Land Access
November 2025: Lopez Legacy Farms Fundraiser launched! Help the New Mexico Agrarian Commons reclaim a piece of agricultural history to build a regenerative future rooted in care for both soil and community.
The New Mexico Agrarian Commons (NM AC) was founded in 2023 based on Agrarian Trusts’ innovative framework intertwining land justice, ecological healing, and generational stewardship.
Founding member organizations Chihuahuan Desert Charities, Naya’s Refuge, and New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group in partnership with the Agrarian Trust created a community land-holding entity registered as IRC 501(c)(25). The goal of the NM AC is to provide long-term, affordable access to land and ensure economic opportunities in regenerative agriculture for historically disadvantaged people. Lopez Legacy Farms is our first project, bringing together farmers, birthworkers, and land stewards committed to ecological restoration and community resilience.
Guided by the healthy soil principles, we are restoring the land using organic practices (e.g. cover cropping, targeted grazing, compost application and drip irrigation) with the goal to achieve regenerative organic certification through the Rodale Institute. The farm will grow vegetables, medicinal herbs, and heirloom seeds while also serving as an incubator for a regenerative organic pecan cooperative and community-supported agriculture. These efforts create hands-on demonstrations of regenerative farming and expand economic opportunities for local families.
Lopez Legacy Farms
Once part of a much larger farm property, three parcels of two acres each represent the last remaining acreage of the original family land. Located in the San Ysidro Church community of Doña Ana County in Southern New Mexico, this land has sustained the Lopez family for over five generations.
Known as Lopez Chile Farm with the motto “It hurts so good!”, the Lopez family grew pecans, alfalfa, cotton, corn, and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, stewarding both the soil and a vision of community abundance.
Now, as board member of the New Mexico Agrarian Commons, Melissa Lopez-Sullivan is leading the next chapter: protecting this land as a community-held place of nourishment, teaching, and transformation.
Lopez Legacy Farms is advancing a three-phase land acquisition and stewardship strategy to place all 6 acres into the Commons, securing the land for collective benefit in perpetuity.
Healing Land, Growing Justice
The agricultural history of New Mexico is shaped by colonization, land theft, and racialized displacement. Indigenous communities stewarded this area for generations before colonization imposed extractive systems like encomienda. Later, Mexican landowners lost property through post-1848 legal systems that erased Spanish land grants. Black farmers, including the founders of nearby Blackdom, NM, also faced barriers to land access due to racism and environmental exclusion. Lopez Legacy Farms reclaims a small but powerful piece of this history by centering land, healing, and community care in the hands of those most impacted.
Lopez Legacy Farms is an extension of the values and mission of the New Mexico Doula Association (NMDA), where Melissa Lopez-Sullivan serves as Executive Director. It represents the physical grounding of reproductive justice; reconnecting the work of community-based doulas and full-spectrum care providers to the land, food systems, and cultural healing traditions. Grounded in a vision that all people deserve access to culturally humble, affirming care, Lopez Legacy Farms seeks to serve as a vital site for rest, recovery, and reconnection to land and water for birthworkers and families.
Learn more about New Mexico Agrarian Commons
The New Mexico Agrarian Commons creates land access and equitable opportunities for next-generation and underserved farmers by holding land to provide long-term, affordable and secure lease tenure for regenerative agriculture. This innovative model of shared land ownership, developed by the Agrarian Trust, fundamentally intertwines agriculture, social and environmental justice, community well-being, and ecological stewardship.
Beyond solely conserving land, the Agrarian Commons is focused on ensuring economic opportunities and food security for communities with the goal to strengthen local foodsystems and ecosystems at the same time.
New Mexico Agrarian Commons Values StatementThe purpose of the New Mexico Agrarian Commons is to own and preserve ecologically significant agricultural land and agrarian community real estate and real property assets as a title holding corporation exempt from federal income tax under IRC 501(c)(25).
The New Mexico Agrarian Commons is accepting land donations through bequests, community-financed purchases, and other mechanisms. All donations to the New Mexico Agrarian Commons are tax deductible.
For more information and to make a donation, please contact Shahid Mustafa, Vice President of the New Mexico Agrarian Commons.
Reparative justice:
The Agrarian Commons centers people who have been marginalized from access to land in communities that have been subject to extraction and exploitation.
Learn more about how the Agrarian Commons model creates equity
Climate resilience:
The Agrarian Commons actively stewards and protects biodiverse ecosystems, including healthy soil and watersheds.
Learn more about the principles guiding the Agrarian Commons
Land donations:
Leave a legacy for future generations by donating land to the New Mexico Agrarian Commons.
Learn how a land gift works
Patrick Jaramillo, President
Patrick was born and raised in New Mexico, a lifelong grower of food and steward of water. As New Mexico Program Co-Director of the American Friends Service Committee he works to protect access to land and water by the traditional peoples of New Mexico.
More about Patrick…
Shahid Mustafa, Vice President
Shahid founded Taylor Hood Farms in La Union, New Mexico, a small diverse farm dedicated to providing community members access to a variety of fresh, nutritious, locally grown vegetables. Taylor Hood Farms is also a farm incubator, offering education and training about local food systems and how to grow food using regenerative organic practices.
More about Shahid…
Rebekah Parr, Treasurer
Rebekah runs her management consultancy Heart Farm, which offers business finance, legal, and management tools. Heart Farm is also the affectionate moniker of the actual farm where she works and resides, located on 25 acres in Monticello, New Mexico, and where she hosts groups, retreats, and emerging creative space. The entire property has been decommodified by committing it in trust to Naya’s Refuge Inc. 501(c)(3).
