American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall today applauded the release of farm bill text and notice of a Senate Ag markup for next week.
“When you look across the spectrum of agriculture, there is one piece of legislation that touches almost every farm in America, and that’s the farm bill, so it’s time for Congress to get it done.
“We’re grateful to Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman for releasing farm bill text and are encouraged that we can achieve a bipartisan bill that can get across the finish line. We appreciate the Administration’s call for Congress to move this process forward and urgently deliver a farm bill to the President’s desk.
“The bill includes important provisions beyond traditional farm bill program support, including authorizing the sale of E15 blended fuel year-round, expanding investments in specialty crops and measures to reduce input price volatility. We’re also calling on Congress to deliver a fix for interstate commerce issues as well as much-needed economic aid for agriculture.
“We’ve lost 200,000 farms in a decade, and a modernized farm bill will help stabilize the struggling farm economy. We’re calling on the Senate Agriculture Committee to advance the bill out of markup and send it forward for full Senate passage and ultimately the president’s signature.”
Invest in Our Land (IIOL) issued the following statement in response to the release of the legislative text for the Agricultural Act of 2026 – or “Farm Bill 2.0” – by Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman ahead of the committee’s markup next week.
“Federal conservation programs are pivotal in helping farmers and ranchers across the country navigate one of the toughest periods in a generation – rising input costs, unpredictable markets, and weather that cost producers billions of dollars,” said Rebecca Bartels, Executive Director of Invest in Our Land. “That is why the long-term conservation commitment Congress made in 2025 needs to be defended and strengthened, not eroded piece by piece. We recognize the durable support many members of the Senate Agriculture Committee, including the Chairman, have shown for conservation over the years, but we are troubled that the Committee’s draft Farm Bill continues to divert money away from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to cover other priorities – reducing EQIP by nearly $2 billion below the levels Congress established just last year. Based on a recent state-level analysis by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the Senate’s proposed cuts could leave more than 56,500 valid farmer applications unfundedover the next few fiscal years. EQIP and its sister programs deliver tangible, on-the-ground results for producers’ resilience and capacity to innovate, which is exactly why they rank among the most oversubscribed programs USDA runs: in fiscal year 2025, the Department was able to fund only about 24 percent of EQIP applicants and 37 percent of applicants to the Conservation Stewardship Program. When demand exceeds available dollars by that margin, the solution is not to slice the same pie ever thinner while the backlog goes untouched – it is to put more resources into the programs producers are requesting by name. We welcome the improvements to the Conservation Reserve Program, but reshuffling existing funds will not meet producers’ needs.
“Furthermore, as USDA continues to move forward with its reorganization that may result in further staff losses, the Natural Resources Conservation Service has already lost 23 percent of its workforce, and conservation dollars don’t reach the field without the planners, engineers, and field staff who partner with farmers and ranchers to deliver them. Protecting and expanding conservation funding has to go hand in hand with protecting the people at NRCS. We urge the Committee to fund new and expanded programs without raiding others and to protect staffing at NRCS. Farmers and ranchers are relying on them to do the right thing at a time when they can ill-afford another blow to the success and vitality of their operations.”
