House committee advances Farm Bill

The U.S. House of Representatives Agriculture Committee passed a Farm Bill last week, marking progress in the lengthy process of reauthorizing the legislation that expired in late 2023 and has been operating under short-term extensions ever since.

The Farm Bill provides funding for programs ranging from agricultural food production to easements and working lands conservation. Title II of the Farm Bill is the largest single source of federal funding for private lands conservation, including programs like the Conservation Reserve Program, Conservation Stewardship Program and Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

The Farm Bill generally follows a five-year cycle, with Congress updating and enacting a new piece of legislation when the previous one expires. The most recent Farm Bill, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, expired at the end of 2023. Congress has since passed extensions of the bill to keep programs running, as policy disagreements delayed the development of a new Farm Bill.

This year, the process was slightly unusual, as the budget reconciliation process last summer provided increased funding for some conservation programs by rolling leftover Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funds into the Farm Bill baseline through 2031. However, that legislation did not reauthorize the broader conservation title and did not provide funding for the Conservation Reserve Program. The draft bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee completes the work begun in the reconciliation process.

The draft bill passed by the Agriculture Committee, entitled the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, would reauthorize key programs for wildlife and set funding levels for the next five years. The bill would reauthorize the Conservation Reserve Program, a cornerstone of the Farm Bill Conservation Programs, without making any of the changes to the program that had been proposed in recent bipartisan legislation. The bill also maintains the requirement that 10% of funding through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program go to wildlife practices. The legislation would create a new Forest Conservation Easement Program and would replace the feral swine (Sus scrofa) pilot program with a new permanent program providing $150 million in mandatory funding over the next five years.

The House bill now goes to the floor for a vote. The Senate has not yet passed their version of a Farm Bill out of committee, although the Agriculture Committee chair, John Boozman (R-Ark.), and ranking member, Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), are working on their own proposal. Once that bill has been released and passed the Senate, any differences between the two bills—and there will likely be some—will need to be worked out in conference. Some provisions likely to prove hard to agree on are changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and policies around pesticide labeling. These policy rifts and the upcoming midterm elections mean that finalizing a Farm Bill remains an uphill battle.

Over the last two years, TWS has joined in coalition efforts to highlight conservation priorities,  make recommendations for strengthening conservation programs, and call on Congress to move the bill forward to passage.