A farmer harvests corn along Highway 163 in Iowa. (Photo: Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The United States House approved 224-200five-year farm bill, members of Congress on Thursday are trying to update the main rules of farm and food policy after three years of extensions.
The Bill would authorize grant and nutrition assistance programs through fiscal year 2031. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the bill would have no significant impact on discretionary federal spending over 11 years and would augment mandatory spending by $162 million over the next six years.
Most Democrats opposed the bill, but 14 voted for it. Three Republicans voted against. Six members did not vote.
Democrats voted in favor: Bishop Sanford of Georgia, Jim Costa and Adam Gray of California, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Sharice Davids of Kansas, Donald Davis of North Carolina, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Kim Schrier of Washington, Josh Riley of New York, Darren Soto of Florida and Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico.
Republicans who voted against were Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Garbarino of New York and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming.
Not much rule change
Because last year’s GOP massive spending and tax cut bill made major changes to some U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, mainly the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helped about 1 in 8 Americans afford groceries in 2024, the farm bill passed Thursday was a “skinny” version and relatively lacking in substantive policy updates.
The bill would still have to pass the Senate, which has not yet presented its version.
Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman, who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, cheered Thursday’s House passage and said the Senate text would be released “in the coming weeks.”
“This is an important step toward updating long-overdue policies that support our farm families and strengthen rural communities,” he said in a statement about the House vote. “We put more farms on the Farm Bill through tax cuts for working families (GOP Spending and Tax Cuts Act), and this legislation builds on that success.”
New permissions needed
Farm bills are typically issued for five years. However, Congress last approved the version in 2018. Extensions to the 2018 version took effect in 2023, 2024 and 2025.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said the measure would still significantly update farm and food programs.
“It is more clear than ever that America’s agriculture needs a new farm bill now, not next year or the next Congress,” he said. “Producers are operating under a third consecutive extension of the Farm Bill, and the simple truth is that 2018 policies will not meet the challenges of 2026.”
Agriculture Committee Ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota opposed the bill, saying it did not address any of the pressing issues facing farmers and SNAP recipients. The bill does nothing to ease the rising costs farmers face from President Donald Trump’s tariffs and “blocks a $187 billion cut to SNAP” in last year’s spending bill, Craig said.
“This does not fix any of the fundamental policy choices of Republicans and this administration that caused the problems in the first place,” she said, adding that continued SNAP cuts put “greater pressure on struggling Americans at a time when the costs of groceries and health care continue to rise.
Craig said Thursday morning that the measure could aid corn farmers by introducing a provision that would allow gasoline containing 15 percent ethanol to be available year-round. The product, known as E15, is increasing demand for corn, but is being restricted during the summer months because of the pollution it can cause at high temperatures.
Thompson responded that the commission would consider introducing a separate measure for the year-round E15 route in mid-May.
Local food, supervision of foreign food aid
The bill contains several novel provisions.
This would provide $200 million for a novel local food purchasing program that would primarily benefit food banks.
It would transfer authority for foreign food aid programs under USDA from the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development.
It would raise the limit on how much individual farmers could borrow from the USDA and expand rural development programs that fund addiction treatment and mental health services.
On Thursday morning, MPs voted in favor of an amendment removing a controversial provision protecting pesticide makers from legal liability for warning users about the risk of cancer. If this provision became law, it would become a subject of discussion the case was being considered before the U.S. Supreme Court this week involved an award given by a Missouri jury to a user of Monsanto’s popular Roundup herbicide who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“I will deepen the hunger”
Several Democrats sharply criticized the bill, but there seemed to be more opposition to the “big, beautiful” law that Trump signed into law on July 4 last year. The farm bill, Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern said, would not prevent changes to the law.
“We are on the floor considering a five-year farm bill that, frankly, does nothing for our farmers and screws poor people and maintains almost $200 billion in SNAP cuts,” the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee said on the House floor Thursday. “This will worsen hunger in this country.”
Thompson said Democrats were too focused on what wasn’t in the bill, rather than on provisions that have bipartisan support.
“Today you will hear opposing comments, that this is a partisan bill, and even more so about what is not in it,” he said at the beginning of the debate. “This bill is filled with good policy that is also overwhelmingly bipartisan.
