve."
Cal. Civ. Code § 3482.5(e) (2013) defines "agricultural activity" as "the cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural commodity including timber, viticulture, apiculture, or horticulture, the raising of livestock, fur bearing animals, fish, or poultry, and any practices performed by a farmer or on a farm as incident to or in conjunction with those farming operations, including preparation for market, delivery to storage or to market, or delivery to carriers for transportation to market."
The California Agricultural Land Equity Task Force even redefines the state’s definition of "agriculture" as "the knowledge and practice of caring for and cultivating plants, animals, and ecosystems for food, fiber, medicine, or other resources."
The task force complains that "while the state’s agricultural industry has produced wealth for some, the large majority struggle to sustain their businesses, families, and communities, often due to a lack of secure access to viable land."
IS THIS GAVIN NEWSOM’S "GREAT LEAP FORWARD?"
Between 1958 and 1962, an estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao Zedong’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new "socialist" China. The Heritage Foundation reported that Mao ordered the collectivization of China’s agriculture under the ironic slogan, the "Great Leap Forward."
"A deadly combination of lies about grain production, disastrous farming methods (profitable tea plantations, for example, were turned into rice fields), and misdistribution of food produced the worse famine in human history."
"Deaths from hunger reached more than 50 percent in some Chinese villages. The total number of dead from 1959 to 1961 was between 30 million and 40 million—the population of California."
As the peasants of China were starving to death, eating their pets, eating soil and dirt, eating leather, and eventually each other, Mao was exporting grain.
It’s a travesty—but it is by design—that California’s public school children don’t know any of this history.
Secretary Rollins says "This radical DEI agenda needs to be stopped in its tracks, immediately. We are committed to fighting for all farmers, ranchers, and agricultural producers — no matter their ZIP code."
We Californians may have a soulless monster for a governor, but the Trump administration is running interference for the 40 million people who live here, as well as for the rest of the 302,034,432 Americans.
Share this article with as many people as you can to expose the deep, dangerous corruption of Governor Newsom.
If he can dream up this scheme to harm California, imagine what he would do to the rest of the country.
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