More about Rebekah…
Isabelle Jenniches, Secretary
Isabelle co-founded the grassroots nonprofit organization NM Healthy Soil in 2018 which led to the successful passage of the state’s Healthy Soil Act in 2019. Drawing from her background in visual arts and community organizing, she attends to storytelling, communications and outreach as well as program development and coordination.
More about Isabelle…
Nathan M. Galaviz, Agrarian Commons Regional Coordinator
Nathan serves on multiple Agrarian Commons boards on behalf of Agrarian Trust to support existing and emerging land-based projects with real estate research, due diligence, transactional work, conservation easement, farm stewardship, management planning, and organizational / board administration.
More about Nathan…
Melissa Marie Lopez-Sullivan, Board Member at Large
Melissa is Executive Director of the New Mexico Doula Association (NMDA), a vital community-based organization for doulas across New Mexico. She advocates for birth and reproductive justice movements, resulting in policies and systemic changes that protect reproductive health and minimize maternal morbidity, specifically for black and indigenous communities.
More about Melissa…
Alicia Thompson, Board Member at Large
Alicia is the West Region Organizing Manager for the National Young Farmers Coalition. She also works as an Indigenous consultant who provides guidance on working with tribal partners, and guidance for tribes in native nation building strategies.
More about Alicia…
Lopez Legacy Farms Fact Sheet (click to view)
Dairy Regeneration Fact Sheet (click to view)
Resources on New Mexico Agriculture & Community
Where The Water Lands https://www.nmhealthysoil.org/2024/08/03/where-the-water-lands/
By Shahid Mustafa, Edible New Mexico 2024
New Mexico Farm & Food Economy http://www.crcworks.org/nmfood20.pdf
By Ken Meter, Crossroads Resource Center, for New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group, 2020
Building Soil Health in New Mexico http://www.crcworks.org/nmsoilhealth.pdf
By Ken Meter, Crossroads Resource Center, for New Mexico Healthy Soil Working Group, 2021
New Mexico Farmland Facts
The Census of Agriculture defines a “farm” as “an operation that produces, or would normally produce and sell, $1,000 or more of agricultural products per year.” It does not distinguish between “ranches” and “farms.”
TOTAL AMOUNT OF FARMLAND: 39,128,563 acres
- 39.128,560 acres of rangeland (94.7% of all farmland)
- 2.094,233 acres of cropland (5.3% of all farmland). One of every three acres of cropland is irrigated.
TOTAL NUMBER OF FARMS: In the 2022 Ag Census, New Mexico reported 20,976 farms, decreased from 25,044 farms in 2017.
AVERAGE ACREAGE PER FARM:
- Average farm size is 1,865, trend is increasing.
- The majority of New Mexico farmers are small-scale. 98% of farmers are categorized by the USDA as small farmers and 78%, as very small farmers (USDA NASS, 2019).
AVERAGE FARM REAL ESTATE VALUE: $610 per acre
The 2022 New Mexico average farmland real estate value, a measurement of the value of all land and buildings on farms, was $610 per acre. This is an increase of 1.7 percent from 2021 and 6.1 percent from 2020. The average value of cropland was $1,790, up 7.8 percent from 2021.
FARMLAND LOSS:
Privately owned farm and ranch land has been lost to urban development, declining 20% over the past 70 years.
USDA/NRCS CONSERVATION PROGRAMS:
- 2,888 farms used rotational management or intensive grazing, 10% less than the 3,198 farms reported in 2012.
- 893 farms held 594,643 acres of land under conservation easements.
- 1,917 farms used no-till farming practices on 158,821 acres.
- 1,229 farms used reduced tillage practices on 236,967 acres.
- 1,075 farms planted cover crops on 47,479 acres, trending down.
- The 2022 Census counts 80 USDA-certified organic farms in New Mexico, down from 127 in 2017.
NUMBER OF FARM OPERATORS/PRODUCERS: Though the state counts more than 37,000 agricultural producers, 54% of New Mexico farmers have a primary occupation other than farming. Only about 17,000 respondents to the Census of Agriculture said their primary occupation was farming.
AVERAGE AGE OF NEW MEXICO FARMER:
60.6
More than a quarter of New Mexico farmers (28.6%) fall into the age group of 65 to 74 years, and 24% of farmers are ages 55 to 64. Farmers aged 75 or older account for 17.3%, followed by farmers ranging from 45 to 54 years old (13.1%), then farmers ages 35 to 44 (9.8%).
NUMBER OF YOUNG FARMERS IN NM:
2,666
Out of 37,023 farmers in New Mexico, only 5.6% of farmers are ages 25 to 34, and just 602 New Mexico farmers are under 25 (1.6%).
NM FARMER DEMOGRAPHICS:
- New Mexico farms are primarily owned and operated by families or individuals, with 17,593 family farms as of 2022, or about 84% of all farms in the state. Corporations account for 1,129 farms, or 5.4%, while partnerships own 982 farms, or 4.7%. Other farms, such as estates or trusts, prison farms, grazing associations, American Indian Reservations, etc., make up about 6% of farms in New Mexico.
- New Mexico farmers are predominantly men. According to the Census of Agriculture, there were 22,009 male farmers in New Mexico in 2022, making up 59% of the state’s total producers. New Mexico’s 15,014 women farmers accounted for 41% of the total.
- According to the census, there are 93 Black farmers in New Mexico who farm 49,350 acres of land across 78 farms.
- In 2022, New Mexico counted 9,826 new and beginning producers, including 4,165 women.
FARM INCOME:
- 10 % of NM farmers earn less than $10,000/yr
- 43 % report a loss
- 25,507 of NM farmers have an off-farm job
Sources: State Agriculture Overview (2023), USDA/NASS State Agricultural Overview (2022) and Census of Agriculture, 2022
NM Agrarian Commons founding member organization:
