{"id":61016,"date":"2026-03-24T23:31:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T03:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sustainableagriculture.net\/?p=61016"},"modified":"2026-04-16T10:13:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T14:13:49","slug":"unpacking-the-house-farm-bill-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainableagriculture.net\/blog\/unpacking-the-house-farm-bill-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpacking the House Farm Bill: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Editor\u2019s Note: This is the first post in a four-part blog series analyzing the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, which was reported out of the House Agriculture Committee on March 5. This post\u00a0provides an overview of the markup process and the bill as a whole. The second post<\/a> provides a deep dive analysis of the bill\u2019s potential impacts on local and regional food systems.<\/em> The\u00a0<\/em>third post<\/em><\/a>\u00a0offers an analysis of its impacts on the farm safety net, farms\u2019 ability to access land and capital, and fair competition. <\/em>The fourth post<\/a> covers conservation, climate resilience, and sustainable and organic research.\u00a0<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In the early morning hours of Thursday, March 5, 2026, the House Committee on Agriculture favorably reported the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 <\/em>(FFNSA, H.R. 7567<\/a>) out of committee by a vote of 34-17. FFNSA arrives at an undeniable crossroads for American food and agriculture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across fields and communities nationwide, recent years have brought hardships not seen since perhaps the US farm crisis of the 1980s. Today, high production costs, unstable markets, and low crop prices driven by uncertain export markets and overproduction have converged to create an economic climate that threatens farmers\u2019 livelihoods<\/a>. Unfortunately, too many of these impacts<\/a> stem directly and indirectly from actions taken by the current Administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, in the halls of Congress, elected Representatives have been unable to pass a new, bipartisan farm bill. Since at least the mid-1960\u2019s<\/a>, Congress has reauthorized a new farm bill roughly every five years by bringing together a bipartisan coalition of rural and urban interests and the Members of Congress who represented them. Yet, the most recent full farm bill – the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018 (2018 Farm Bill, PL 115-334<\/a>) – was signed into law in December 2018. As of March 2026, we are in uncharted waters – over seven years have passed since the 2018 Farm Bill was signed into law, the longest such stretch in recent memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opportunities to authorize a new, full farm bill during the 118th Congress – in 2023 and 2024 – came and went in both the House<\/a> and Senate<\/a>. When the November 2024 election delivered a governing \u201ctrifecta\u201d for the Republican Party, they turned to the budget reconciliation process<\/a> to pass a bill that updated some parts of the farm bill, while leaving most out. This reconciliation bill, commonly referred to as H.R. 1,  took the unprecedented step<\/a> of cutting nearly $200 billion from one part of the farm bill in order to fund another part of the farm bill, effectively breaking the decades-old bipartisan farm bill coalition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is against this backdrop – unprecedented times in farm country and in federal food and agriculture policy – that the House Agriculture Committee introduced FFNSA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A single farm bill – as important as it is – cannot solve everything. Yet a single farm bill can<\/em> set us on a better path. Judged within the inseparable context of this moment, FFNSA includes some promising provisions but ultimately falls short, choosing to double down on an agricultural system that simply is not working, rather than making real strides toward a system that does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summarizing the Markup<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The FFNSA markup<\/a> kicked off shortly after 6:00 pm EDT on March 3 and did not conclude until around 1:30 am EDT on March 5 – more than twenty hours in total. The vast majority of the markup focused on the debate of dozens of amendments offered by policymakers from both parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To understand the debate around many of the amendments, it\u2019s important to understand that, due to the unique nature of current Congressional budgeting rules, any reauthorized farm bill cannot cost more than the most recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) baseline of the current (in this case, 2018) Farm Bill. This means that to increase funding for one farm bill program, a corresponding amount of funding has to be cut from another farm bill program. Traditionally, this has meant redirecting funding from a program within the same Title (eg, Conservation Title) of the bill. Without such an \u201coffset\u201d for new or increased funding, however, many amendments offered during markup, which would have improved the bill, were rejected because they were not budget-neutral. During markup, several lawmakers from both parties took to deriding CBO – Congress’s nonpartisan official budgetary scorekeeper – when their amendments did not achieve budget-neutrality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, however, partial blame rests with Congressional leaders who have not been able to  identify and direct outside funding resources into the farm bill, even while Congress has simultaneously managed to move tens of billions in funding for ad hoc assistance programs since 2018. This inability to secure new, outside funding for a farm bill is, in part, why H.R. 1 resorted to slashing billions from nutrition assistance to fuel farm subsidies, and why the new version of FFNSA lacks the resources to set us on a better path. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In total, just over 150 amendments were filed to FFNSA. 74 amendments received a vote of some sort – 29 of which were roll call votes and 45 of which were voice votes. Of those 74 amendments that received a vote, 44 were approved and incorporated into FFNSA – 3 by roll call vote, and 41 by voice vote. Find the full list of amendments here<\/a>. Below is a list of amendment votes directly related to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)\u2019s priorities that were taken during the House Committee on Agriculture\u2019s markup of FFNSA:<\/p>\n\n\n\n