After seven and half years after the 2018 full farm bill was signed, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman (RAR) released the longawaited text of the 900-plus pages of the Agricultural Act of 2026 , which will update federal food and farm policy.
In 2025, the One Big Beautiful BillAct (OBBB) split the traditional farm bill coalition by updating some farm bill policies while excluding the rest – from rural development and credit to conservation and local and regional food systems. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives approved their own separate version of the farm bill, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026.
The Agricultural Act’s immediate prospects remain hazy, while Boozman has signaled that a committee markup could be held in the near future. Meanwhile, Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has made clear that committee Democrats want the farm bill to directly alleviate the OBBB’s impacts on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program before entertaining a broader negotiation. Ultimately, 60 votes are required to approve a farm bill in the Senate – and in the 119th Congress, that means a successful Senate farm bill must be the product of a bipartisan process.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) did an analysis of the new bill. The Agricultural Act includes two provisions that significantly impact the future delivery of ad hoc assistance: a Specialty Crop Emergency Assistance Framework and an authorization of state disaster block grants. Through the Specialty Crop Assistance Framework, the discussion draft establishes a consistent method for delivering ad hoc aid to specialty crop farmers. The proposed program would calculate payments for future ad hoc assistance programs based on sales from the previous market year. As written it includes high payment limits of $900,000 for farmers deriving at least 75% of their income from farming activities. The framework would also exclude new producers who were impacted by an adverse event but had no recorded sales in the year prior.
The Agricultural Act also gives the USDA the authority to administer future disaster programs through state block grants and provides few protections to ensure these administrative issues do not hinder relief efforts when administered through state block grants.
Despite a continued need to improve risk management tools for farmers without access to traditional crop insurance, the Agricultural Act only makes a small improvement to the Noninsured Crop Disaster Assistance Program (NAP) – allowing NAP payments for losses due to damage to shared community ditches used for irrigation.
The Agricultural Act cuts over $1.9 billion from the first five years of the Environmental Quality Incentive Program’s (EQIP) budget window, and $500 million permanently from the Conservation Stewardship Program’s (CSP) baseline. Both cuts will result in an immediate reduction in the resources available to producers in 2027, though EQIP’s long term baseline budget is maintained after 2031. CSP on the other hand, takes a permanent, unacceptable cut.
The bill did not address NRCS field staffing problems after losing 23% of it staff between January 2025 and January 2026. NRCS staff work directly with farmers and landowners to identify conservation practices that are well-suited to their needs and local natural resource concerns.
The draft includes a number of positive reforms to the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), and a few problematic omissions. The bill restores support for midcontract management activities necessary to maintain the conservation value of enrolled acres and offers dedicated funds for cost share for grazing infrastructure to help ensure that appropriate acres remain in perennial cover at the end of a contract.
The Agricultural Act discussion draft includes some positive, bipartisan provisions in the nutrition title – but falls short due to a lack of guaranteed funding and provisions that would limit local food representation and market access.
The bill show supports for creating permanent pathways that support local and regional markets for farmers, including a state-led local food purchasing program that would ensure a greater share of food purchases (51%) are made from small and mid-sized farms, and beginning and veteran farmers. It also ensures funding can be used for all costs associated with implementation, including technical assistance to farmers.
Other provisions in the discussion draft have the potential to limit local food representation within federal nutrition programs. The draft adds a provision that would prioritize projects that offer all forms of fruits and vegetables year-round risking a larger share of incentive funding being spent in big box retailers rather than with farmers in local market settings.
There are a number of proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that would carry an uncertain impact on farmers. These include permanent authorization of online retail with greater restrictions on who is authorized to accept benefits online, and the addition of protein as an eligible food type for incentive programs.
The Agricultural Act discussion draft includes several modest improvements in the credit title of the bill by streamlining access to credit and allowing for preapproval for some loans. The draft also increases some loan limits but does not include a corresponding increase in FSA funding authorization, potentially resulting in bigger loans to fewer farms.
The discussion draft makes modest improvements to streamline access to farm credit, allowing for a preapproval pilot program for direct farm ownership loans, a prompt approval program for direct and guaranteed loans under $1 million, and increased funds for state mediation programs, and allows limited refinancing of guaranteed loans into direct loans, potentially forcing borrowers to the brink of financial crisis before qualifying for this refinancing opportunity as well as reducing the prohibition on loan eligibility for farmers who previously received debt relief from a lifetime ban to a seven year waiting period, and removes the requirement for beginning farmers and ranchers engaged in cooperatives or other business arrangements to be related by blood or marriage.
The draft also raises the limits that any individual borrower may owe to a lender for USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) direct and guaranteed operating and farm ownership loans.
Overall, the Agricultural Act makes little progress when it comes to investing in publicly funded research that benefits small to midsized farmers and ranchers. The discussion draft reauthorizes the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program as well as the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative while offering no additional funding or meaningful changes to either program.