A farmer harvests corn along Highway 163 in Iowa. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)
The US House of Representatives agreed 224-200a five-year farm bill as members of Congress seek to update key agricultural and nutrition policies after three years of extension.
The The invoice would authorize subsidy and nutrition assistance programs through fiscal year 2031. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that an earlier version of the bill would not significantly affect federal discretionary spending over 11 years and would add $162 million in mandatory spending over the next six years.
Most Democrats opposed the bill, but 14 voted for it. Three Republicans voted against it. Six members did not vote.
The Democrats in favor were: Sanford Bishop 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.
The Republicans who voted against it were: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Garbarino of New York and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming.
Few policy changes
Because Republicans’ massive spending and tax cuts bill last year brought significant changes to some U.S. Department of Agriculture programs, most notably the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helped about one in eight Americans afford food in 2024, the farm bill passed Thursday was a “slim” version and contained relatively few key policy updates.
The bill would still need to be passed by the Senate, which has not yet submitted its version.
Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, welcomed the House’s passage Thursday and said a Senate text would be released “in the coming weeks.”
“This is an important step toward updating long-overdue policies that support our farming families and strengthen rural communities,” he said in a statement about the House vote. “Through the Tax Cuts for Working Families (the Republican spending and tax cuts bill), we included more agriculture in the farm bill, and this legislation builds on that success.”
New permissions required
Agricultural invoices are usually issued for a period of five years. However, Congress last approved a version in 2018. Extensions to the 2018 version were enacted in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said the measure would still meaningfully update farm and food programs.
“It is more obvious than ever that rural America needs a new farm bill now, not next year or in the next Congress,” he said. “Producers are operating under the third consecutive extension of the farm law and the simple truth is that the 2018 policies are not up to the challenges of 2026.”
Agriculture Committee Ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota opposed the bill, saying it does not address any of the pressing issues facing farmers and SNAP recipients. The bill does nothing to alleviate the rising costs faced by farmers from President Donald Trump’s tariffs and “secures the $187 billion cut” to SNAP in last year’s spending bill, Craig said.
“It does not change the fundamental policy decisions made by Republicans and this administration that caused the problems in the first place,” she said, adding that continuing SNAP cuts “puts more pressure on struggling Americans at a time when food and health care costs continue to rise.”
Craig said Thursday morning that the measure could have helped corn farmers by including a provision allowing 15% ethanol gasoline to be available year-round. The product, known as E15, increases demand for corn but has been restricted in the summer months due to the pollution it can cause in high temperatures.
Thompson responded that the committee will consider a separate measure on year-round E15 in mid-May.
Local food, oversight of foreign food aid
The bill does contain some up-to-date provisions.
It would authorize $200 million for a up-to-date local food procurement program, largely used by food banks.
It would transfer responsibility for foreign food aid programs under the USDA from the now-defunct U.S. Agency for International Development.
It would boost the cap that individual farmers could borrow from the USDA and expand rural development programs that fund substance abuse and mental health services.
Members voted Thursday morning for an amendment that removed a controversial provision that shields pesticide manufacturers from legal liability for warning users of a cancer risk. If it had become law, the provision would have come into question a case argued At issue this week in the U.S. Supreme Court was a Missouri jury’s award to a user of Monsanto’s popular weedkiller Roundup who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Will make hunger worse.”
Several Democrats criticized the bill but seemed to have more problems with the “big, beautiful” law that Trump signed on July 4 last year. The farm bill, said Massachusetts Democrat Jim McGovern, would not address the changes in that law.
“We are locally considering a five-year farm bill that, quite frankly, does nothing for our farmers and screws over poor people and maintains the nearly $200 billion in cuts to SNAP,” the House committee’s top Democrat said on the House floor Thursday. “It will worsen hunger in this country.”
Thompson said Democrats focused too much on what wasn’t in the bill and not on the provisions that had bipartisan support.
“Today you will hear some opposing comments saying that it is a partisan bill and even more about what is not in the bill,” he said at the start of the floor debate. “This bill contains good policy that is also overwhelmingly bipartisan.
